AT&T finally announced their official iPhone 3G plans. We already knew they were bumping data rates by $10, but now they’re going the full monty and letting it all hang out. Pricing of the iPhone is of course $199 for the 8 gig and $299 for the 16 gig on a 2-year contract, as we already knew. What’s new here is the no-commitment pricing, which will hit your wallet up for $599 and $699 for the 8 and 16 gig versions respectively. Pricy, but still lower than its debut price just over a year ago, and you get that nice GPS bundled in — and you’ll have to wait a bit, as these won’t be available on launch day, but at some unspecified later date.
New customers and people who are comfortably within AT&T’s upgrade territory — you bought in before November of 2007 — can gab the phones at the above pricing. Anyone who bought in after last November however can opt for the early upgrader’s rates, which will require you to fork out $399 and $499 for the phones, plus an $18 upgrade fee on a 2-year service agreement.
As for the plans, here’s the skinny:
Nation plan (for individuals)
Price
Anytime Minutes
Data
Nights & Weekends
Additional Minutes
$69.99
450
Unlimited
5000
$0.45
$89.99
900
Unlimited
Unlimited
$0.40
$109.99
1350
Unlimited
Unlimited
$0.35
$129.99
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
N/A
Family Talk plan (includes 2 lines)
Additional lines: $39.99 for each line (up to 3) except the unlimited plan, which is $129.99 per line (up to 3)
Price
Shared Anytime Minutes
Data
Nights & Weekends
Additional Minutes
$129.99
700
Unlimited
Unlimited
$0.45
$149.99
1400
Unlimited
Unlimited
$0.40
$169.99
2100
Unlimited
Unlimited
$0.35
$209.99
3000
Unlimited
Unlimited
$0.25
$259.99
4000
Unlimited
Unlimited
$0.20
$359.99
6000
Unlimited
Unlimited
$0.20
$259.99
Unlimited
Unlimited
Unlimited
N/A
Notice that the unlimited family plan is cheaper than the highest tier family plan. This is offset by the much higher per-line add-on cost, which is essentially the same as signing up for an individual unlimited plan.
Text plans for individuals go for $5 for 200 messages, $15 for 1500 messages, and $20 for unlimited. For the family plan, you can only choose from $0.20 pay-per-use messaging, or a $30 unlimited plan.
Their enterprise rates are expected to differ, but it doesn’t look like their enterprise iPhone pages are ready for prime time yet.
So there you go, Americans. Your plans await. Just know that we Canadians are still green with envy.
Lazrhog’s at it again. The guy who ported rRootage is now working on porting a full-on 3D balance game for the iPhone and iPod Touch that will blow you away. The game is called Neverball, and is a port of an open-source game for Mac, Windows and Linux developed by Robert Kooima.
The game is rather like the traditional labyrinth game where you must tilt the floor to move your ball around. In Neverball, the object is collect a set amount of coins as determined for each level, and then guide the ball to the exit. Throughout each level there wll be fences, moving platforms, and other obstacles that will get in your way or make navigating the level difficult, as well as bonus coins that are worth higher amounts to get you closer to your goal faster. If anything, this is a lot like a Super Monkey Ball variant.
Having played the Windows version of the game I can say that the control mechanism takes some getting used to. Tilting the floor is simple enough, but since the camera swivels around to point more or less in the direction the ball is travelling. Worse, your tilt direction (but not its pitch) changes with the camera direction, so it’s really easy to get very disoriented, since most of the time the camera will be pointing in a direction other than the one you’re tilting the floor in, and the changes in tilt make it difficult to get things under control again. What’s more, your ball is pretty bouncy, so when you’re moving with some velocity and you bounce into a fence or obstacle, the sudden shift in direction can leave you scrambling to get your bearings.
An option to play the game in a fixed, possibly zoomed (or zoomable) 3/4 view with swipe controls to rotate the board would make it much easier to control. Perhaps we might see something like this in Lazrhog’s version — one can hope anyway. Just the same though, the graphics look to be superb and pretty faithful to the original (though with lower poly counts) and since you can use the touch to really tilt the board (rather than a mouse to tilt it for you) it ought to make the game much more intuitive.
Lazrhog expects to release the game in about two weeks, but until then you can enjoy a couple of videos below. You can also grab the original game for your computer here so you can get a feel for the game.
Taking a break from following the whole Rogers Wireless fiasco, I grabbed a new game off Installer. Its name is Kusari, it’s by Chris Nordberg, and I can’t seem to stop playing it.
