serious financial stuff

[deird1]

Currently doing lots of maths...

- I need a new phone. Mine keeps dropping battery rapidly. (This morning it went from 96% to 0% in a single jump.)
- It must be an iPhone. It's simply too useful for me.
- Ideally, this would involve waiting until the end of my phone contract, then getting a phone pre-packaged with the new contract.
- My current contract doesn't end for four more months.


Questions currently taking up brain-space:
Can I wait four months before my dying phone is fixed?
Can I afford the extra money to get a new phone right now?
Does the fact that my work hours are about to plummet change any of this?

...and I have no clue.


Silly phone. *grumps*

Comments

[nimthiriel]

Have you considered booking an appointment with the genius bar at an apple store? One of the recent software updates had this problem of the battery sensy thingy not knowing how full it is. If that's the case, they may be able to fix it for you.

Even after 2 years, the battery shouldn't be this bad.

[deird1]

I've already talked to them over the phone - when they told me that restoring my phone from backup should work - and didn't...

[nimthiriel]

Eep.

If it makes you feel any better, you can still get the 3GS and it's cheaper. If your carrier refuses to do it, the Apple store still does and they can set you up with a carrier. I think it has to be Telstra though.

[deird1]

Yay!

But I think that would involve paying out the end of my contract with 3 - which is a whole financial thing...

[nimthiriel]

Yeah, you would. This was more in the interests of long-term financial management :-)

[a2zmom]

Can you get to an actual store? This is a problem with their equipment it seems to me and you shouldn't have to suffer with it.

[nimthiriel]

Yeah, if you take it to a store they do tend to just swap it over if it's faulty :-)

[velvetwhip]

Good luck with your phone dilemma.


Gabrielle

[kerri]

Are you not eligible before your contract is up? Or are you planning on switching carriers?

[deird1]

Definitely switching carriers. My carrier has almost no signal - anywhere. They're kinda known for it...

[ruuger]

Have you checked your settings to see if you have any settings on which you don't use that drain a lot of power, such as push mode for email/internet or GPS? It may not fix the problem completely, but might make it easier for you to use the phone until your contract ends.

[nothorse]

Do a very careful calculation on the costs. I've found it's almost always cheaper to buy an open iPhone directly from Apple and get a cheap SIM-only contract, than get a contract with an included phone.

But that's here and wherever you are the situation may be different.

[curiouswombat]

Um - can you not just get it a new battery? That would see you through in the mid-term whilst you make your decisions.

[nimthiriel]

Not for the iPhone. You can't open it up. Or rather, you can but it's extremely difficult and voids any warranty. If part of it is faulty and you take it in to a store, they swap over the whole phone and then you restore it from your backup when you get home.

[curiouswombat]

Good grief! And then they complain about Microsoft having a monopoly! It seems a very good reason to me to never, ever, buy an Apple anything.

This makes more sense to me now...

[nimthiriel]

"Monopoly" means having the majority of the market share, which Microsoft do :-p

There are a lot of advantages to Apple products, so don't discount them on the basis of not being able to swap a battery in a phone :-p


Editted to add: Having had to go through the issues of getting a Nokia phone fixed, I prefer the Apple way. It takes only as long as getting to and from the store and then putting the image of my phone back onto the new device. This as opposed to taking it to the repair centre, waiting while they "Field test" the thing, change a few parts over, and then give it back a week or two later without a loan phone to tide me over in the meanwhile.

[curiouswombat]

In the particular cases that went though the European courts it was deemed that putting Microsoft software onto PCs for free gave them a possible monopoly over the supply of software... to PCs. So they can now only put 'free samples' on - you then have to choose to purchase the product or not.

It seems to me, and quite a few other people I know, that the way that Apple insist that only their software can be run on their machinery - and only their shops can repair their products - is exactly the same situation, possibly more so, as it is quite possible to run non-Microsoft software on your PC.

And as this seems to means that, should I need a new battery in an iPhone or any other Apple product, I would be required to spend a lot of money to travel by either sea or air to my nearest Apple shop (rather than just nipping to the local telecom shop in my lunchbreak)I think I'll stick with my Acer computer, my Samsung netbook, and my Nokia phone... :)

[nimthiriel]

Yeah, we have 3 apple stores in our city so I guess it's a much more viable option for some than for others :-p

[draconin]

I'm not quite sure if it applies in this case but I've been very impressed with iinet's scheme so far. They have a "SIM only" scheme where (obviously) they supply only the SIM card to those who already have a phone. I bought an HTC Sensation XE ($600) and joined their $10/month scheme. It gives me the same as my old 3 contract that was a $29 cap. It's not quite as cheap (nearly) as doing it via a plan but it has the advantage that you don't have a phone that's locked to a company and that gives quite a few pluses in terms of what apps you can run and how much you can tweak it.

I realise that this is not quite helpful as your current situation stands BUT if it gets to the point where you decide that you can't take it any more and purchase a phone outright (not as part of a new plan) to tide yourself over for the remaining four months you're locked in, then this may become worth looking at.