Due to verizon giving me a bunch of credit towards the purchase of a smart phone (upgrade credit and some other credit I never claimed from part of a class action lawsuit I was apparently part of) and my phone pretty much dying, I am in the market for a new phone. Verizon has almost done away with flip phones and I’m not too excited about the andriod phones (after reading hundreds of reviews and speaking to pretty much every andriod owner I encounter on a daily basis) . Verizon will sell me an Iphone 4 (not the S) for around $40. What do I need to know? Or let me paraphrase this:
I’m not an apple fan. At all. I don’t have an Ipod (i have an MP3 player that I paid under $10 for) nor do I use Itunes (I like to be able to do whatever I want with the music I purchase independent of a software program that forces me to synch devices). I had an apple computer years ago (before it was cool) and ran screaming to windows as fast I could. I will admit that the iphone seems more refined than the andriod and windows phones on the market (if andriod and windows phones were built by 1 company with closed sourced parameters I assume they to would have more refined products) and it doesn’t seem like I’ll have to carry a charger around with me all day long. I’m not thrilled with paying $30 more a month for data.
The phone will remain OFF and in my locker at work for 6-9 hours a day mon-fri. I get no service at work and while there are both wired and wireless networks all around me they are designated for business and medical computer systems not employee use. I don’t plan on getting ANY apps (maybe myEchain since I work with the creator’s neighbor and promised her I would buy it) and will use the phone for calls and texts.
Do I have to use Itunes? My home computers all run Linux Based operating systems so is there a way to use the phone without having to synch with the computer? I’m using the phone as phone and really don’t care about the camera or the Ipod functions.
I tunes is the only supported way to sync with the iphone. Though there are probably open source alternatives for linux boxes.
All you need is an AppleID, then you can just use the app store directly over wifi or cellular. Unless you want to sync music and movies, you dont need iTunes. The phone can be used alone.
you can jailbreak/root your iphone for file system access. That would allow non iTunes file modification/sync.
yeah I literally just want a phone. No Apps Itunes or Movies. No plans to root or jailbreak the phone and if I absolutely need a pc or mac to use the phone, my parents live 15 mins away in one direction, my younger sister lives at Seton Hall and my other younger sister lives 20 minutes away.
Should be good to go. the iphone works great as a phone and it’s not crippled if you dont have a computer to sync it with. I barely plug in or connect my nexus to my computer either. Dropbox could be used even for wireless sync.
LOL. I need some time to practice the skills required to own an apple product. I’ll multi-task by working on my air of superiority, while waiting in line days before the new i-product is set to drop. That way I can confidently tweet “first!” while holding my shiny new aluminum box and the copy of my bank statement reflecting a negative account balance.
why don’t you purchase a used flip phone off ebay thats verizon compatible, use it until your contract expires and get on another carrier? this way your not paying $30 extra a month for something your not going to take advantage of. if you dont trust a used phone and need to stay with verizon for whatever reason, verizon offers plenty of “basic phones” that text with a full keyboard on their website, all of which can be ordered online and apply your credit towards.
If your not an apple fan and have a computer that is not mainstream compatible i would not even go near an iPhone, you will eventually smash it in frustration. I have a 4S and Ive had a few glitches here and there with syncing and such with my windows PC.
I was reluctant to go down the road of Apple product ownership, but as it turns out I don’t dislike the products themselves. I just hate their retail stores! I bought my Mac at an actual independent computer store instead. Incidentally, that store was fairly quiet on the day the new iPad was released, and still had remaining stock the next day. Meanwhile people who lined up at the Apple Store went away empty-handed.
The sellers name could be “IonlySellWorkingVerizonPhones” and they’d have 100% positive feedback and a 12 year history on ebay, and I assure the phone either wouldn’t work or be verizon compatible. If it involves me and anything electronic there are going to be problems. Problems to which technicians respond “I’ve never seen that happen before” (happened today when I had to call care fusion about a pyxis anesthesia 3500 that would allow the user to waste more ketamine then we had on site.)
I’m stuck with verizon for the next 2 years or I’m paying out the nose to cancel. Verizon is also the “best” carrier in terms of coverage in this area. I did alot of math. Based on reviews of the phones, the original cost of phones, and the deep discount on the Iphone 4 ( I guess they are really trying to move them), the iphone came out ahead. (aside from the data plan but many of the phones required atleast $10/month data plans). It seems as if all carriers are getting away from selling devices that are well “PHONE” type in nature.
Apple’s OSX is closer to Debian Linux (as on a long enough timeline they are both forks of Unix) than it is to windows. 40 million people worldwide use some form of Linux as their primary OS. I agree its not as mainstream as Apple or Windows, but there are existing Linux solutions for dealing with syncing. It comes down to if 1) these solutions work right out of the box. 2) how hard I want to work to make these solutions work (Linux is open source so I could spend eons building whatever I need to make this work with a mild risk of fucking up my system. Or in my case a 100% chance of fucking things up royally)
I ordered the iPhone. The setup instructions blew and after several unsuccessful attempts at setting up all of the i-bullshit (including 5 password resets. Apparently FuckYouSteveJobs1 and SteveJobsisAtWat3 don’t work as passwords, even though they are initially allowed with security questions) I was 30 seconds away from driving my happy ass to verizon and returning the phone for my $30. My mac addict friend dropped by and took a look at the phone. He informed me that he had an equally shitty time getting his phone to set up correctly and said to leave it alone for an hour. Hour later everything just works. Not in love with the phone overall but I figure in 2 years the droids will be where I need them to be and I can , for the 2nd time in my life, run screaming from apple products yet again.
be warned, you will use that 1gb minimum data before you know it. i understand you wont use the smart features of the smart phone as much but 1 gb goes real fast. i have had my Galaxy Note 3 weeks and i hit 22gb data yesterday, you do the math on that one. if i didnt have unlimited data id be screwed. I hit the 5gb mark the 3rd day i had it.
most iphone plans require the data as far as i know, so you may want to look at something that doesnt. i could be wrong on that since i have never had verizon though.
in the grand scheme of the things, its $30. I’ll “rag and gag” 1 less a hooker a month and it will more than cover this expense. I could switch to sprint and some point but eh.
Oh, fyi, these glass phones will shatter if you sneeze on it the wrong way. May I suggest a case to protect your phone. I use the lifeproof case, which has been stellar for me.
co-worker showed me an otterbox defender, and I went and bought it at the verizon store for a deep discount. I know I know I could have ordered it on amazon for $0.18 but I needed it YESTERDAY.