The object of Kusari is quite simple. You are presented with a 5×7 board populated with round counters. Each counter has an arrow on it. Your task is to move your token to each arrow. As you do, your token will follow the path of arrows until it reaches a counter pointing to an empty space. Then you pick your next counter in your immediate vicinity to move to and continue on until you have reached that level’s goal — or get trapped without doing so. You can move in any of the 8 cardinal directions, with valid moves indicated with green-coloured tiles, but you cannot move to an empty space, so you have to follow the arrows and pick your paths carefully, lest the arrows lead you to a dead end you can’t move from. Once you’ve reached your target and have either cleared the board or can’t move any further, you move on to the next level.
There are 20 levels in all, and each level has a target and a time limit. The time limit starts at 100 seconds and subtracts 5 seconds on each subsequent level until it reaches 35 seconds, when it will reduce no further. Each level also requires you to clear a set number of counters, starting at 16 and increasing by one each level. You must clear the target number of counters in the alloted time or you forfiet a life and start the level over. You have three lives in total, so make them count. Scoring starts at 1 point for a tile, but each counter’s value is squared for each sequential token in a chain that you move to. The longer a chain of tokens you can clear with one move, the higher your score will be. A bonus of 200 points is given if you can clear the board, and you also get a 2,000 point bonus if you manage to pass all 20 levels.
The gameplay here couldn’t be simpler. Simply tap on a counter to move your token and it will follow the arrows until it comes to a stop, lather, rinse and repeat until you’ve completed the level by whatever method that takes. There are some nice afterthoughts that really make the gameplay though: When your token only has one possible move that it can make, the game will automatically advance your token to that counter until you’ve got more than one possible move to make; when the time limits get shorter, the gameplay gets faster, and the token movement increases in speed too, to help you clear the board faster.
Graphically, Kusari is polished to a shine. The game pieces are detailed and gorgeous, and each level is given its own distinct background, which adds some incentive to keep playing, just to see what the next level is going to look like. There is also a high score table to keep track of your progress — however, it is not net-enabled, so the scores are all local, and there seems to be an issue with the #1 scoring position simplaying both your score and the level you achieved; the level gets ellipsed (”…”) because there’s not enough space to display it all.
That’s about the only complaint I can make for the game though, because otherwise it is a deviously addictive casual action puzzler that will keep you coming back for one more game. Give it a shot and tell me I’m wrong. You can find it on the Ste Packaging repo (http://blog.psmxy.org). Check out the screenies below.
If I seem like I’m focusing on the iPhone in Canada situation a lot, I apologize — but obviously, this is a topic that hits where it hurts for both me and Jody, and for millions of other Canadians from what I’m reading.
Virtually no one is happy with Rogers’ rates, and the displeasure ranges from disgruntled comments to corrosive venom, with the only “what’s the big deal?” comments from data neophites and people who don’t understand the full scope of what kind of data-hungry apps iPhone 2.0 engenders. The day that Rogers announced their plans was the same day a petition site with a harshly-worded URL went up. E-Mail addresses of Rogers execs and links to a report page to the Competition Bureau of Canada flew (and the Competition Bureau has subsequently stated that they’ve been getting many reports). The blogosphere is humming with derisive articles. IntoMobile, iPhone In Canada, macQuebec (en français), p2pnet, andPOP, iPhone User and others feature pieces on Rogers’ highway robbery. The forums are similarly hopping mad, with threads on Howard Forums (and here), The Computer Mechanics, MacRumors, iPhone in Canada forums, the Engadget thread, — even Digg commenters. Canadians are not happy with Rogers. But what choice to Canadians have? Rogers have a virtual GSM monopoly in Canada, and even with the wireless spectrum auction looming, Rogers won’t see any potential competition come from that for a few years yet. Our voices are a faint buzz in Ted Rogers’ ears, barely able to penetrate the fingers he has inserted into them on a more or less perpetual basis, and what sound leaks through is neatly drowned out by repeatedly shouting “lalalala I’m not listening lalalalala!“ They even went so far as to defend their pricing plans amid the consumer outcry — and they didn’t even get their cites right.
Petitions don’t go very far unless the number of signatures is enough to cover Ted’s entire field of vision. Complaining with our wallets — not buying into Ted’s outrageous rates — is a good way to get the message across, but provides little instant gratification, especially since we’d be depriving ourselves of a coveted device. What we need are voices that carry more weight than our own. Perhaps the news media can help with that.
In browsing the media this morning I’ve come across a number of articles from reputable sources that echo our despair, albeit in a much calmer, more media-friendly manner. Reuters Canada had a rather non-committal article that spent a paragraph or two echoing the sentiment. The Toronto Star starts off more optimisic, positing that these plans put the iPhone “in the realm of reality” for many Canadians, though its position seems to come from comparing the current rates to last year’s even more astronomical ones, rather than comparing our overall rates to other countries. It does delve into the disappointing aspecs of the rates though, citing market research firm KDC’s Kevin Restivo as saying that the rates are aimed at people who treat web browsing as a novelty rather than a core function. The Winnipeg Free Press is fairly neutral on the issue, simply stating the basics.
