As soon as my ATT store has iPhone 3Gs is stock I will upgrade - I held off upgrading last year - so this is my year! Next year I will be kicking myself - but what the heck!
I want to give my old iPhone to Brent to replace his phone - he simply hates carrying his phone around and so maybe if I give him a phone+gaming platform+SMS with keyboard+Wifi Surfing - he will be carry his phone around a lot.
What I don't want to do is pay $20.00 for his data plan which he will really not use. I do want to give ATT my money because I will likely pay for tethering on my new phone regardless of the cost.
Bu you need to put the data plan on the phone - when you activate and if you take it off later - it still uses data here and there and you can rack up a bad bill pretty quick - so you need to really turn off data.
I was so cheesed about this that I figured I might finally jailbreak my phone. Driving away from the ATT store I even though about jail-breaking and going to T-Mobile for Brent (I wuz steaming). So far I have not jail-broke my phone on principle (yes - I even resisted "free" tethering - and yes that was hard to resist) - since I am an unabashed Apple-fan-boy I feel good about the "have never jail broke my phone".
And then here is a super-duper blog post that effectively shuts off 3G/Edge data without a jail break by making a fake APN - I don't know what that means exactly - but it works. Here is the blog post:
http://www.iphonedownloadblog.com/2008/10/11/using-an-iphone-without-the-data-plan/
And here is the web site it works at:
I would go to the blog entry because it has instructions. The instructions worked for me on a first-gen iPhone. I immediately undid the Fake APN (following instructions) since it was only a test. But so far this looks pretty nice.
I will do a bit more research and if things feel right, I will end up with three iPhones on my plan (iPhone 3Gs for me with tethering, iPhone 1G's for Brent and Amanda with data plans turned off). I do have to check to see how much Amanda uses her data plan.
As best I can tell the only bad thing about the no-data-plan is the loss of the visual voice mail feature.
Funny thing about this - if the iPhone family data plan was $10 - I would put it on all the phones and never have a second thought. If the family data plan is $20 per phone - I get all crazy and go to great lengths including contemplating jail-breaking phones and switching to TMobile - I have no explanation for this seeming inconsistency. Perhaps the best explanation is that $40 per month is getting awfully close to the payment on a new or slightly used motorcycle.
Posted by csev at June 24, 2009 01:03 PM