I was in Los Angeles last Friday for TV meetings and lost my iPhone 4. It was on my belt and suddenly it wasn’t. Then in one of those deja vu experiences I noticed that I was only steps from an Apple Store, so I went inside to trace my iPhone using the Where is my iPhone? app. But my iPhone was nowhere.
Understand it was fully-charged and I had been using it less than 10 minutes before. My phone was nowhere to be found.
Sadly the kids at the Apple Store knew far too well what had happened because they hear the story every day. My phone was most likely stolen straight from its clip on my belt by a professional iPhone 4 thief. The moment it was grabbed from my belt the thief handed it to an accomplice. Within a minute the phone was powered-off and untraceable. They didn’t want my data, just my iPhone.
An iPhone 4 can go for $300 in China. They replace the SIM card, spoof the MAC address or sell it for use on a network that doesn’t care. The street price in L. A. for my phone is $100. An industrious criminal can grab several phones per day.
My friend Bill, hearing my story, said it is even worse in New York where thieves will steal the iPhone 4 right out of your hand, running off into the inevitable crowd of pedestrians. That will teach us not to use our mobile smart phones when, well, mobile.
I have had a hand-held phone continuously since 1993 and while I have broken phones a variety of ways including dropping one in a toilet, this is the first phone I’ve had stolen in 18 years. It’s not that I felt naked without the phone, I felt violated.
So what do you do? Go back to the Apple Store and pay full price ($599) for a replacement iPhone 4 because AT&T didn’t offer insurance and you didn’t think to buy a policy from a third-party provider
Nope. I bought for a quarter that price an iPhone 3GS which nobody wants to steal.
It’s good enough for me.
I sold my iPhone 3G on eBay for $190 in January. That was only $9 less than I paid for it 2.5 years ago. The providers’ insane off-contract pricing is keeping a healthy price for old clunkers like mine. I replaced it with a Droid X and have been extremely happy with it.
Oh God, these phones! Call me old-fashioned but it seems to me that, with phones, the less they do the better they are. Ever since phones and their operators started offering “content”, I’ve had too many ads and messages telling me how I can get movie news, gossip, ringtones, my favourite music, football news, celebrity twitterings, etc. Does nobody have anything better to do? Why is it all so much ephemeral drivel?
My wife, a child-protection lawyer, has had her quality of life seriously diminished by her Blackberry. She would now be considered unprofessional if she were uncontactable at any time, and is bombarded with text and e-mail from the moment she wakes up until she goes to bed at night. Solicitors e-mail her huge documents on Sunday afternoons because there’s no longer an imperative to deliver them to her chambers on Friday. Paper’s cheap, everything’s photocopied, scanned, electronically duplicated and CC’d everywhere for no other reason than that it’s possible to do, and everyone’s covering their backsides. Her inbox is constantly overloaded and yet she has tendonitis in her hands from schlepping massive suitcases full of files from court to court.
I should shut up and I’m off-topic now. Suffice it to say that the information age isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
My mobile phone is just a phone. An old Nokia 3510, if I remember correctly (blue and orange), nothing fancy. And my next phone will probably be an Emporia Elegance, which does almost nothing beside calling and SMS, which is what I want.
Cheers,
Ruben
The iPhone 4 is not a phone.
It is a great hand-held computer that happens to have a phone-emulating application among its various useful software. I have found it to be a useful part of my life even though I don’t do any of the advertised crap you listed.
I am selling my house and buying another. The iPhone’s GPS and mapping help me to find places. The real estate applications Redfin and Zillow are indispensable. During down time or waiting for agents, I can listen to music, radio, and news. I can take pictures of the houses and create written or verbal notes.
I get calls from real estate agents to ensure I’m not home when they show the house. I send an SMS to my girlfriend to make sure she’s out too.
I can watch TV and movies. And no, this doesn’t replace a real TV, but we’re talking about down time while mobile.
I can read the news. I can play video games, some of which are really great. I can coordinate unplanned changes to dinner and grocery shopping with my girlfriend. I can read a book without remembering to have to pack one. I can GET a book virtually anywhere.
I can move money around in my bank accounts. I can manage my investments.
Can you imagine doing the above with a home computer and a home phone line? The iPhone, and similar smartphones, make these tasks significantly easier and mobile.
Also, unlike your wife, I can turn it off any time, and I do.
