Cost of Owning An iPhone, Palm Pre, Android Compared

Published on June 11th, 2009

Posted by Uncle Dave in Technology

So, which one are you gonna buy? Or have bought?

59 users responded in " Cost of Owning An iPhone, Palm Pre, Android Compared "

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# 1 moss said, on June 11th, 2009 at 5:49 am

Until I can get pay-per-call, none of the above.

# 2 Sea Lawyer said, on June 11th, 2009 at 5:50 am

I pay $75 a month total for my iphone plan, and I’m swimming in rollover minutes.

# 3 Opus said, on June 11th, 2009 at 5:51 am

Based on the comparison, Apple made a bad decision to stick with AT&T as the sole service provider.

In Asia phone, messaging, data and streaming digital TV cost a fraction of the US plan. We’re getting screwed by the networks.

Maybe I’ll just stick to an Ipod Touch with Skype and rely on free wi-fi instead.

# 4 Benjamin said, on June 11th, 2009 at 5:51 am

I want the Pre and the Android phone, although I would be happy with the emulator of one or the other. I am happy with my Centro, but I think I need to adapt the Palm OS software I wrote so it works natively on the Pre and in Android. If I had a Mac, I would re-write it for the iPhone too.

# 5 jbellies said, on June 11th, 2009 at 6:22 am

If the phone costs $199, and the monthly fee is $100, then isn’t that $2,599 over 24 months? Or are a “contract” and a “service plan” totally different things? No wonder noobs such as I don’t trust manufacturers / phone companies / packagers.

BTW, it sure *looks like* BillShrink.com is in bed with one of the manufacturers, from the way the data is presented. Did I need to say that?

# 6 Animal Mother said, on June 11th, 2009 at 6:27 am

I’ll get the iPhone when I have a choice of carrier. Until then, TracFone baby!

# 7 Travis said, on June 11th, 2009 at 6:31 am

I love my G1.

The micro SD card is hot swappable so the 1GB capacity above isn’t really accurate.

The phone is easy to hack, and there is also a completely open developer version of the phone available from Google.

If you know Java you can write software for this phone.

The bar code application is awesome. I was at Best Buy with a friend that wanted a digital camera. I scanned the bar code and Amazon had the same camera for $260 less.

Another cool application is Tricorder. I initially downloaded it because I’m a trekkie, but instead of being some fake readout of bogus sensor data it actually displays whatever data it can get from the phone. It also is a great little wifi finder. http://code.google.com/p/tricorder/

The battery life does suck, but when you consider that you are running networked applications that are constantly using the radio it makes sense.

# 8 Jim said, on June 11th, 2009 at 6:34 am

Why are all these plans set at a $99 price point? Did all these companies meet somewhere and decide this?

# 9 Roland said, on June 11th, 2009 at 6:50 am

Here in Canada, we can get the IPhone without a dataplan… I have a Mega 10 plan ($10 a month for 250 anytime minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends, unlimited in-network calls to any Rogers/Fido/Speakout), plus the dreaded $6.95 System Access Fees (sic) and he 911 fee ($0.50)… all in all after taxes I pay more or less $20 a month… so with a mandatory 3 year contract, my total costs is $720

# 10 Patrick said, on June 11th, 2009 at 6:58 am

“So, which one are you gonna buy? Or have bought?”

None & none.

# 11 BubbaRay said, on June 11th, 2009 at 6:59 am

I have a phone that makes phone calls, quite well everywhere I travel, including home base. It even gets on the net if I need it to. I no longer have a landline. With 3 phones on the rollover plan (and I’m swimming in minutes, too) the cost is $130/mo. Why do I need an oyPhone or any other of these gadgets? Do they actually make phone calls?

# 12 Nik (no C) said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:05 am

What, no Blackberry?

# 13 Named said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:05 am

Tried the HTC Magic (G2). It’s the keyboardless version of the HTC Dream. I must say, I went believing that Android was clunky crap but I came away immensely impressed.

