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What would be your second choice phone next to the iPhone?

MarlboroLite

MarlboroLite

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 29, 2007
582
5
the 13 colonies
Well here's my very sad predicament. I have been living in France for 15 months and have had an iPhone for about 9 months now...what can I say it's the most amazing phone out there. We all know that.

Unfortunately for me, I return to the US at the end of the month and back home I am under a family plan with Verizon which I don't pay for. I will be returning to the NYC metro area where ATT is the worst and I loathe to switch to ATT--not only because of it's shoddy service coverage but also because the iPhone plans in the US are insanely expensive compared to the iPhone plans in France. With Orange, I am currently in a plan that costs me €42 a month, which includes about 300 minutes, unlimited texting, and of course the unlimited data. Oh and the phone itself (an 8GB 3G) cost me at the time €99, I know the phone was selling for $199 in the US. So....going from this very affordable plan to my cheapest option being $70 a month (minus any texting plan!!!) is simply too much, especially considering right now under Verizon it's costing me nothing.

So....the iPhone is just out of reach for me in the US. But because I love this phone so much I haven't paid any attention to what else is out there, especially on US carries since I have been away. So my question is, if you were in my place and had to go from an iPhone to something else (on Verizon) what would be the best smartphone right now in their catalog not called iPhone?

Is something coming out soon that is worth waiting for aswell?

Thanks for your suggestions...it's going to be super hard to stop using my iphone.
 
Excuse me if I am incorrect

By the sounds of things you are against jailbreaking. As far as I knew France was one of the countries that fought hard about apple selling exclusively with one telco. So shouldn't that mean that you are already unlocked or have the capability to unlock the phone before going back and just use that family plan that you dont have to pay for?
 
rtc872 said:
By the sounds of things you are against jailbreaking. As far as I knew France was one of the countries that fought hard about apple selling exclusively with one telco. So shouldn't that mean that you are already unlocked or have the capability to unlock the phone before going back and just use that family plan that you dont have to pay for?
Click to expand...

Jailbreaking/unlocking an iPhone won't change it from a GSM phone to a CDMA phone, so it won't worth with Verizon.

To answer the OP's question, my dad has a BlackBerry Storm that he seems to like, but he still drools over my iPhone. I hear that they are about to release the Storm 2, so it might benefit you to wait until that hits the market before buying one.

While it does suck that you are having to sacrifice the iPhone, just be confident that your service will be a million percent better with Verizon than it is with AT&T.
 
Well that would most definitely explain the dilemma. I didn't realise that telcos were so weird in the US. Sucks and best of luck.
 
My second, third, fourth choices all for 2nd place are:

upcoming Nokia E72 (currently I have E71)
Palm Pixi (if it EVER gets to HSPA/GPRS/EDGE bands for North America; stupid Palm going with CDMA a dying technology soon to be phased out by Telus, Bell, Verizon, and even Sprint some time as they too are flirting with LTE in 3yrs)
Nokia N97/N900
 
Exactly, I can unlock the phone through Orange itself after I break my contract with them without penalty because I'm moving to a different country, but it won't help me with Verizon. I simply plan to sell the phone when I return to the US.

I will look into the Storm 2, thanks for the tip.
 
Before i bought my 3GS i was really interested in a Palm Pre but since as all the stores in my area only had dummy phones that i couldn't actually use i went for the 3GS, i had a 1st gen iPhone so i knew the 3GS would be great. I don't know if things are different in the US but if you want to get anything close to the iPhone you are either going to have to take a risk and not be able to use one before you lay down your cash or jailbreak your current iPhone. If i was in your shoes i would go with the jailbreak option ;)

Few other phones you might wanna look at:
Palm Pre
Nokia N97
HTC TouchSmart Pro
 
Couldn't you get another GSM provider in the US apart from AT&T? Seems a real shame to let go of an unlocked iPhone. And if you ever travel back to Europe (or elsewhere in the world), you can always pop a prepaid/pay-as-you-go sim card in that iPhone.
 
Nokia 97 has serious issues.

Lovely piece of hadware, but the almost constant freezes/slow downs combined with a very poor browser make for an all round bad phone.

Two people I know with them are selling on eBay to make some dough to be able to go to the iphone. And they are on 2 year orange contracts so will have to buy unlocked or rely on a 'forthcoming' 3GS unlock.

They'd still rather chance it.
 
molala said:
Couldn't you get another GSM provider in the US apart from AT&T? Seems a real shame to let go of an unlocked iPhone. And if you ever travel back to Europe (or elsewhere in the world), you can always pop a prepaid/pay-as-you-go sim card in that iPhone.
Click to expand...

The only other option is T-Mobile, and they suck.
 
Personally I am a fan of Blackberry. The pre is out of the question because you are limited to what Verizon has to offer.

I know a lot of people really like the Blackberry Tour and Blackberry BIS services (free purchase of a phone) is 2nd to none.

Then again I really like the physical keyboard over touch screen. My vote is blackberry tour
 
the samsung galaxy looks pretty nice i guess. not played around with one to see what they are like though. i'd imagine any phone i chose as a second choice would be a distant second. i know that sounds like a very closed frame of mind, but i am more than satisfied with what the iphone is capable of and i'm just used to it now. the ease of use, the apps store and itunes store. i'd struggle to settle for a phone that doesn't have those 2 stores and that's just for starters. it would also have to have a screen of similar size and i haven't come across another OS that can handle a touch screen keyboard as well as the iphone does.
 
I have used my boss' Storm and really it is nothing compared to a iphone. The sotrm 2 might be better but on top of the blackberry os you will be craving a lot. Verizon has some touchscreen phones but most if no all of them are boring and have no apps worth using. What you need to do is wait until october/november and get the new Motorola Sholes, it runs Android and has a massive 3.7" touchscreen, slide out QWERTY, 512MB storage, 256MB RAM, support for microSD / microSDHC up to 16 GB (an 8GB microSD ships with the phone), a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, GPS, and the expected connectivity (USB, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi). It is gonna be a Verizon exclusive and is confirmed to be $199 w/ 2yr contract (prolly another $100 for 1 year). The phone is very nice looking to, google it and you should find some images.

Android is a really great OS and if it gets as popular with developers as the iphone OS then expect it to be the next big thing. Almost every phone manufacturer is coming out with Android devices, and lots of them, I think it is expected to be around 30 devices by early-mid 2010. I have a G1 and a iphone and honestly if Android had as many apps and whatnot then I would prolly sell my iphone and stick with the G1 (or the Sholes when it comes out).
 
You're stuck in a bad situation here since verizon makes the worst smart phones out of all their competitors. You can wait and see what the storm 2 is gonna be like, but as long as Verizon insists on crippling their phones, they will all suck.

On the bright side though they have the best coverage in the US.
 
impulse462 said:
You're stuck in a bad situation here since verizon makes the worst smart phones out of all their competitors. You can wait and see what the storm 2 is gonna be like, but as long as Verizon insists on crippling their phones, they will all suck.

On the bright side though they have the best coverage in the US.
Click to expand...

This is 2009, they don't cripple their phones anymore.
 
they definately cripple their phones as almost none of their phones have wifi. Verizon does have the worst phones by far.
 
dread said:
they definately cripple their phones as almost none of their phones have wifi. Verizon does have the worst phones by far.
Click to expand...

A lot of VZW's newer Smartphones do offer wifi options.


*back on topic*
My second choice would be an Android phone. Not sure which one though.

w00master
 
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