You make a persuasive argument in theory, especially the real estate thing, but you ask, “Can you imagine doing the above with a home computer and a home phone line?” Actually, yes. I do it all the time on my lovely big widescreen monitor, zingy quick computer and superfast broadband. It’s all so convenient. Even as I write I can look out of the window and see my wife lying naked in the sunny garden (reading a 1000-page social enquiry report!) and cows roaming in the verdant field beyond the willow tree. It sounds as though you’re living in your car.
pics?
You could be lying outside next to your naked wife if you had a decent phone…
You had to sell your house to get another iPhone! (:
Sorry John in Texas, the no-contract price of your phone was $599.
Yes, those off-contract rates are insane.. but it’s only because the market of savvy consumers is so small they can afford to ignore them in order to milk the masses.
Everyone… resist locking yourself into multi-year contracts. We used to be King… now we can’t even get treated like a customer!
So if the comment below about getting unlimited data for $20 is accurate.. that means the portion of your monthly bill that went to paying off your iPhone was $50/month. You paid $1200 + $199 = $1400 for your iPhone!
Even if you can only get a comparable plan for $50/month it still means you paid $680 for your iPhone… so that’s like $50 for a phone and $630 to be a chic geek.
You must be one rich dude…
@ John in Texas
Another advantage of the Droid X is, it’s another phone that thieves won’t bother to steal.
They sure as hell stole mine, out of my hand on the street (late at night, in heavy rain). Droid X replacement price is the same as an iPhone 4, and I’m sure the thieves know that.
All the telcos around the world should be making any stolen phone worthless.
That’s not in their ($) interest.
I wonder if they could make a small design change to the iPhone 4 to reserve battery power to make the Where is my iPhone? app work even when the phone is turned off?
They could, but it would open up a can of worms regarding privacy issues.
Many people expect privacy, but won’t take steps to protect themselves from the data miners, and just as importantly, themselves.
People can be their own worst enemies, and the corporations have taken advantage of that. One cannot trust them, or the government to do the right thing if they are lax about it themselves.
The bar has been lowered the bar as a whole, as well as making it harder to achieve the necessary balance.
Well, the iPhone 4 already keeps a database with all of the locations you visit, so I don’t know if I really believe that you can’t trace the phone when it is powered off.
Even the stupidest phone thief will quickly figure out that slipping it into a Faraday cage will stop any tracking. And Faraday cage doesn’t have to mean fancy woven stainless steel mesh case; something like a biscuit tin will do.
“That will teach us not to use our mobile smart phones when, well, mobile.”
Or, at least, to use the cheapest available headset for calls and keep the ‘phone hidden in an inner pocket. Granted that doesn’t help when you want to use the big screen you paid all that money for, then you’ll need to physically tether the ‘phone to your clothing – or hire Earnie the Psychotic Madman as a bodyguard. :o)
What would be really fun would be making a call on a concealed headset, while holding a mock-up iPhone to your ear. Fill the mock-up with a mixture of indellible ink and rotten eggs, and use a sophisticated digital remote control device* to make the case burst open while the thief is running away…
*such as a piece of string tied to your finger.
For many people, half the reason for having the latest iPhone or iPad is to brandish it in public, Same for the white earphones.
Ever notice that most of the cases meticulously avoid obscuring the sign of the holy fruit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
Bob, Are you concerned that the thieves might be using the years worth of location information stored in your iPhone to plan on robbing your house?
Then again, maybe it’d be better to be robbed when you aren’t at home?
I Have had an iphone 3gs for almost 2 years. It is 6 months out of contract so only pay $20 a month for unlimited data messages and phone. Only other cost was to send off for a batter replacement for $30 all in.
No plans to upgrade – I reckon Apple got it pretty much bang on with the 3GS.
Wonder if phones will end up like cars with a large population sticking to second-hand devices rather than buying new?
“$20 a month for unlimited data messages and phone.” What carrier offers that plan? Is that the total monthly bill after contract is over?
So those “track my phone” services are basically useless. I guess I suspected as much but there was a minor comfort thinking that you might be able to get a lost or stolen phone back.
At least it sounds as if the thieves have no interest in your data. I must admit to being a bit worried about that myself. I use an Android phone and I try to keep as much of my data as possible on the cloud (gmail, google docs etc.) Anyone who gets my phone can still access them temporarily but hopefully I could change the password and restrict their access before too much damage is done.
Drop box is another service I have come to depend on but I have to admit is is just another glaring security hole. I try to encrypt anything that is sensitive but to be honest I probably only encrypt half of what I should.
