The world is going gaga over the iPhone, yet again, thanks to the announcement that the iPhone 4 will be out at the end of June. Just my luck to have finally picked up an iPhone 3gs just a week ago, three days before they announced the new model! At first I felt bad, not because of the model upgrade but because Apple was cutting prices. But then I remembered – this is Israel, and I’m signed  up with Orange – where the prices go up, not down, no matter what!

In Israel, iPhones really are for elite power users who have “resources” (ie money) to spare. It appears that the cellphone companies (Orange, at least) splits its “phone world” into two; iPhones and everything else. If you want to be in the iPhone world, be prepared to pay – more than you bargained for. In my case, it was (almost) the data network I had to pay for, without even realizing that I was being charged, and after doing everything I was supposed to in order to avoid the extra charges!

Here’s the story: Being in need of a couple of cellphones for members of the tribe (one to replace a broken device, the other for a new high school student traveling every day), I thought about upgrading to an iPhone, to replace my Nokia XM5800, which I had relatively few complaints about (and in fact outdoes the iPhone in some ways!). The reason is not because I consider myself to be part of some “cellphone elite”; so many of the companies I write about are doing apps for the iPhone (and Android phones or Blackberry, but not for Nokia’s Symbian phones) that I felt I was missing out on being able to write accurate stories about their technology. So things just sort of fell into place for a Shamah iPhone.

When I pick up my already ordered iPad in the States in a couple of weeks, I’ll have a whole Apple family – Dad (iMac), Mom (Mac Mini), a couple of teens and tweens (Macbooks, aluminum and white version), Junior (iPad), and Baby (iPhone)!

And the iPhone is everything they say it is – a beautiful screen, far advanced UI (light years ahead of the Nokia’s clunky UI), and an endless amount of apps that do anything and everything. While I really missed the lack of multitasking (a no-brainer on the Nokia, and a lack that will be resolved with the new iPhone OS due with the iPhone 4) and no ability to record phone calls (that one hurts!), it’s easy to see why people love their iPhones.

One big plus for me is the iPhone’s built in ability to tether its cellular connection to a laptop, enabling you to use it as a modem (I used a separate program for that, called Joikuspot, on the Nokia, but the iPhone’s implementation is far better). I use the modem program (known as tethering feature on iPhones) to connect to the net when the router goes down (an occasional problem where I live).

As it happened, the day after I got my iPhone, the internet was out for a few hours while I had “crucial” on-line work to do. So, I tethered my device to my Mac (that’s a story in itself, because I had to do a “mini-jailbreak” from the block Orange put on tethering!), and did my thing. Great connection via 3G – much faster than I ever had with Joikuspot on the Nokia! So I was happy.

But only for a little while. After about 2 hours (it was a long outage) I got an SMS from Orange saying that I had used up my internet surfing package, and would now be charged per megabyte. I thought it was strange that I had used up a full 150MB of upload/download time so fast – clearly it was the 3G, I thought – and realized I had to upgrade from my “middling” package (150 MB/NIS 47 per month, better than the free 30 MB they give you, but not as good as the 5 GB/NIS 88 a month I was planning to order). But that was for another day. For now, I went to settings, and turned off “Enable 3G” and “Data Roaming” on the Network settings.

Flash forward about a week. I still hadn’t gotten around to upgrading the package, but that was OK, because I seemed to be able to find a Wifi connection when I needed it (even when we ate out at a place in Herzliya for my wife’s birthday!). On that day (about a week after I got the phone), I got two phone calls from Orange – the first to try and sell me “screen insurance” (at NIS 47 a month I said no thanks), and a second from an Orange rep asking me if I liked the phone, did I have any questions, etc. (than in itself is a sign that they look at iPhone customers as being in a different league – no one called me when I had my Nokia, Sony, or any previous device!). Very helpful and thoughtful, I said to myself.

I said thanks, everything’s fine, and was about to hang up – when I figured that now would be a good time to order the 5GB wifi package. “Good idea,” he said. “You know you’re over the limit on your 30 MB connection package.” Whoa – 30 MB? Shouldn’t that be 150 MB? After all, they transferred my previous Nokia plan to the iPhone – or so they told me they would do in the Orange store!