The Globe and Mail’s article lands more firmly on the pessimistic side, offering up Info-Tech Research Group senior analyst Michelle Warren’s quote, “These rates are just another indicator that Canadian cellphone rates are really high and that essentially the carriers feel like they can charge whatever they like. Rates should be going down, they shouldn’t be going up, and these are expensive rates.” Amen, sistah.
C|Net Crave decided to get downright scathing. “In its press release, Rogers does provide a convenient chart to gauge your data usage–apparently, 2G amounts to 16,000 Web pages (who knew?)–but we don’t approve of such an arrangement at all. The iPhone’s Web browser is one of its top attractions, particularly on a 3G network, and asking users to limit their data certainly isn’t putting the “Internet in your pocket.” Rogers is offering unlimited Wi-Fi access at all Rogers and Fido hotspots, but that in itself is limiting if you have to be in one place.” Yeah, they know what’s up.
So with all of this negative press, both small-time and mass media, will Rogers pay attention? It’s hard to say. We are all painfully aware that the Rogers collective lives in its own universe, separated from the hoi polloi by mile-thick steel walls that nothing short of the CRTC’s Regulation Cannon can penetrate, but can the massive consumer backlash that is building fast and hard create enough ammo to threaten these plans with the death of a thousand paper cuts? We’ll have to wait and see — but if I wouldn’t go holding my breath. Even if the riots break into Ted’s world, they’ll still have to contend with Ted’s fingers.
It’s the moment of truth, fellow Canucks. Rogers has finally unleashed its tailored iPhone data plans. The verdict? Ted still sucks. I’ll list the details of the plan here, but you’re not going to like them:
Price
Voice
Data
Sent text
messages
Incoming text
messages
Visual
Voicemail
$60/month
150 free minutes
Unlimited evenings and weekends
400MB
75
Unlimited
Unlimited
$75/month
300 free minutes
Unlimited evenings and weekends
750MB
100
Unlimited
Unlimited
$100/month
600 free minutes
Unlimited evenings and weekends
1GB
200
Unlimited
Unlimited
$115/month
800 free minutes
Unlimited evenings and weekends
2GB
300
Unlimited
Unlimited
Notice any conspicuous absences here? That’s right. No unlimited plan and a 2GB cap on the highest tier. As if it’s any consolation, you do get free WiFi at any Rogers hotspot.
To say that I am disappointed is a weapons-grade understatement. It is abundantly clear that Rogers has absolutely no interest whatsoever in “driving adoption” — either that or they have an incredibly unclear concept of what it takes to do so. These pricing structures will likely drive adoption — to the Blackberry, which has better plans with much higher data caps despite not being a device that engenders over 70% data usage on.
Rogers clearly does not understand the iPhone’s market. If they did, they would understand that plans which have at the very least data caps that are double that of the Blackberry for their current pricing structures would be required to even attempt to “drive adoption” — and ideally, following in AT&T’s footsteps if they were truly serious about getting an iPhone into the hands of as many consumers as possible. But apparently Rogers doesn’t give a damn.
Just par for the still-disgustingly-overpriced Canadian mobile data course.
Full press release here, in case your stomach wasn’t churning hard enough.
UPDATE:Here is Rogers’ official page with all of the details. Here is a comparison of the total cost of the iPhone for the life of the contract between Canada, the US and the UK. Note that while the year-over-year cost is lower than US, they have unlimited data and call display is included, more anytime minutes, more text messages, and shorter contracts. And that’s just for the BASIC 400MB plan.
Here is an online petition you can sign (language warning), though I doubt that will do any good. What might do some good is to give some of the bigwigs a call. Here are a few contacts:
Seriously, keep it civil and well-reasoned. It won’t help the cause if you’re just nasty. There’s also a general “contact us” form for Rogers here. Want lower rates? Contact them and let them know by any and every means necessary. Let them know that this will not stand and that we’ve been abused by Rogers’ GSM monopoly for far too long. If we don’t speak out — and most importantly if we don’t let our dollars do the talking by not buying into their absurd rates — Rogers will never get the message. Let’s make sure they do.
I was hoping they would release it early, and they did: ZAGG Inc. have just announced their famous InvisibleSHIELD for the iPhone 3G today. For those that aren’t familiar, invisibleSHIELD is the original skin protector for all your favourite devices, and is something I consider an absolutely essential part of protecting your electronics from every day wear. (I’m pretty diligent about keeping my mobile toys looking like new, so a shield is the first thing to go on, and then a case when traveling.)