It may be useless when your phone is stolen, but is pretty great when its misplaced. My wife returned from a shopping trip and could not find hers anywhere. Find My iPhone showed it was in the house. She made it ring and we walked around until we found it in the compartment of her car door in the garage. She was so happy!
If iOS required someone to enter your passcode (or maybe SIM PIN) to be able to shut down the phone, this problem would go away. This only works for someone using a passcode-lock on the phone, which many people just don’t do.
Damn good point. Suggesting it to Apple.
If I were a thief and could not shut it off for sure I’d wrap it in tin foil.
Couldn’t the thief just remove the battery?
No. iPhones have non-removable batteries.
I have an Android phone and love it. But there is a problem here. If someone were to steal it they could get a lot of my personal information that in my contact list and some of my applications. I have a pass code lock on my phone, but that wouldn’t help in a theft. They could just pull the micro-SD card out of my phone. A lot of my personal data is there — and in unencrypted form. Just plug it into a PC and you can see everything.
If you work at Apple, Google, or Microsoft and work on cell phone software, take notice. You need to do some serious thinking about the security of the personal data on our phones. I am going to go back and rethink what I keep on my phone. Losing one’s smart phone could result in an ugly identity theft problem. We need your help on this.
Bob, phone insurance — there is a problem. I don’t like buying a policy where I basically pay in premiums the replacement value of a phone. Most of the plans I’ve seen are excessively over priced. Some of my friends with iPhones bought an independent policy from SquareTrade. It is more reasonably priced AND I believe it covers theft.
I have a Virgin Samsung Impulse android phone which presently lists for $169 prepaid, no contact, with a monthly charge a fraction of the iPhone’s. If I lose it Virgin will FedEx a replacement it at HALF price. For this I get a smartphone with all the functions I actually use and a real keyboard. And nobody wants to steal it.
ATT has insurance of a sort. We just got an iPhone 4 for my wife a couple of weeks ago and got the hard sell from the ATT salesguy on their plan. I think it was $70 for two years and gave us the right to buy a new one for $199. Since she’d gone over 2.5 years with the iPhone 3 without losing it, we declined. I dropped my iPhone 3 in a river (was bent over railing taking photos of flood waters, when stood up, railing scraped it out of my shirt pocket into the drink) 19 months into the contract and about 2 weeks after iPhone 4 came out and replaced the 3 with the 4 for the $199 contract price. One can become somewhat cavalier about them, they are so much a part of everyday life, and it’s easy to think of it as a $200 device and not a $600 one.
The iPhone was on your belt? Who does that anymore? Like John, I have an Android phone and I love it. It’s in my pants pocket!
I put mine in my cargo pants pocket. Not only would a thief have to pull open a loud Velcro flap enclosure but they would also have to bend down low to get it out while my leg is is motion to boot! Also first rule of valuable devices…don’t have them in plain sight in the first place!
[…] Cringely meets the Common Man. I was in Los Angeles last Friday for TV meetings and lost my iPhone 4. It was on my belt and suddenly it wasn’t. Then in one of those deja vu experiences I noticed that I was only steps from an Apple Store, so I went inside to trace my iPhone using the Where is my iPhone? app. But my iPhone was nowhere. […]
I received a hand-me-down phone and it works fine for note-taking and communication. An added bonus is it has these “button” things that prevent the phone from becoming a Finger Grease Accretion Puck like touch phones do.
Sorry to hear it was probably stolen, but it sounds like you’ve bounced back. This seems like the sort of sting that would be perfect for engineers: make a device that looks like an i4n but which doesn’t really turn off. You’d be tracking down all kinds of interesting people, and maybe even snapping their pictures 🙂
” An added bonus is it has these “button” things that prevent the phone from becoming a Finger Grease Accretion Puck like touch phones do.”
Good to hear your greasy fingers never touch the keys, leaving human grease stains. How do you manage that? Have you looked at your keyboard lately (and the one on your computer, if you have one).
[…] I, Cringely: I was in Los Angeles last Friday for TV meetings and lost my iPhone 4. It was on my belt and […]
>They didn’t want my data, just my iPhone.
>I felt violated.
Would you have felt less violated if rather than loosing your phone to a thief, you lost your data to a friendly government official?
