in London without iPhone!

[roshi]

Report from London. Day 4 of not having an iPhone. It is starting to get a bit frustrating. Half the population seems to have an iPhone, When I jump into a taxi, the driver has one on the dash. Walking down the street, people of all ages have iphones and are walking along looking at them. when i went into a phone warehouse to buy a cheap Nokia, all 5 or so of the salespeople had iphones. Amazing adoption rate. It is almost worth it to have a cheap jailbroken iphone to take to Europe.

NOT having $1000 of stupid charges is good, though.

[kap]

If the junk charges are that outrageous then how do folks there afford to have the service?

[Doc]

On the Metro today, every second person was playing games or listening music on iPhones (and maybe an occasional iPod Touch). Including young kids.

I think Apple has been faking their sales numbers. Clearly, half the population of our nation has already bought at least one iPhone each.

[davester]

kap wrote:
If the junk charges are that outrageous then how do folks there afford to have the service?

In population centers like London you can just buy a wifi card from one of the major services for cheap and get plenty of access. No need to use the outlandishly expensive AT&T roaming system. That's what I did when I was there. For phone service I just took a regular unlocked GSM phone and bought a cheap pay as you go card at a local shop.

[roshi]

I brought my Touch, and it accesses the wi-fi in the hotel, and certain cafes, easily.

But the for-sale public access wi-fi is clunky and no one at the Starbucks could get it to work on the touch - kept taking me back to the register page.

"If the junk charges are that outrageous then how do folks there afford to have the service?"
because they are not paying roaming charges - their iphones are local

[davester]

roshi wrote: But the for-sale public access wi-fi is clunky and no one at the Starbucks could get it to work on the touch - kept taking me back to the register page.
l

I was talking about the main telephone services' wifi, not local coffee shops. I can't remember for sure, but I think I had a vodafone (or perhaps it was Orange) wifi card which had service all over the place in London. The only down side is that you have to remember to log off each time or it will merrily go on charging you minutes for doing nothing.

[Speedy]

We feel your pain. But give it some time and things will get better. You just have to take one day at a time.

[kap]

Speedy wrote:
We feel your pain. But give it some time and things will get better. You just have to take one day at a time.

And that is not a sentimental life's lesson for solely iPhone owners

[roshi]

I found a partial solution -- while sitting in a spot that has free WiFi that works, I went to the App store and downloaded a couple of map applications for the touch. These allow off-line viewing of the London area, including "the tube" -- the subway system, the streets and the buses. For some reason, they designed these map apps to work even if you do not have an Internet connection.