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I Stole the HTC Incredible for $99. OMG.

Posted on April 30, 2010 ·

Wow, talk about luck, apparently I caught a discount that barely existed for hours.  I’ve long waited for a decent smartphone available @ Verizon, be it the iPhone, Nexus One or whatever else … so raving reviews of the HTC Incredible certainly did not leave me cold. Still somewhat hesitating, I started to look for deals.  Verizon offers the new superphone for $199 with a two-year contract, but I’ve quickly quickly found some outlets selling it for $149. Then it occurred to me I should check my new default shopping destination, Amazon.  Bingo!

htc 99

I could not resist the $99 price, so I quickly ordered it.  This morning I wondered why people are saying Amazon sells it for $149 … a quick check on the pricing:

htc 149

Wow – was the $99 an introductory promotion ( not that they needed it, the first shipment sold out in hours), or an honest mistake by Amazon?  I don’t know, but am certainly happy that I grabbed it while it lasted 🙂

Now, if only HTC had a better name for it: saying HTC Droid Incredible is quite a mouthful – compared to the elegant simplicity (simple elegance?) of just saying iPHone.  Perhaps they should follow this advice:

If you have the audacity to name your new smartphone Incredible, it had darn well better live up to its name. Based on the reviews from CNET, LAPTOP magazine, PC Magazine, and PC World, the new HTC Droid Incredible does just that. In fact, the Android 2.1-based Verizon phone ($200 with two-year contract) could just as well be named Awesome. Stupefying. Maybe even OMG.

OMG.  I like it.  Now, please, Holy Amazon, just ship it soon.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve)

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Time for Device Independent Data Plans

Posted on January 27, 2010 ·

The Apple iPad event is still on, and the Internet is crumbling… Twitter barely crawls, CoveritLive isn’t exactly live, the major sites providing blog coverage are barely accessible… this is iKill – the day Apple Killed The Net. 🙁

But I want to talk about something more important:

iPad data plan

It’s a screenshot from Engadget’s coverage.  Yes, reasonable data plan prices. Except… how many of them do you need?  An iPhone data plan, too?   A data plan for your USB stick for the times you do need a “regular” notebook to work on?

Remember this?

rotaryphone

Yes, phones looked like that.  And there was a time when phone companies (Ma Bell) charged extra when you had more then one outlet in your home….

Remember the early days of cable TV?   You had to ( well, were supposed to) pay extra for each additional cable outlet.

How about the early days of the Internet, before wireless became pervasive?  Yes, ISPs expected us to pay extra for each outlet.

These anachronistic charges are all gone – we pay for the service, no matter what device we use to access it.

So why would wireless access be any different?  We will soon have an increasing number of devices, but the underlying service is the same.  In fact chances are when I use my iPad (which I don’t have), I will not be using my Netbook / Notebook, or browse the Net on iPhone, Google Nexus One … as a consumer I may own a variety of devices, but chances are I will only use them one at a time.

It’s time wireless providers wake up to the 21st century and charge for consumption on a per account (person) basis, not per device.

(Cross-posted @ CloudAve )

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