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2011/04/michigan-police-search-cell-phones-during-traffic-stops/
http://coto2.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/chamber-of-commerce-thugs-use-terror-tools-to-target-me-my-family/
A person’s watch used to be on a chain. Put your phone there.
Bob- you’re a genius, but c’mon, a belt clip? I don’t want to go so far as to say you deserved it… but let’s just say in one regard he did you a favor. Never wear a belt clip again.
I agree! This doesn’t address the problem of people stealing it out of your hand, but I had a hard time getting past the belt clip remark. The iPhone 4 is so small and light that carrying it in your pocket is a no-brainer. Belt clip? That’s like, soooooo 1990’s. 🙂
>> I bought for a quarter that price an iPhone 3GS
>> which nobody wants to steal.
Are they going to know the model before the lift it off your belt? You’ll be out less $$$ but it will still be a hassle.
After seeing some comments here, I think Bob can (safely?) assume that they indeed don’t care about his data because, by turning the phone off immediately, the phone would be auto-locked immediately upon rebooting (as I’m sure he’s at least somewhat security conscious). After 10 mis-guesses (or whatever the number is), the iPhone will erase itself.
While the big money is in information, the easy money is in the hardware.
There’s nothing Apple can do about this, except to try and fail. If it is small enough, light enough, and valuable enough, people will steal it. People got mugged for their “Air Jordan” shoes in the 80’s, and those were on people’s FEET.
How many of us have heard a car alarm go off and think only “will somebody shut that darned thing off”. We don’t even care if it is shut off because somebody stole the car. Just shut it up.
It is a mistake touting the “find my phone” app for thievery. It’s really only good for accidentally leaving it somewhere.
this is timely and apropos:
https://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/04/21/iphone.tracker.explainer
TPM’s Josh Marshall just had an article about the iPhone’s tracking ability. Just wondering if in the case of a stolen iPhone, how much of this information is available to the thief, if any. Once they replace the sim card, is it gone forever? Why is Apple collecting that information anyway? Do all phones do this? Is the tracking software related to or accessed by the “where is my iPhone?” app?
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/ispy-conspiracy-your-iphone-is-secretly-tracking-everywhere-youve-been.php?ref=fpb
Cell phones are fun because they are the grownup equivalent of the walkie-talkie toy. But holey cow, they are one expensive toy.
10 cents a minute, I used to pay that much for an entire phone call at the booth! (35 cents today).
But whenever I see one in the bathroom or change room, I am suspicious the perv is running around getting inappropriate pictures. You into nude photography, Bob?
Mine was stolen off the bus. I don’t own my house but am instead a renter. I found out that my renters insurance fully covered my iPhone at the unsubsidized price, minus a $50 deductible (non computer was a $500 deductible, but the iPhone is/was considered a computer). My insurance gave me the $699 + Tax – $50 for it. If you rent, look into it!
The other evening I was enjoying the lack of rain (I’m in Portland) by sitting outside of a pub with my dog, having a beer. Since there weren’t people there at the time, I was playing scrabble on my iPhone 4 while sipping my pint.
My dog is an imposing 110 pounds, but he’s 100% friendly, and would never hurt a fly. The only thing he barks or growls at is dogs who are barking or growling at him.
But there I was, oblivious to the world, focused on my phone, and my dog started growling really aggressively. I tugged at his leash, shushed him and looked up, and a really shady-looking character was clearly not walking by, but had been–silently–heading right towards me.
He asked if I had a cigarette, although I don’t (and wasn’t) smoking and was sitting at a table too close to the door for smoking to be allowed. And his demeanor was definitely nervous. I’m convinced that, had my dog not growled, I would now be sans-phone.
And that’s how the iDog accessory was born.
Love it!
The iDog app. Available at your local humane society or shelter. Just be sure to feed it and remember that there are required in-app purchases (shots, license, water bowls, bed, etc.)
When I was a kid, I remember it was fashionable for the big a$$ biker dudes to have a big a$$ leather wallet chained to their big a$$ body, with a big a$$ chain, all in plain sight. The posers had the chain attached to a belt loop of their jeans, but you get the idea.
Turn it off, wrap it in foil, pop the sim card, once your iPhone leaves your body, it’s gone. Find my iPhone works if your phone is lost, not stolen.
Bob, I’m truly sorry for your loss.
Bob,
I have heard of many people replacing their phones because they dropped it in the toilet. You are the first man I remember admitting they dropped their phone in the toilet.
