Friday, February 25, 2011

The iPhone for a Penny!

With the excitement of Verizon getting the iPhone earlier this month, our position was "watch AT&T" for great deals. Well, here they come. AT&T now offers the iPhone for a Penny! These are 3GS, 8Gb refurbs with "cosmetic blemishes." Hey, it's a 'Scratch & Dent' sale!

We have been on the Android bandwagon partly because of the price of the iPhone, but that situation is changing. AT&T is also offering a number of other deals including Free phones, Free Overnight Shipping and Free Activations on new and additional lines of service.

If owning a new iPhone is anything like owning a new car, a 'Scratch & Dent' model gets you past the first apprehensive month. You won't be paranoid about dropping it.

On a related note, why is AT&T advertising 4G phones when they don't yet claim any 4G coverage? Is this a marketing effort to fool us, or or they just helping us get ready for their big 4G introduction next summer? Maybe they're working ahead to keep us from having to stand in those long lines? Gosh that's thoughtful.

2 comments:

Scott W said...

Bill,
I added an AT&T 4G coverage map on the 4G Coverage Comparison page.

William said...

Scott, thank you for adding the 4G coverage map, and to both of you, thank you for the work you do with this site. Bill, I think At&t is touting 4G as a marketing ploy. They've taken a lot of heat for their lack of 3G coverage and their spotty 3G performance over the last couple of years, and At&t is trying to make current and potential customers forget about those issues. And with every other carrier touting 4G coverage (whether or not it is really 4G is another debate), At&t didn't want to get stuck in 2005-2008 again, when Verizon and Sprint had gobs of 3G coverage, and At&t was still mostly an EDGE network. At&t wants to keep pace with Verizon's LTE image persona, and squash T-Mobile's negative marketing. It's futile because of two reasons; most consumers who care about data speed know that At&t's network hasn't changed just because the name has changed, and others will deal with the network problems, ignore the problems, or remain in denial about them as long as At&t sells Apple products.