Well no surprises from Vodafone with their iPhone pricing 
announcement. I’m sure there will be lots of fuming punters out there. It seems the basic patter is “New Zealand is expensive (cell-phone duopoly after all) and we’re just pricing the iPhone at the same rate as other high end phones…in New Zealand”.
That said, the iPhone is obviously a seriously cool piece of kit…it will change the world(maybe not NZ at these prices)…but i certainly wasn’t that keen on the previous non-3G / locked version. So i went out and bought a LG Viewty (an iPhone want-a-be). This puppy:
- is 3G,
- has a 5 mega-pixel camera,
- takes divx movies,
- has a touch screen – so is great for texting,
- can browse the web,
- can be used as a modem, and
- available on any plan
I never used to think having a camera in your phone was a big deal until i bought the Viewty. I use it heaps with the kids, just to grab those little clips that you’d otherwise pass up. Given that its camera is significantly better than the iPhones, i’m not convinced that i will trade up / across. As always individual choice of product comes down to what you’re going to use them for.
Another observation…phone web browsing…i’ve had it for a few years on various phones and its always worked at a ponderously slow rate (i’m sure Vodafone slows it down deliberately to try and get you into the pay Vodafone Live service). Well i just installedOpera Mini and what a revelation that is. Opera have a bank of servers that compress and reformat web content before its sent to your phone. This is seriously cool…Opera runs really fast and the pages are instantly readable without scrolling all over the place.
For those of you queuing for your iPhone enjoy the weather, i think we’re going to crack 10 degrees in Wellington on Friday! I think i will stick with what i’ve got for now…