Rogers is offering 6GB of data for $30 in Canada, but 25 for 250 minutes unlimited eve and weekend… Not bad at all.

# 14 Potenza said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:06 am

If those are the only 3 choices you go with the Pre. Cheapest rate plan. Sprint is rolling out 4G. If th Pre only had voice command

# 15 BillBC said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:07 am

I have an old cell phone my son in law gave me for free. I pay (in Canada) $15 a month, including system access fee, plus tax. Calls cost 30 cents a minute or 40 cents long distance, and I use it only for urgent calls. $180 a year. It doesn’t play games…it has some sort of access to the internet, but I’ve never used it for that. It’s a phone. I use it to make calls when I need to. Call me a Luddite, but paying $3600 a year seems insane, unless you are charging it to someone else…

# 16 jobs said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:08 am

I want the iphone without the phone but with a data plan.

Maybe the next ipod touch and Verizon?

# 17 BillBC said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:10 am

oops…make that $3600 over two years. Still nuts…

# 18 Tippis said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:10 am

A Nokia E71, obviously.

# 19 Potenza said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:11 am

At 6

You can get the Pre with a Sprint plan at $79.99 or 69.99 with employee referral. (450m, unlimited text & data) Info for the referral can be found on google.

# 20 Potenza said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:13 am

At 6

You can get the Pre with a Sprint plan at $79.99 or 69.99 with employee referral. (450m, unlimited text & data) Info for the referral can be found on google.

They must have used the $99 plan to give Cingular, I mean ATT a chance

# 21 mouring said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:24 am

Honestly the plan costs for AT&T side depends on what you need. My total bill (after tax, before discounts) is rarely more than $100. I have a cheaper voice plan and I rarely use my minutes (helps most of my friends/family are on AT&T =). I don’t do a lot of text messaging so I opted out of the text messaging plan (I may send/receive 10 messages a month).

So my cost is more inline with the Sprint/Palm Pre then the one marked as AT&T.

I know they have to make a simple chart, but wonder how many people are like me.

# 22 Potenza said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:33 am

The problem I’ve had with Cingular is it’s an outrageous amount to add internet &/or text to a plan. While all the Sprint plans for the Pre have free unlimited net & text. While the price points if for how many minutes you want.

To bad you can’t due a Pre on a Sero plan, then the Pre would just trounce the comp.

# 23 mikem said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:35 am

My wife and I oay $112a month TOTAL for our phone service. ther is NOW WAY we would EVER pay $150 a month for just 1 phone with the same capabilities at $112.

You AT&T Iphone users are the SUCKERS.

# 24 daav0 said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:43 am

I have an iphone 3g, and a Nokia E61i, and a Motorola Q, and only one account and one sim. The company pays the account and it’s brutal in international roaming (without even making any calls or running any apps–the os is a browser, remember and foreign data plan is two cents per kilobyte)

The iphone is a compelling software platform, with a mighty flood of great apps. It works very well as a phone, until it doesn’t work. Then it’s a bleeding nightmare.

I don’t think this is an apple problem, or an AT&T problem. I think it’s the problem of having a computer emulate a telephone. All smart phones do that.

# 25 GigG said, on June 11th, 2009 at 7:43 am

I have 2 phones (and iPhone and a regular phone for the wife) on an AT&T plan and 7500 shared minutes and UL data and messaging for the iPhone and my bill is $118/month with all the taxes. Add the $199 I paid for the phone and that comes up to $2359/year + sales tax on the phone.

# 26 omar R. said, on June 11th, 2009 at 8:02 am

If you need unlimited texting on a smart phone you are doing something wrong. G1, unlimited data, 250 min. unlimited nights, weekends for 61$ a month, taxes, fees included. 32GB micro sd can be found for about 20 bucks. FTW. Plus the phone is 97$ on amazon right now.

