back to article T-Mobile bribes fanbois to trade iPhone for...Windows Mobile 6.5

T-Mobile has instituted a tried-and-true incentive to induce iPhone users to switch to their HTC HD2: bribery. The wireless carrier, based in Bellevue, Washington - a stone's throw from Microsoft's Redmond digs - will slip apostate iPhone owners $100 to $350 if they trade in their working Cupertinian smartphones for HTC's hot- …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    car industry

    imagine Kia bribing Mercedes car owners to abandon their benz for Rio.

    a delightful joke indeed.

    1. Lord Elpuss Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Yes....

      Yes, because that would be a completely accurate analogy.

      1. TeeCee Gold badge
        Grenade

        Accurate analogy?

        Of course your Kia will work quite happily for as long as you want it to at minimal cost, while with the Merc you'll be paying a never ending series of eye-wateringly large bills.

        Than again, maybe the analogy holds here too?

        Oh.....hang on....HTC hardware? This one's busted.....

      2. Anonymous Coward
        FAIL

        Pretty much so

        you would have have to be as mad as a hatter to buy a M$ OS on a smart phone

        1. Shades

          RE: Pretty Much So...

          I must be mad then because I've JUST got a HD2 and it is absolutely awesome. Although I'm not a "fan" of WinMo it, to me, seems like the lesser of three evils. The iPhone is, personally, far too restrictive and side-by-side with the HD2 looks like a Fisher Price style "My First Phone". Android is a no-go as I'm not giving Google access to my "offline" comms as they attempt* to do with my "online" activities.

          Besides, the efforts HTC have gone to to hide WinMo are quite amazing really. Yes, you do sometimes get confronted by WinMo but I'd say its only if you are a bit of a nerd wanting to do nerdy things with your phone (like I do!). I reckon someone who just wants to use a kick-ass camera phone with a slick interface, as a camera phone, would very, very rarely, if at all, have to encounter any raw WimMo screens.

          * FF and NoScript to the rescue. It staggers me no-end the sheer amount of sites that reference the Google analytics and Google domains.

    2. Argh
      Thumb Down

      Especially if...

      Especially if the Kia cost more than the Mercedes (as the RRP for the HD2 does compared to the iPhone) and they both got the same review score of 85% on the same website (Reg Hardware in this case).

      Oh right... that means it's a perfectly fair comparison and not a joke at all.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      RE: car industry

      Perhaps more like Ford bribing Mercedes car owners to take a 1970s Ford Escort instead of their 3 year old Merc...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Let me guess ......

    Somebody at T-Mobile got a bit carried away and severely over-ordered.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Gates Horns

      RE: Let me guess ...

      "Somebody at T-Mobile got a bit carried away and severely over-ordered."

      Or they believed the MS hype...

  3. Danny 14

    <sigh>

    The iphone isnt for everyone you know. And there is nothing wrong with WM6.5 it is lightyears ahead of 6.1 and the os of choice for me.

    horses for courses I guess.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      True, the iphone is not for everyone

      because mad-hatters, morons and idiots - are sure to have the opinion that what is pumped out of the Micro$haft sh1t pipe is good.

  4. Tom 35

    WM6.5 it is lightyears ahead of 6.1

    Cheese wiz on toast is light years ahead of dog crap on a stick but I still don't want any.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Makes Perfect Sense

    And they can then sell the iPhones for a profit on the $100 to $350 they paid for them.... Would be even more sensible if they just unlocked the, and put them on retail.

  6. Graeme McKeague
    Jobs Horns

    wp7 on hd2

    The HD2 can run wp7, well not offically though, the people at xda and htcpedia fourms have shown it, and all the big wigs on it have supported it sayin its not fake, anyways i have my htc and wouldnt change it, especially for the iphone! the screen is massive

  7. Steven H Taylor

    Something for US?

    Presumably this deal is only valid for customers in the US of A, or perhaps also Canada but not on our side of the pond. Too bad the article makes no mention of this whatsoever.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      this speaks volumes

      [dont know | dont care]

    2. G_C
      Megaphone

      over here...

      Completely separate organizations... Just the names the same...

  8. Trevor Marron
    Go

    The handset is just hardware

    And the XDA Developer folks have had WinMo7 running and -A-n-d-r-e-x- sorry Android working on the HD2.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SE are doing the same...

    SonyEricsson are doing the same in Singapore. They'll give you 650 SGD (about 400 USD) off an X10 if you trade in an iPhone 3GS 16GB. Lower model iPhones get less discounts.

    I'd rather have the X10 than the HD2. :)

  10. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Boffin

    Does it matter if the HD2 is WM6.5?

    It's not as if you could upgrade any version of a WM phone, unless you reflashed it with homebrew software which is not supported under the guarantee, i.e. exactly the same as what you'd need to do to go from WM6.5 -> WP7.

    1. ChrisC Silver badge

      Not so

      TMobile UK released a 6.1 -> 6.5 upgrade for their Compact V last year, so whilst official upgrades are rarer than a truthful politician, they aren't totally unheard of...

  11. Jim Coleman
    Thumb Up

    It's true.

    It's certainly true that iPhone owners covet the HD2 - an iPhone owning colleague here in the office won't stop bugging me to show him stuff on my HD2 and he's certainly gagging to ditch his iPhone.

    Perhaps this deal is for him.

    1. Shades

      Its the same over here...

      An iPhone owning colleague now wants an HD2 after seeing mine. He agrees that the HD2 makes the iPhone look like a Fisher Price style "My First Phone"

  12. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    Why?

    I don't understand this. I'd expect to pay a modest fee to trade in and upgrade a phone. You're saying the phone company pays their own customers to upgrade? Why?

    Or... are they paying other-company customers upfront to switch to them?

    You know how when a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    annoying on two counts

    firstly that just continues the precedent of phone companies shafting their existing loyal customers who are dumb enough to be on contract by making them pay retail - and even if I was due a new phone the discounts are still not as good as for a new incoming customer... and to rub salt in the wound they'll now pay for you to dump your fruitphone as well. greee

    secondly the HD2 while a lovely slab of a phone is lumbered with a lot of the HTC front-end which while really pretty is a bit of a dog for performance and stability and if this is just a base 6.5 device that means it's 3 service packs behind (according to XDA Developers the current builds are 6.5.3, and it's in the SE Faith - http://www.unwiredview.com/2010/02/02/sony-ericsson-aspen-faith-with-wm-6-5-3-officially-announced/)

    I'm not an iPhone fan, and I'd love a T-Mo HD2 (because they've got different 3G to everyone else in the US so it limits the choices) but when it looks like I'll need to pay more than I did for my first car...

  14. Giles Jones Gold badge

    Good luck with that..

    I had to use an XDA with 6.1 (6.5 is just a bit of a stop gap hack of 6.1) and it really does make you realise what a pile of rubbish Windows Mobile (touch screen version) is.

    It's so 1990s.

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