Am I the only iPhone Grinch?

yes, very happy.
came in handy during long hours at airports, too. watching short movies, emailing, browsing....suits me very well. i do like to have it all in one device.

Prolly why you're single.......

I'm waiting for the new release... Surely the Man 3.0 will be the most integrated version.

Im with Phoenix.
I am not a gadget person at all and wonder why people think they NEED phones like that?
It isnt need, it is consumerism plain and simple. They were not out a few years ago, you didnt 'need' them then. Its nice if you want to have a toy, but they are far from a necessity. Not when ANY cell phone can take any call and get you the 'emergency' phone you need.
I love that we are so advanced in technology that I can have a great friend in Michigan who I never met, yet can talk to her about anything for any length of time any day of the week.
I love that my family can move where ever they want and I can talk to them forever and a day. I love the invention of the cell phone. Im not so young that I dont remember the very first cell phones, or how important fax machines were and how REALLY important hand written letters were.
Phones were attached to machines all day, and your messages where how you conducted missed business.. not by email, iphone, or bluetooth. As I said, I do love the invention..

But necessity? they are not.

There's always improvements to come.....

dunno if anyone is saying it's a necessity.

but it sure is handy once you have it. i do like it and use it a lot for many diverse purposes. in fact it keeps me off the computer, since some of the most important functions i use in the computer i now have in the phone. "Need"? No, i don't "need one" - but then again, if you go for a literal interpretation of "need", i don't need education, four fifths of my posessions, i don't need anything but water and basic food to survive.... but that's for a philosophical discussion elsewhere. bottom line is that "need" is subjective and also changes with time and context.

Necessity's a real mother, eh?

you think you need... you don't REALLY need....but you're not thinking about if you really really need...so if you don't know you don't need and feel that you need...you might indeed need....

tfooey, now i need a shot of something.

I don't own a cell phone of any kind.....and don't intend to get one in the future. The monthly service cost is outrageous.

In fact, I hate talking on a phone in general, even our home phone.

Am I the only one?

hehe.

I wasnt -quite- saying need... but

in a way , the more that I think about it, I could understand why someone would really NEED something like this.

Our society is very... instant.. driven.
meaning, the faster you can respond, attend to, fix, do, or what ever... the more valuable you are.
I can , for example, lose a job because I did not respond to an email immediately like someone else could.

So.. there IS a bit of need.. but not really need, just need to need right?

I'm not a fan of any mobile phones. I've got one. It's turned on when I want to make an emergency call, or when I've pre-arranged to receive a call while I'm away from home (i.e. the car's in the shop and needs to be picked up, the dogs are at the groomers and need to be picked up), otherwise it's turned off. I did not take on any extra options - no voice or text messaging, nothin' - even though the lovely little beastie is able to do just about everything. I may take a three month contract to use it to go online when I next travel, but it'll be discontinued after the trip.

Gotta say, I don't find $10/month outrageous.

actually, the nice thing about iPhone is that it picks up whatever wi-fi signal there is around. Unlike blackberry, where you have to pay monthly internet fee.

My phone'll do it for either $3 or $5 a month. Not a lot when I will want it - too much for something I generally have no interest in.

I'm a techie, I see the appeal of the iPhone... but I haven't made the move yet.

Mainly because I just want my phone to be a phone. Maybe I was turned off by the early smartphones with their slow performance, bad reception, and clunky interface, but my phone is just to talk on.

My other thought is that I've sent at least three phones to digital heaven by bathing them in the washing machine....

I hung on to my original old analog phone until my wireless carrier was practically offering to pay me to upgrade. I still have the next phone after that--so antique it doesn't even vibrate. It allows me to receive and take calls, does include a voicemail service, and I probably could store some phone numbers in it if I knew how, but no games, no email service, no GPS system, no camera, no music and I don't miss those options. At least yet.

I do use the phone though and it is always with me and always on unless it is required to be off. And everybody has my phone number that I use for personal and business. The calls I get are usually brief, informationative, and necessary or appreciated.

So you non-phone people? How do you reach the grocery shopper of the day at the market to tell him or her that you forgot to put toilet paper on the list?

same here...
yup...
there are others out there like you!

R(telephone grinch)P

Don't think of the iPhone as a phone. It's more of a portable computer than anything else at this point. They happen to be able to make cell calls as well, but it's almost secondary to their basic potential.

At this point, iPhones are able to access wireless LAN's and move files around to other computers on the network, as well as full web browsing, Email and PDF document capability. Access to 3G networks also gives them very high internet access speeds even when away from a wireless LAN.

The touch screen and underlying software to drive it is one of the key attractions for me. While other manufacturers have finally figured out that touch-screen technology is the obvious direction for the future, they haven't yet duplicated the ease of use of the MAC interface currently available on the iPods and iPhones.

Buttons are a bad thing. Moving parts are a bad thing. Touch screens and solid state storage are the way everything will eventually go.

The only major drawback to these devices are the visual size, and the need for physical "KEYS" in order to touch-type rapidly. But both of those drawbacks are being addressed with LEP flexi-screens and voice recognition for dictation (instead of typing).

I just wish they would hurry up and get to the point where Phone, PDA's, Cameras and Music Players were ALL combined into a single device. At present, you still have to get cameras separately in order to get decent pictures. But that won't last long.

Also, the LEP (Light Emitting Polymer) flexi-screens are still a few years away, and those will eventually allow larger displays which can be rolled up into pen-sized tubes when not in use, substantially improving the viewing and typing surfaces when unfurled.

Reading with interest, on three levels:

1.) My mom doesn't have a cell phone, wants one, and is overwhelmed by the choices (devices and plans) and wants me to help her figure out what to get. (Not to get it for her, just do the research/ figuring.)

2.) E.G. doesn't have a cell phone, and isn't sure he wants one, but keeps being faced with situations where it would've been useful if he had one and is thinking about it. (Still mostly opposed at this point.)

3.) I don't have a cell phone, and am obviously not interested in a phone qua phone, but miss my dearly departed Blackberry desperately. It died in 2002 or so and things have moved way on since then so I'm interested in the email/ keyboard web navigation angle of things. (For example, the Blackberry Storm looks super-cool but a friend of mine told me she returned hers because she disliked the touchscreen keyboard.)

#s 2 & 3 are likely to be combined -- I'll get a Blackberry or something similar and loan it to E.G. occasionally.

Since the iPhone has a contract with AT&T only and I am with Verizon I can't
get one, otherwise I would have.
I got an LG Dare instead - it's similar to the iPhone and I love it! Easy to use,
touchscreen and large enough numbers even for my challenging eyesight.