# 27 Somebody_Else said, on June 11th, 2009 at 8:07 am

The Pre looks pretty cool, although I’m happy with my iPhone 3G.

I have to use AT&T to get service at my house, so my options are limited anyway.

# 28 Narr0wM1nd said, on June 11th, 2009 at 8:13 am

This came from http://billshrink.com/blog/iphone-versus-palm-pre-versus-android/

Many there have pointed out that these numbers are over simplified. These phones have much better rates when other things are taken into account. With my Android G1 I qualified for the Tmobile loyalty plan so my unlimited voice is only $49.99 not $99.99 saving $50 a month means the TCO to me is $2040 making it the cheapest by far.

# 29 Stu Mulne said, on June 11th, 2009 at 8:27 am

I’m using a Samsung Omnia – after returning a Blackberry Storm…. The Storm is a “touchscreen only” sort of thing and my fingers were just too big. The Omnia pretty much demands a built-in stylus, but comes with a little lipstick-ish thing that hangs off the side. Very high PITA factor without any stylus, but you can find ‘em easily enough with pocket clips. The best is a Cross refill for an old Cross pen….

The kid’s got a similar candy bar phone with pop-out keyboards (I can’t figure out how to make it dial ), and the whole mess – unlimited data and something like 750 minutes – is just a shade under $200/month. (I did pay about $400 for the phones initially.)

The Omnia’s a half-decent phone, but the engineers apparently never actually used it. Many features don’t work as described in the manual, the USB cable really doesn’t charge the phone when connected to a PC (although setting up sync with Outlook is easy enough), and a sort of anti-cheek-dialing feature makes things like “Press 1 for English” frustrating, as you have to click the “mouse” (which is itself useless), then (sometimes) click “keypad”, before you can press the “1″…. And you have to do that QUICKLY or start again….

Other functions suffer from inconsistencies – things work somewhat differently in different places in the phone’s system. Kind of like having to turn your automobile’s key to the right to start the car if you locked the doors first, but to the left if the glovebox was opened…. (Impossible to explain this one .)

Something else next time….

# 30 Bob West said, on June 11th, 2009 at 8:27 am

Which ever one goes “Pay as You Go” first (maybe).
My current cost is less then $10 a month.
Currently I have a Nokia, which I bought used ($60), put in my sim card and added a 1gb micro SD card, takes a 1mb photo. Bought a PC cable to down load photos (works with Vista and Win7.
I’m happy with it

# 31 sargasso said, on June 11th, 2009 at 8:48 am

Technically speaking, all three are unremarkable.

# 32 Toxic Asshead said, on June 11th, 2009 at 8:55 am

I’ve been looking for a good comparison like this. I’m leaning Pre at the moment.

# 33 gquaglia said, on June 11th, 2009 at 9:00 am

I pay $75 a month total for my iphone plan, and I’m swimming in rollover minutes.

Me as well. I didn’t think anyone really used the phone part anymore, aside from SMS. Unlimited voice plans are really un needed.

# 34 Cephus said, on June 11th, 2009 at 9:21 am

Honestly, I don’t want any of them. The only reason I’ve been thinking of getting a smartphone is because I want to replace my old Palmpilot and that’s the only way to do it these days. I hate it, I’d much rather have a stand-alone device, but they don’t make them. I’d lean toward the Pre, but it’s a Sprint-exclusive and Sprint sucks. I’m very happy with T-Mobile and would like to stay with them, but only if I don’t have to pay through the nose for services I don’t use, which is what you have to do with all the smartphones. I don’t text, I never access the net from my phone, I don’t read e-mail, download movies, listen to music or anything else, in fact, I can guarantee I will never do any of those things, I just need a portable database to carry around where a laptop is too bulky to take along.

Why is that so goddamn hard?

# 35 Wretched Gnu said, on June 11th, 2009 at 9:40 am

Cephus — Completely agree. But what’s wrong with your Palm? I still use my T|X. It does everything I need for 0$ a month, including email.

