Ugh, carrier contracts. Why do you Americans tolerate these lock-ins? One thing I miss about Europe is that you can just buy the phone you want and take it to the carrier you want.
This is why I use MetroPCS. It's not the world's best service and it only works in major cities, but I pay $50/mo for unlimited voice/text and I have no contract. If you want the blackberry I think the unlimited data plan is about $75.
T-Mobile allows anyone to pick up any of their standard plans without signing a contract, and without even requiring you to purchase a phone from them; they'll gladly sell you a SIM chip with a plan, and you provide the GSM phone. The only reason I still go with the contract is because I'm perfectly happy with T-Mobile, and I decided that I wanted to upgrade to the G1 at the $179 rate, as opposed to paying almost $400 for it without the contract.
So, if you don't like contracts, pick T-Mobile; they're the closest thing to Europe available in the US.
One nit, though: don't let the really terrible website and phone service get you down. If you go to a T-mobile store, everything's easy, fast, and efficient, and the reps are either knowledgeable or willing to ask someone who is, on the spot. It's a totally different experience from that on the T-mobile customer service line, and I wasn't able to use the website to do anything I wanted. At the time, what I wanted was to buy a G1 full price, but I would have settled for "with a contract", and I never managed to get it done, finally going to Wal-mart and picking one up for slightly less anyway, and then using AT&T for a few months before the lack of 3G service (the G1 doesn't do AT&T 3G) drove me back to T-mobile. However, it hasn't been useful since I came back to them, either. The in-store service is really excellent at every store I've been to, so just go there physically.
"$199.99 after $100 mail-rebate and 2-year contract"
I really hope this Palm Pre does well. I would have higher hopes for it if it didn't have carrier lock-in. We'll see if this Sprint-only deal lasts long or if it goes carrier neutral soon.
I do too, mainly because I want to see more JS/HTML based mobile device development, possibly some standard APIs in the near future.
I've been spoiled by the web and I don't like having to deal with multiple languages, platforms and dev environments just to be able to reach a decent portion of my potential audience.
The difficulty is that the Pre is a CDMA 1x-EVDO handset, which is really only compatible on a few networks (Verizon, Sprint, and a few other regional carriers). Unless Palm has a super-secret GSM one waiting in the wings, it could take some time for the Pre to filter over to other networks.
It won't last long. Palm has done this over and over. They launch on one carrier first because they get paid a lot to do it, then 6 months later start rolling out to everyone else.
The videos I've seen of it make it look pretty second-rate. It probably compares well against other smart phones but it doesn't seem like a "real" competitor to the iphone. A JS/HTML SDK might be nice but it's not as deep and powerful as the iPhone's.
Although I don't plan on getting the Palm Pre, I'm quite happy with my iPhone, I think it would be very beneficial for Apple to get a "real" competitor in that space. One that can truly challenge Apple to innovate and to continuously improve.
Having said that, the Palm Pre is unreleased and many questions are still to be answered; especially delicate are those related to battery and performance ("the snappy"). It also seems a bit fat.
I applied to get the SDK when the application page first went up, has anyone been accepted yet? It was my understanding that this wasn't going to be an Apple-style beta, where everything was locked up tight.
Oh god shoot me now. They're even worse than Rogers, who at least have good customer service. I suppose if Bell has a good data package, I might be able to deal with them; I'm pretty good with accents so I suppose I can do customer service in India for a few more years.
Not sure if it just me or not, but anybody noticed the count-down on the right sidebar actually says 46 days? It's May 20 today, and it should be 16 days until June 6, unless someone forgot that JavaScript's month is 0-indexed?
This is why I use MetroPCS. It's not the world's best service and it only works in major cities, but I pay $50/mo for unlimited voice/text and I have no contract. If you want the blackberry I think the unlimited data plan is about $75.