More iPhones and a documentary

iPhone

More information has come out from AT&T about the iPhone release and plans. While I'm not going to dig into the plans for the phone itself, I just want to reiterate the pricing of the phone itself for customers.

Steve Jobs was very quick and loud to announce the 'low price' of the iPhone. Well the prices for the 8GB and 16GB iPhones will different depending on where you fit in. I will be giving the prices in 8GB/16GB format so I don't have to reiterate myself each time.

So, to get an iPhone 3G without any contract at all, you will have to pay $599/$699. For customers who are not 'upgrade eligible' you will have to pay $399/$499. Finally, for customers who are 'upgrade eligible', opening a new account or adding a line will be paying $199/$299 for the iPhone. I do not have any sources that explicitly say that iPhone users will be 'upgrade eligible' when the iPhone 3G is released, but many are touting that they will be. Only time will tell about that for certain. Typically, a customer is 'upgrade eligible' when their contract has expired. Which I would expect AT&T to be money hungry enough to do just that because Apple fanboys would still be willing to pay that premium just to have the iPhone 3G.

Don't get me wrong, the iPhone is a very nice piece of technology and it is starting to have a real impact on mobile phone industry. The multi-touch interface and web browsing capabilities were very innovative. I have qualms about the multi-touch because I have large fingers and had problems typing with the on-screen keys. Plus the lack of feedback when touching the keys or numbers was not very user friendly. LG has the Voyager, which has a touch interface with feedback whenever a touch button is activated, which is very nice.

However, the blackberry still seems to be the corporate phone of choice by many companies. Be it the features it has, the pricing of the phones or their possible avoidance of certain mobile carriers (*cough* AT&T *cough*). Holding a blackberry is very nice and I do very well using the qwerty keypad even with my large fingers.

I want to see the reviews of the iPhone 3G after 2 or 3 months of use by an impartial judge. Even then I will still probably be using my LG 8300 phone because its cheap, good, and has excellent signal.

Voting Documentary

Someone twittered a link to a video online, that originally aired on HBO, being shown at freedomdocumentaries.org called 'hacking democracy' about electronic voting. Its a long video at one hour twenty-one minutes, but something very interesting to watch. They visit a company in Huntsville, Alabama and go through the trash from Diebold (completely legal).