As always it’ll cost you $25 for a full-body shield and a bottle of applicator fluid, but it’s the last skin you’ll ever have to buy for it and they do offer that nice lifetime warranty where they’ll replace it for free if ever it needs replacing. If you need more details though I’m currently working on a skin showdown video going head to head (to head) with the invisibleSHIELD, Bodyguardz, and Best Skins Ever, so you’ll be able to get some virtual hands-on with the popular skins and find out what the real differences are.
ZAGG’s 3G skins begin shipping tomorrow, but if you pre-order today you’ll get yourself a nice 20% discount. Might as well take advantage of it while the discount still applies, right?
Not as a malicious act of vengeance, mind you, but it will do it if you tell it to. You may recall the hubub surrounding the problems the iPhone has had deleting your personal information when you perform a complete restore on the device. To be specific, it doesn’t, and that’s generated a great deal of concern from people who have sold their iPhones already as well as those who were thinking about doing so. There was a long and complicated workaround involving overwriting the device’s internal memory with repeated writes to the flash memory, but that’s long and irritating.
The good news is that the iPhone 2.0 firmware will now securely shred your data when you tell it to erase all content and settings. The only noticeable difference between the current firmware and the forthcoming 2.0 when you tell it to reset is that it now warns in the confirmation box that the process will take about an hour — which sounds about right if it’s going to go through and zero out all of the storage memory.
Those of you who have not yet flipped your first-gen iPhone may want to wait ’til firmware 2.0 comes out before you reset and sell, just to make sure that all of your personal data is well and truly scrubbed from memory.
I have been holding off writing anything about this for a while because I have been waiting for compatibility and performance to reach a level where I think it’s getting closer to prime time. While it’s not there yet, it’s showing strong progress, so I figured I’d get the word out.
vlc4iphone is the work of our illustrious ZodTTD, and it is currently still in heavy beta testing, but I’ve had the opportunity to play with it for the past week and change, and while there’s still work to do, it is coming along very nicely.
The application is pretty huge by iPhone standards — currently weighing in at a heavy 24MB installed size (about 9mb download), so you’ll need to make sure you’ve got some free space before you install it. The bulk of its size however can be attributed to the absurd number of codecs it currently supports to varying degrees. Check it out:
- Video codec support for MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, Flash Video (FLV), DiVX, XViD, Quicktime (MOV), H.264, 3GP, and Windows Media (WMV - video only right now, but he’s working on audio).
- Audio codec support for the above video formats (except WMV right now) as well as MP3, Ogg, and FLAC.
- Streaming internet radio, including support for Shoutcast, M3U, MMS, RTSP and HTTP streams. Just feed it a URL and let it play!
Sorry. I should have told you to put on a bib before reading this.
As it stands right now compatibility and speed is still being heavily worked on. I’ve been testing numerous videos covering multiple audio and video codecs, containers, resolutions, bit rates, and frame rates, and the results with the latest beta have been extremely mixed, but are a vast improvement over the previous beta, so things look very promising for future versions.
There’s no word on a release date — like I said, this thing still needs work, but Zod is on the case, and I’m sure you all know by now that he does good work, so give it some time and hopefully we’ll finally have the last media player we’ll ever need on the iPhone and Touch.
As you’ll see in the gallery below, it currently only plays in portrait mode (speed considerations for now) but that is expected to change, as is the UI. Hopefully, the ginormous ad block in the file list will also be trimmed to a more sensible level.
Gentlemen, start your iTunes. Word around the water cooler is that Apple might just be getting set to unleash the finalized iPhone 2.0 firmware to the masses this Friday. Sources inside Cupertino’s software development cubes is apparently are claiming that it is “highly probable” that the iPhone 2.0 Golden Master will pop up on iTunes by this Friday, a full two weeks before the release of the iPhone 3G.
This would be good for 3G hopefuls to get their grubby hands on the firmware before camping out in front of Apple stores and carrier outlets across 22 countries to prepare for the Jesus Phone’s second coming. It’s unlikely the App Store will be live at that time, and existing iPhone users obviously won’t have access to location services, but you’ll be able to fiddle with everything else so you know what you’re getting into on the 11th.
AT&T finally announced their official iPhone 3G plans. We already knew they were bumping data rates by $10, but now they’re going the full monty and letting it all hang out. Pricing of the iPhone is of course $199 for the 8 gig and $299 for the 16 gig on a 2-year contract, as we already knew. What’s new here is the no-commitment pricing, which will hit your wallet up for $599 and $699 for the 8 and 16 gig versions respectively. Pricy, but still lower than its debut price just over a year ago, and you get that nice GPS bundled in — and you’ll have to wait a bit, as these won’t be available on launch day, but at some unspecified later date.
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