AT&T To Offer No-Contract iPhone 193
rfc1394 writes "While the regular price of an iPhone is $199 if you take a 2-year contract with AT&T, if you're willing to pay a lot more you can get one without a contract. An article in InfoWorld mentions that 'Freedom will come with a price — $599 for an 8GB device and $699 for a 16GB — but this will mark the first time consumers in the United States are able to buy an iPhone without being tied down to a two-year contract. The phone probably would still be locked for use only on AT&T's network, said Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg. But buyers could choose a pay-as-you-go plan for voice service.' The question still remains, does it make any sense to pay that much for a phone that is still locked to AT&T's network even if you aren't bound to a contract?" Update: 07/05 18:21 GMT by T : An anonymous reader suggests that there is a convoluted but possibly cheaper route to an new, unlocked iPhone.
Paging Mr. Hobson... (Score:5, Funny)
"does it make any sense to pay that much for a phone that is still locked to AT&T's network even if you aren't bound to a contract?"
As Henry Ford once said of his Model T, "the customer can have any color he wants, so long as it's black." But only a cellphone company could call that a "custom color choice" and charge extra for it.
Re:No lock for no-contract phones (Score:4, Funny)
Once you are out of contract, they are required by law to unlock your phone for use on any carrier
I'm sorry, what law is this?
/. law; similar to the /. girlfriend and laws of economics; otherwise known as "what color is the sky in your world, anyway?"
Re:This is a response to iPhone unlocking... (Score:3, Funny)
It's always possible to game the system if you're willing to defraud it sufficiently. I mean, hey, I need more money, what if my bank gets "robbed"?
Re:This is a response to iPhone unlocking... (Score:4, Funny)
What if the phone gets "stolen"?
Then you might get accused of "fraud".
There's no way (as of yet) to change the iPhone's ESN, so if you report the phone stolen, you can expect the ESN to be barred from US networks (and EU ones, come to think of it) -- and if you try to use it, an alert will be triggered (assuming that AT&T's policies are anything like the policies of the carriers in the EU when it comes to stolen phones.)