ORANGE's I Phone 3G is a dud!!

[Golo100]

What is even worse is Orange's I Phone service. I must warn everyone with a 3G I Phone that it is loaded with hidden charges. The most dangerous(to your pocket) feature is Safari and all the other internet uses. The minute you thumb any of these features you're in for a surprise. Your megabytes run as fast as Dominican CAASD and Edesur electric meters to a rate of $0.07 per kb after your alloted megabytes are depleted, which is fast, faster and fastest. It seems as if when you approach the end of your allotment, the megameter runs at the speed of light. Just listen to this...for about 18,000 kb in a given extra day you would have to pay a lofty RD$1300 pesos, in addition to the $5000 plus monthly plan.
Orange started offering the infamous "Eliminate Edge"(APM system) to help control your internet use, but strangely enough it has been "out of order" conveniently. So Orange has you over the barrel.
The 3G has been a huge dissapointment to me. It has no video capability, the bluetooth does not work with any other equipment(you cannot transfer anything into anybody else's cell), downloading music to your G ipod is so complicated and expensive as paying for live music, downloading music videos takes an eternity. It plays videos individually and you have to download the next one..one by one. To switch from one application to the next you have to exit the previous one. I have not been able to find a conversion feature for metric system, currency, etc. unless you use internet. You cannot send multimedia messages thru SMS or text messages(you must use e-mail), the camera has no other applications than taking pictures, zoom and viewing slide show. I could go on and on. Orange Dominicana has no efficient or effective technical help to deal with this phone. Only a handful of staffers know this phone in and out, and not that much. Help is only available at the main office, if any. No supervisor would take a second of his time to see you even paying phone rates as high as luxury car payments. Besides, you're married to your G phone contract for 18 months, cannot pass along minutes from your I Phone to your other cell phones and the battery is a DUD! I tunes does not work in DR directly. The warranty does not cover battery replacement which will die at the end of the first year and it is as expensive as the Iphone. If you have a curious girlfriend, forget about erasing your other girls' calls individually. You have to erase every call shown on your screen. You cannot select-erase calls. Your earphones fall off your ears. The equipment comes with the worst-ever instruction booklet. It has no information of any use. Unless you go on internet, you will never know how the I-phone works, except costly and time consuming trial and error. It comes with a fancy box, but no Instruction CD or booklet. Their instruction brochures are laughable. Steve Jobs must do something before he dies about the phone and its representatives like Orange.
Golo
I give it one star.

[Robert]

The iPhone has one of the highest user satisfaction rating of any electronic product.

Look in the app store, lots of apps to address your issues or to expand the usability of what is now the worlds defacto phone.

I do agree that Orange and Claro have really screwed with the market and the pricing is ridiculous.

[Mark835]

I have an iphone and love it, over here in the Uk it is only avaliable from o2 but the contract includes everything needed for downloading email using safari ect so doesnt cost a penny extra.Best gatget ive ever bought. If you are traveling with an iphone though you need to turn off data roaming or the costs will mount up.

[CFA123]

I'm happy with my iPhone 3G here in DR. I bought it 'unlocked' on e-bay & just put in my Orange sim card. I don't have an Orange data plan for internet service, i just use wifi... so I avoid data charges.

For me, at least, it's an ideal phone. Good call quality, great browser interface, good typing recognition, etc.

No doubt, if the shortcomings you mention are critical to you, you won't like the phone. But all of those are mentioned over & over in online reviews of the phone. A little advance research may have saved you the headache.

[MrMike]

I am very happy with my Orange 3g iphone. I very rarely use the edge network, because at home and work I have wireless that works fine.

[Beads]

Originally Posted by Golo100

What is even worse is Orange's I Phone service. I must warn everyone with a 3G I Phone that it is loaded with hidden charges. The most dangerous(to your pocket) feature is Safari and all the other internet uses. The minute you thumb any of these features you're in for a surprise. Your megabytes run as fast as Dominican CAASD and Edesur electric meters to a rate of $0.07 per kb after your alloted megabytes are depleted, which is fast, faster and fastest. It seems as if when you approach the end of your allotment, the megameter runs at the speed of light. Just listen to this...for about 18,000 kb in a given extra day you would have to pay a lofty RD$1300 pesos, in addition to the $5000 plus monthly plan.
Orange started offering the infamous "Eliminate Edge"(APM system) to help control your internet use, but strangely enough it has been "out of order" conveniently. So Orange has you over the barrel.
The 3G has been a huge dissapointment to me. It has no video capability, the bluetooth does not work with any other equipment(you cannot transfer anything into anybody else's cell), downloading music to your G ipod is so complicated and expensive as paying for live music, downloading music videos takes an eternity. It plays videos individually and you have to download the next one..one by one. To switch from one application to the next you have to exit the previous one. I have not been able to find a conversion feature for metric system, currency, etc. unless you use internet. You cannot send multimedia messages thru SMS or text messages(you must use e-mail), the camera has no other applications than taking pictures, zoom and viewing slide show. I could go on and on. Orange Dominicana has no efficient or effective technical help to deal with this phone. Only a handful of staffers know this phone in and out, and not that much. Help is only available at the main office, if any. No supervisor would take a second of his time to see you even paying phone rates as high as luxury car payments. Besides, you're married to your G phone contract for 18 months, cannot pass along minutes from your I Phone to your other cell phones and the battery is a DUD! I tunes does not work in DR directly. The warranty does not cover battery replacement which will die at the end of the first year and it is as expensive as the Iphone. If you have a curious girlfriend, forget about erasing your other girls' calls individually. You have to erase every call shown on your screen. You cannot select-erase calls. Your earphones fall off your ears. The equipment comes with the worst-ever instruction booklet. It has no information of any use. Unless you go on internet, you will never know how the I-phone works, except costly and time consuming trial and error. It comes with a fancy box, but no Instruction CD or booklet. Their instruction brochures are laughable. Steve Jobs must do something before he dies about the phone and its representatives like Orange.
Golo
I give it one star.

