Last week, we covered the top five reasons you might want to shell out £269 for an iPhone when they go on sale here on 9th November. Now it's time for the flipside, where we explain why you might want to keep your wallet firmly in your pocket. While there's a lot of justified excitement around Apple's first mobile, it's not immune to criticism. So...
1. It's not 3G. Steve Jobs claims that 3G saps battery life too much, that EDGE is fast enough for web surfing on the go, and that Wi-Fi is much faster anyway. In order: it doesn't, it isn't, and it's true, but you have to be within range of a hot-spot. The lack of 3G is a big problem for would-be iPhone buyers, not least because Apple has already said it'll be releasing a 3G model next year. £269 and an 18-month contract for a phone that may be superceded within a year? Thanks for that.
2. It's expensive. Take a look at that price tag again: £269 for a phone that's on an 18-month contract, which will cost you a minimum of £35 a month. That's at least £899 in total. This won't stop Apple fans buying it, of course. But the fact that O2 hasn't been allowed to subsidise the price of the iPhone may put casual buyers off.
3. There's cheaper competitors out there. This ties in with the expensiveness of the iPhone, since savvy consumers will want to see what else they can get. This Christmas, for example, you'll be able to pick up a Nokia N81 or a Sony Ericsson W960i, which are both 8GB music phones, and both 3G. If you're signing up to a decent contract, you'll likely get them far cheaper than an iPhone too.
4. It's not a true iPod replacement. Much of the sales pitch for iPhone is that it combines two devices - an iPod and a phone - in one. But does it really? The iPhone has 8GB of internal memory, while Apple's new Wi-Fi iPod Touch has 16GB, and the iPod Classic has up to 160GB. If you have a sizeable digital music collection, you'll only be able to store a portion of it on your iPhone. In fact, the iPod Touch may be one reason not to buy an iPhone, since it does nearly everything the iPhone does bar voice calls.
5. It's locked to O2. Yes, you can unlock the iPhone with an increasing number of software applications, but they all involve fiddling with its firmware to some degree, and Apple has just warned that doing this could render your iPhone unusable the next time it releases a software update. So most users are stuck with O2. Now, O2 is great in many ways, and they're making it as easy as they can to port your number. But the fact remains that if you'd rather be on another operator, for now you can't buy an iPhone.
So, we've covered both sides of the debate (and as a reminder, here's our Top 5 Reasons To Buy a UK iPhone). What do you think: are you seduced or shocked by Apple's mobile?
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