My iPhone 3g disappeared a few months ago and I replaced it with the iPhone4. It has worse reception than my 3g! It frequently does not ring in my house. I have never been so underwhelmed by a consumer product and the service quality I get from AT&T borders on criminal. Did I mention I am on my third iPhone4? For more than three years I have been complaining about the fact I have five degraded cell phone towers in my area and so far no resolution. I could install the AT&T micro cell, but there is no way to lock out other people from using it. If the popular cafe behind my house is full of iPhone-using patrons, would I be unable to use my phone in my house with the microsite I paid for because too many other people have the same problem with lousy service? It really annoys me that I have to subsidize AT&T’s shoddy service.
I’m really envious of Europe. If you hate your carrier, you can easily switch. In the US we can’t. I get terrible service from AT&T and I get terrible service from Apple. The fact is the iPhone is the only phone sold by AT&T that cannot be insured. I know Apple and AT&T are making tons of money on this thing. I am just shocked at how poor the customer relationship is with both companies.
Bob, I hope you can find a way to get your iPhone issue resolved like you did with your friend’s refrigerator.
Only phones you specify (up to 5) will be allowed to connect to the micro-cell.
Sorry this happened.
But do you wear your wallet on your belt for everyone to see?
Didn’t think so.
Hey Bob! I have my sob story too.
Yesterday I was fishing (and videoing myself fishing … for my YouTube channel).
I landed a fish, took a pair of forceps from my pocket, removed the hook, tossed the fish back … and then accidentally brushed the SanDisk Sansa Clip+ clipped on my shirt (used to record the dub-over audio) …
and it tumbled into the river.
And then I almost slid into the water when I lay down and reached in up to my elbow … and still didn’t feel the bottom.
Who knows where you might have slid to, if you had noticed the iPhone tumbling into the thief’s metalized potato chip bag?
Jamais Vu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamais_vu
For no reason other than the flip side perspective.
Jamais Vu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamais_vu
For no reason other than the flip side perspective.
Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer’s impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before.
Bob, will the potential snatch and grab thief be able to tell the your replacement 3G phone from your original iPhone 4? While cruising down the street?
Bob – did they steal your phone holder off your belt or your phone from your phone holder? Just curious, do you remember getting “bumped” while walking?
hi. i found an iphone on saturday april 16 in los angeles. wonder if it is yours? if you can describe it, it is yours 😉
Genuinely sorry to hear it Bob. It’s just a great shame that when technology pushes forward and (like it or not folks) enriches our lives, the experience is sullied so immediately by criminals.
No longer being able to walk down a street without being attacked (that’s what it is) sounds so emotive – and will be dismissed by people who tell me my shoes were valuable in the 80’s and equally pinchable – doesn’t make the situation any less depressing.
It’s true a phone is now more a portable computer and something we all dreamed about back in the science-fiction, forward-looking past.
I work in an environment where I (not actually of my choice) get to meet these ride/walk-by criminals every day. It’s part of my job. I really should make that change of career….
I recently decided to get rid of my own smart phone and instead bought an iPod Touch 4 and use my old, unlocked Sony candybar phone. Not so complete a solution but the phone boots in seconds and is worth nothing. The iPod is my PDA/portable computer and more safely hidden.
I can only assume (or at least hope) that there’s some secret Apple way to deactivate your stolen phone, but I have a sinking feeling that this is probably not so…
To say we live and learn is so trite and condescending.
[…] Meanwhile, the pseudonymous Bob Cringely, had his iPhone snatched from his belt while in Los Angeles. Even though he had his Where is my iPhone? app, it was not to be found. Cringely explains: […]
I had that happen in New York. Some guy grabbed my phone and tried to run. Being a footballer, I had no trouble chasing him down and beating the crap out of him. Nobody ever expects a girl to do that. Cops came and the little punk was hauled off to jail.
And I got my phone back and won’t ever visit New York again…
Here’s another interesting wrinkle. NFC technology is turning smartphones into mobile debit cards. Just scan a transaction using your phone and the money is taken out of your bank account. A recent Juniper Research report predicts that 1 million smartphones with NFC capability will be sold in France this year. So if they steal your phone, they are stealing more than your wallet. They can steal your bank account.
Hate to say this, but you really must FILE A POLICE REPORT.
My iPhone was stolen too. Not fun at all. But I got it back. Greatly thanking the police for that. Getting it back was nice, but that real worry is that someone else had my phone. There is STUFF in my phone. Information that would be greatly valuable to some.