Based upon your post there seems to be some discrepancies. As far as the level of service based upon the signal of Orange this would be an Orange issue. I have used the iphone (unlocked with an Orange SIM card) and the level of service is the same as any other phone.

The fees involved I cannot comment on as I have only used the unlocked phone.

Video recording and picture messaging is available for jailbroken iphones but not for ones right out of the store until they have been jailbroken.

Cydia is a package manager used by the iphone. Inside Cydia is a program called Cycorder which is free and provides video recording.

SwirlyMMS is a cheap program inside Cydia which provides picture messaging.

You will need the following information for the settings area...

MMSC:http://mms.orange.com.do/servlets/mms
Proxy :172.16.126.070:8080

MMS-specific APN Settings
APN: orangeworld

leave username and password blank.

There are also plenty of cheap unit converters in the app store for download.

Even in the US the 3g speeds are extremely slow compared to using wifi. There seems to be no shortage of wifi hotspots around the north coast when I was last there so getting good speeds on the internet was actually pretty easy.

[KBarwise]

First off Orange doesn't offer 3g, the phone is 3g, but orange only supports/offers edge internet which maxes out at 200 kb/second and i highly doubt you'd even be seeing that continuously.

If you really wanted 3g here in the DR for your phone, you should have gone w/ Claro, which is the only company offering 3g, i've personally tested their speeds to go up to 800kb/second, but again its not continuous thoroughput and likely fluctates based on the amount of users that are on & using it.

When the Claro's 3g dials down to edge it drops down to lower than 56kb/second which means its gets slower than dial up, beginning to wonder if Claro supports edge at all.

But my point is the only 3g is from Claro & it fluctuates. (as it would anywhere else)

[suarezn]

Originally Posted by Golo100

It has no video capability, the bluetooth does not work with any other equipment(you cannot transfer anything into anybody else's cell), downloading music to your G ipod is so complicated and expensive as paying for live music, downloading music videos takes an eternity. It plays videos individually and you have to download the next one..one by one. To switch from one application to the next you have to exit the previous one. I have not been able to find a conversion feature for metric system, currency, etc. unless you use internet. You cannot send multimedia messages thru SMS or text messages(you must use e-mail), the camera has no other applications than taking pictures, zoom and viewing slide show..

The question is whether what Golo said is true or is it just a matter of user not knowing how to use the features:
- Can you record video on it? Without having some hacked applications.
- Can you text using SMS or do you need e-mail to do this?
- Can you use it's bluetooth to connect to other devices like any other phone?

Can anybody comment specifically on these features and not the usual apple lovers comments how everything about it is great. I think these are pretty simple things that most phones nowadays can do, so I would imagine the Iphone should be able to do them as well.

[Adrian Bye]

- you can't record video without jailbreaking. if you jailbreak, qik works well, but jailbreaking is a hassle
- texting using sms works fine. sending pictures via sms does not
- you can use bluetooth to connect to some other devices (eg computers), but not to other phones.

i have an iphone 16g and am considering switching to the blackberry since i'm tired of having to deal with jailbreaking to keep the phone able to be used with sim cards in different countries. if i end up doing that that i'd keep an ipod touch in my house as a remote control and for testing different apps.

[Beads]

Originally Posted by suarezn

The question is whether what Golo said is true or is it just a matter of user not knowing how to use the features:
- Can you record video on it? Without having some hacked applications.
- Can you text using SMS or do you need e-mail to do this?
- Can you use it's bluetooth to connect to other devices like any other phone?

Can anybody comment specifically on these features and not the usual apple lovers comments how everything about it is great. I think these are pretty simple things that most phones nowadays can do, so I would imagine the Iphone should be able to do them as well.

If you don't jailbreak the device you cannot currently send or receive picture messages, record video, or use the bluetooth features.

Jailbreaking is a simple process these days and anyone who has a pc should be able to do it with the simple programs in about 10 minutes. There are plenty of tutorials out and the required programs and files are all free and simple to use. If your scared to do it have someone else do it which should cost about $20-$25 tops in the states.

You can always restore your old firmware and since this is a software modification you won't void your warranty if you don't divulge you jailbroke the device.

If your too lazy and too cheap to jailbreak the device then maybe the iPhone is a little too much and a simpler phone should be used. Don't expect the same functionality though.