# 36 Mike said, on June 11th, 2009 at 9:40 am

Nokia 97, 32GB internal and SD card, plus 5 meg camera.

Mike

# 37 zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz said, on June 11th, 2009 at 9:43 am

NO SMART Phone for me until they I can activate one without rip off DATA Plan!

Business will pay a tons of $$$ for data plans but for consumer its not worth it.

# 38 zorkor said, on June 11th, 2009 at 9:44 am

You American people are following Apple and Blackberry blindly. May I suggest you Nokia E71 or Nokia E75? Or if youre a multimedia freak then Nokia E97?
If youre into high quality photography and a nice cell phone then how about Nokia N86?

Lots of choices out there….

# 39 Named said, on June 11th, 2009 at 10:18 am

30,

I was thinking Pre too. But its not GSM yet, and I like to pretend I’m a world traveler. That being said, check out the HTC Magic (G2). Like I said prior, I was extremely impressed with the whole package.

# 40 ECA said, on June 11th, 2009 at 10:35 am

NONE..

What I would like to know, in this international forum…

IS the basic costs in your areas for Cellphone plans..

# 41 Named said, on June 11th, 2009 at 10:40 am

38,

The basic cost in Ontario is 6.95 for system access fee and 50c for 9/11. After that, it’s all over the place!

But, I can get a reasonable 250 minutes and free evenings (6pm – 8am) and weekends for 25 dollars more than above. Plus tax.

Though, our European friends get free INCOMING calls which is so LOGICAL no one in North American has asked for it.

# 42 MikeN said, on June 11th, 2009 at 11:46 am

How does that compare to $15 a month for phone calls and $10 for the phone?

# 43 David said, on June 11th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

This article has nothing to do with the phones mentioned. They’re all close to the same price.

Instead, this article is about the different cell providers usage rates. Sprint is cheapest because it’s horrible customer “service” alienated so many people, and they’re the only company that’s actually losing customers.

I have an iPhone and pay $65 a month after taxes for 450 minutes of voice, unlimited data, and 200 text messages. I wish it were cheaper, but it’s less than half the prices quoted here.

# 44 Cephus said, on June 11th, 2009 at 12:16 pm

#33: What’s wrong with my Palm? Nothing whatsoever, except that Palm decided to stop supporting it and now that I’m using Vista, you can no longer hotsync it via USB. I’m now having to keep an old laptop running in order to keep syncing my and my wife’s Palms. The time will come, however, that it will die and I want to have moved on by then, unfortunately I hate all the options I currently have for moving.

# 45 Cephus said, on June 11th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

zokor: I looked at all of the phones you mentioned, none of them would work for me. They’ve got a ton of bells and whistles I don’t want and none of the things I do. The Nokia E97 doesn’t appear on the Nokia website at all, I was looking for actual tech specs and all I could find online was a bunch of ridiculous fapping over how it looks.

Like I said, the Pre, if they can fix it and if I can get an unlocked one to use on T-Mobile at a decent price, might be the best way to go, Palm has already announced that they’d be doing an emulator that will run all of the software I’ve already got and really don’t want to have to re-write all of my databases that I just got working right again.

# 46 Richard said, on June 11th, 2009 at 1:10 pm

I would love one but the monthly fees are just way too high. Especially since I hardly make a phone call…

# 47 George said, on June 11th, 2009 at 1:48 pm

The best deal for me was to unlock an iPhone and put it on TMobile.

My wife wanted an iPhone more for fashion than anything. She didn’t talk much on the phone she had, and wasn’t going to use the web-enabled apps that often.

We were already on a TMobile family plan for $49.95/mo for two phones. I found a 16GB 2G iPhone on Ebay for $330. Jailbreaking and unlocking were free. I added a 100Mb/mo data plan for $9.99, and everything works except for visual voicemail.