In the interests of full disclosure: I know people. I know far too much about carriers and how they work, helped build many of them too. Still, none of that was any help in getting my phone back.
There are Identity Theft issues to worry about too. Watch for signs.
Easy advice for all:
ALWAYS KNOW YOUR IMEI NUMBER
It is huge time saver in all of this. Ultimately, after the Police Report, there will be a Court Order sent to your carrier to release the association record for that IMEI number and the SIM it is currently connected to. Then a member of local law enforcement can knock on their door.
That amazingly simple step is something that can not legally be done until the Court says so. So, File the Police Report. It will take time, and likely your phone phone will pass through many hands before that last one they catch it in.
It is still not 100% that you will ever see you phone again. The police treat these all as petty thefts, even if there is thousands of dollars in apps or content on the device or high value in the data. It all comes down to the the value of the handset. Be nice to the detective.
I’d love to go off on a rant here about how every cell phone tower sees every IMEI it is connected to, and how towers can be easily polled for that data and how it would be effortless for the carrier to tell you what towers were seeing your IMEI in real time… letting simple triangulation take you right to it!
But they won’t.
Because the law says they don’t have to.
That should be changed.
Good Luck Bob
my phone is so old I have to clip it on my belt because the hand crank for ringing Central sticks out too far for pocketing it.
and I presently like it that way.
Google is my mobile phone company. I ported my mobile # to google voice for a one time fee of $20. I just use an iPod touch for my handset, no hacking even required. There are a variety of apps available for this task. I enjoy iPhone4 functionality (facetime, iOS 4.3 ect.) with NONE of the carrier headaches. Because the service is essentially wifi only I’m assured to have service in my home and at work and virtually anywhere I go as it turns out.
You would be amazed how many FREE or unprotected wifi connections there are out there. I can do all of this without breaking any laws mind you. Of course I have my own SIP server that I built on asterisk but there are tons of free VoIP providers out there such as textfree or textnow and the like. The whole process is a bit like running your own cellphone network, so if there’s a problem there’s really no one to complain to but complaining to customer service agents never got me very far anyway. I have had zero problems in the 4 months I’ve been doing this and have shown others how to get started.
I should also note that I do have a 4g mifi pocket router that I keep in my car or on my person most of the time in order to have network coverage when I’m out and about or in the sticks as it where. The side benefit to all of this is my identity (my phone number) lives in the cloud for free for life regardless of what network I’m on. Whether it be AT&T, Verizon (currently), Sprint or some other soon to be absorbed telecom provider.
I can easily switch networks by just getting a different mifi or I could just skip the mobile network altogether. It’s not like I’m a neuro-surgeon after all. I’m not that important and either are most people actually. The ability to text while driving is actually illegal in most states now so it’s only a matter of time before that seems less needed.
Anyway, the point is this: in the future cellphone companies wont sell things like minutes, or text messages, or picture messages or tethering. When you go in and buy a mobile phone in the future and you want a mobile network you can buy bandwidth package A, B or C. 5gb, 10gb and 20gb respectively for $35, $60 and $100 a month. I currently pay $50 for 5gb of 4g Verizon network coverage. This is something I would have anyway for my other mobile devices so it’s not an added cost for me.
That’s equivalent to 3,000 minutes of talk time, millions of text messages emails ect and pretty unrestricted mobile browsing, streaming and downloading. I should point out that I only have restrictions when I’m actually mobile. When I’m at work and home or even the mcDonalds down the street I’m in unlimited land where there are no such things as phone bills.
Allow that to soak in for a second and compare what I have to the $120 or even $160 plans offered for a similar iPhone 4 experience. I think I’ve carved my little piece of the future out for myself right now. Isn’t this what Apple intended when they made an iPhone 4 without a carrier? That’s really what the iPod touch is. It might have fooled the AT&T executives or perhaps even the Verizon executives but it’s my guess that Steve Jobs knew all along it would be going this way. That was the point of the original iPhone after all. Why wait until EVDO (Evolution Data Only) lives up to it’s namesake. You don’t have to be a geek to appreciate saving money. Especially in this economy.
