Using an iPhone can be fairly expensive, but there are things you can do to make owning one substantially more affordable. A lot of the things that make maintaining an iPhone so costly can be either worked around or eliminated completely, you just have to know how.
Unfortunately, there's no getting around the expense of the iPhone unit itself. That's going to be $500 or $600 all by itself, depending on which model you get, the 6GB or the 8GB, respectively. Most people go with the 8GB model, because even though it costs a hundred bucks extra the additional two gigs of space are pretty essential. The top models of iPods have up to 80GB of space, so settling for only 6GB on a beautiful, shiny new iPhone just isn't something a lot of owners are willing to do...and so that extra $100 goes bye-bye with its 5 brothers.
There's not a whole lot you can do to cheapen the unit itself, but the same does not hold true for all the extra features and services associated with the iPhone. A few take a little sacrifice though...
For example, the special features of the iPhone that make it far superior to the iPod have led many people to disconnect their AT&T phone service and simply use it as a "tricked out iPod." This is certainly one way of lessening costs, and really all you lose is the call-making capabilities of your phone. It kind of makes it less of an iPhone, but at least you get rid of that ridiculously high-priced AT&T bill. One problem with exclusive partnerships with high-interest items like the iPhone is that the sole carriers can charge whatever they please, and AT&T is certainly taking that to heart.
By disconnecting your service, you essentially make the iPhone free to maintain. You keep the outstanding built-in camera, as well as the Internet connection via WiFi. Since most people owning an iPhone will probably have their own standard cellular phone, losing out on the phone service isn't a crippling blow. Only problem is that in order to even activate your iPhone and get it to work at all you have to sign up for an AT&T contract...with an activation fee. BUT, there's a loophole! If you cancel your contract within 3 days of signing it, you get your activation fee back...which after just having bought that $600 phone is quite the blessing.
So cool...if you take that path, the only thing you've actually paid for so far is the phone itself, and it's still a fully functioning digital camera, internet browser, and multimedia player...with one problem:
Multimedia downloads are expensive.
iTunes costs 99 cents per song. $10 an album. That's ridiculously high-priced, and if you have to spend 50 bucks each time you rotate your playlist, you're not saving much money...
However, there IS a way to get unlimited downloads for a lot cheaper...in fact the downloads themselves are free, only the software has to be paid for. To find out where to go to get your hands on this software, check out http://hubpages.com/hub/iPhone_Free_Downloads
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