So, my costs over 24 months are:

$330 iPhone
$600 1/2 of family Voice Plan (500min/mo)
$240 data plan (100Mb/mo)

$1170 Total.

# 48 Hmeyers said, on June 11th, 2009 at 2:34 pm

I pay $6.66 a month for my cell phone.

Smart phone? No. Smart customer? Yes.

The only thing that makes something a phone is that it can make phone calls!

# 49 Buzz said, on June 11th, 2009 at 2:42 pm

B- b- b- but what if I don’t let Sprint’s cheap everything unlimited plan define my needs? I have an iPhone and so does my wife, and the whole cost for the both of us is less than the monthly cost quoted here.

And as of the last bill, I still have over 7,000 rollover minutes.

And besides, where am I going to find a crowd of friends who will stink with envy when I show up sporting my new Pre and both of its killer aps?

# 50 Johan said, on June 11th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

Why do they compare the G1 with the not-even-released iPhone 3gs, when they could’ve used the HTC Magic instead. I don’t get it.

# 51 WhiteyMcBrown said, on June 11th, 2009 at 4:25 pm

To be fair, the iPhone is at 32GB and all music stores/app stores are not equal. I’m a huge iPhone fan, though…. 2nd place goes to Palm Pre. The Google phone is underwhelming.

# 52 Uncle Dave said, on June 11th, 2009 at 4:44 pm

#50: Because these are the three big boys that everyone is writing about. Everything else is… everything else.

# 53 Joe said, on June 11th, 2009 at 5:44 pm

Cost of owning a Sciphone:

Phone $100
8 GB card $20
Prepaid 1000 minutes, $100 x 3 times/year = $300 x 2 years = $600
Total $720.

PS: David Lynch says…

# 54 ECA said, on June 11th, 2009 at 9:28 pm

I wonder which would be BEST PRICED, if they were sold at 2 times Manufactured price.
Also arnt they on the Ver.2-3 hardware on the iphone??

# 55 ECA said, on June 11th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

Insted of the 5-10 times cost of building the unit..

# 56 orangetiki said, on June 12th, 2009 at 10:45 am

Honestly the only thing that , to me, makes one look like a better deal then the other is the carrier’s plans. Obviously the sprint looks the cheapest because they have a complete package plan when AT&T forces you to peacemeal everything. I’m an iPhone user and I am happy that I am. I sure as heck don’t have the unlimited text and minute plan. I get 500 minutes a month with 200 text, and I pay 80. The best deal will always be the one where you buy only what you need..

# 57 ECA said, on June 12th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

Problem ?I see with itunes/Iphone and the rest is dealing with APPLE and itunes.

They have messed up itunes before and screwed up alot of ipods. esp the shuffle.
Insted of dealing with JUST the phone seller, you are dealing witht he phone dealer, the Phone corp(ATT, or whom ever) then with Apple then with itunes. ANY of which could say GOODBYE and you have a brick. Any of these could mess up or quit working, and you are STUCK. You are already dealing with 2 versions of the hardware, as well as 3 major patches.. And if you dont have itunes you arent SUPPOSED to have other “un-apple-registered” programs or music on the device.
APPLE has the right to ERASE any music or programs off your iphone/ipod device it deems NOT to back or is illegal. READ the EULA.

# 58 ThisSucks said, on June 12th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

I stick to my 2 years old TyTN II, thank you.
None of the above can do half, and iPhone without cut/paste is the worst all of them.

# 59 pedro said, on June 13th, 2009 at 1:38 am

#13 HTC Touch Pro 2. That’s the ticket.

#38 You forgot “death to America” yet again.

#52 Well, they should seriously have a look at the HTC Touch Pro 2…oh, wait! Not available in the US. Sorry you have to get put up with mac & its oy!Phone instead.

#58 Check the phone I’m referring to. I’ve stuck with my ipaq 6315 for the same reasons as you until this baby came up

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