The beauty part is, this can be done with virtually any existing handset. Android, iPhone old or new. They don’t even need to be activated on a network. So long as they have a wifi radio. I just really wanted a 4g iPhone now on Verizon that could do mobile video calling, talk and web browsing at the same time. It’s much thinner than an iPhone 4 too. Less space wasted on an outdated 3g radio and of course no antenna gate. Less battery doesn’t seem to make any difference to me. I’ve never had a phone with better battery life than this. Same retina display, same camera optics, same bluetooth, same software. Why isn’t everyone doing this? I’m not that smart am I?
I actually get better coverage on my iPod than my friend with his HTC thunderbolt 4g. That’s because the radio in the mifi is rated for higher power than something designed to be next to your head. It’s also almost entirely antenna. Of course the black market value of an iPod touch 4 is much lower than a iPhone 4 although the hardware and software are virtually identical. I paid just $225 to be free. Odds are if you’re reading this you already own an iPod touch 4th gen (or even more likely, your kids do) and perhaps even a mifi but you never connected the dots.
Sidebar, if your mobile phone is in the cloud the only way someone could steal it is if they got your password. The handset I use is cheap and rather disposable. I’ve owned so called free handsets from carriers with higher replacement costs. I have mine set to self destruct if the pw is entered incorrectly ten times.
I often log into my phone on a friends phone or even my laptop if my battery is dead so I don’t miss any calls. My texts are automatically aggregated and stored on Google for future syncing so I don’t miss anything. It even translates my voicemail to text with sometimes entertaining accuracy.
That might make some people paranoid about google knowing what you’re picking up from the grocery store but odds are they already know. If you’re a sprint customer your phone is already on google voice. All sprint customers are automatically google voice users. How long until Apple, Microsoft and perhaps even Amazon launch competing cloud phone services? Three years four years?
Thanks for reading.
-Keith
I enjoyed reading that Keith! I’m not 100% sure I get *all* of it but it made me think. As you can tell from my own comment earlier I’ve ditched the smartphone and gone with a cheapo phone and iPod Touch PDA… Didn’t realise I could connect a mifi to the Touch and use that (thought the BT was peripherals only etc)
Certainly I always ask when I visit friends if I can log in to their router to use the Touch. Maybe I just post photos to my sites, but I’ll now look at the telephony angle other than Skype.
🙂
Not convinced yet. The lack of free hotsposts is getting worse as more and more people and businesses are talked in to WPA for reasons like being sued by the RIAA to Firesheep. And if I need to rent and carry a mi-fi at $60/month just to get less reliable voip, I might as well get a smartphone and be done with it. If you really want to save money get a GoPhone for as little as $100/year. If you want portable 3G data, get a umpc with a built in data card for the same price as the mi-fi.
Yes, that’s a good point Ronc.
Free WiFi in the UK is rare except when cruising suburban housing areas where individuals are less savvy.
A lot of WiFi hotspots in towns and cities are now tied to mobile-phone company plans (e.g get free wifi if you buy such-and-such contract and phone) where before they might have been free for simply just registering…
I misplaced my IPhone 4 and borrowed my wife’s IPhone to help locate it. When I went to the Me.com site, it automatically took me to a page to download the find me app and I couldn’t get to the find my phone page. Apple should fix this flaw. Good news is I found the phone found later that night.
[…] I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Sorry, wrong number – economics of iPhone theft […]
@Wally Glenn
Not true. The micro-cell allow you to list specific phones (up to 5, IIRC) that will be allowed to connect with it. None others will get service.
[…] Robert Cringely is an excellent write on all things technology (and other things). At the meeting, we discussed the security of the phone, how you protect the data etc. We didn’t discuss physical protection. Robert – in this piece does. […]
So how long before geek chic includes having your iphone4 chained to your belt like the kids who seemed to have a future hanging out in biker bars used to do in high school?
My nephew had his iPhone stolen while walking home at night. He was hit over the back of the head with something hard and heavy. Luckily he was seen staggering along by a taxi driver, but he still came close to bleeding to death. He spent several weeks in hospital, and hasn’t been able to return to work due to constant headaches.
There isn’t any amount of insurance or tracking apps that will make up for what he has lost.
Solution: Password required to turn off iPhone.
“Does nobody have anything better [than attending to ephemeral drivel] to do?” — David Stewart 4/21/11 12:38am
Apparently not — at least for tens of millions of Americans.
Whether this is a cause of, is caused by, both of the above, none of the above, is merely con-incidental with, or has some other relationship entirely with the current Republican ascendancy in American politics is left as an exercise for the reader.
Wow, man. Sad story… but funny pic though!
Oh well, time to upgrade to an Android phone.
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