But no – they apparently “forgot” to upgrade me, and now I “owed” them over 50 MB over my allocation! That works out to about  NIS 95 that I was going to have to pay!

Unacceptable, I told the (now formerly) “helpful and thoughtful” fellow on the other end of the phone. In fact, it was impossible for me to have gone into such megabyte debt; did I not turn off 3G as soon as they warned me that I was now going to be charged for cell data connections, making sure to use only Wifi? After much hemming and hawing (and keeping me on hold for about 10 minutes), he came back with his best offer – Orange would knock off half the charges, and I would end up paying only NIS 45 (from my previous complaints to Orange, it appears that they have a stock policy of giving energetic complainers half off whatever charges they’re complaining about).

Nothing doing, I said – rather loudly, by this time. “It’s not my fault they didn’t transfer my 150 MB package, and anyway I was only using Wifi. If I still had my 150 MB package, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, because I only used 80 MB of allocation – and anyway, I was only using Wifi!” Unable to do more, he gave the number of customer service for data plans. I called, and spoke to another rep, who also listened, gave me an argument, then regave me the 50% discount – and then, after emphasizing numerous times my chief arguments and that I was not willing to pay a shekel for this – they knocked off the whole thing (or so she told me on the phone; it remains to be seen if they try to sneak the NIS 90 onto my final bill. As of now, it appears on my account usage page on the Orange site).

One of the reasons she gave me an argument was because of the following: Even if you turn off the 3G, you are still connecting to the data network via 2G, even if you’re just surfing Wifi! Accoourding to this Orange rep, you CANNOT connect to the internet without using a cell network, with just Wifi; the Wifi takes precedence, but if you move out of range, the 2G network AUTOMATICALLY kicks in – racking up the charges on your account, adding a phantom 50 MB in data usage. “The iPhone is the only device that does this,” she said. “You can connect using any other device using strictly Wifi, but not the iPhone.”

Needless to say, I though I was dealing with some ridiculous excuse to justify the charges – or some Orange-only scam (like disabling the internet tethering feature so they can charge you to open it!). Jumping to that conclusion makes sense, since Orange is very good at relieving you of your money in small increments (“nickel and diming,” they call it); the way the Orange website is organized gives you a clear indication of how they operate, but that’s a post for another day.

Anyway: Not believing this story, I actually called up Apple in the U.S., taking an educated guess that the device actually came from the U.S. (I was right, and anyone in Israel who wants can buy the Apple Extended Warranty for iPhone directly from Apple for $69! I don’t know how much Orange or iDigital sells it for, but I suspect it’s a tad more than that). And unbelievably, the Apple rep confirmed what the Orange rep said! Even if you turn off the 3G to save surfing megabytes, and even if you make sure to stay near Wifi hot spots at all times, you are STILL going to end up connecting to the cell data network!

The implications? If you have the iPhone, you are REQUIRED to have at least 500 MB in your data plan (since the next jump after 150 MB is 5 GB, that’s what you need to do, at least with Orange). Even if you plan on using just Wifi. Is this a “feature” Apple built in to help the cellphone companies it sells to? Why haven’t I heard this fact before (I did a lot of internet searching before calling Apple)? If this is the case, how can they let a customer walk out of the Orange store with only 30 MB in their data plan?

Once again, our local “business sharks” take what was supposed to be a nice, fun experience and use it as another excuse to shake down loyal customers. Lessons for the future: There is no way an iPhone is going to cost $200 (the price announced for the 16GB iPhone for last week) if you buy yours from an Israeli cellphone company. And two, when the iPad finally comes around, get ready to spend – $499 just isn’t going to do it. If they treat iPhone customers like millionaires who can throw money away on large data plans (who have no choice in the matter either), I can imagine what they’re going to do to the “super exclusive” iPad crowd!

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One of the great things about a smartphone is the ability it gives you to connect to the wider world – through its data connection. And now, with relatively fast 3G internet networks, you can really hook into lots of great services. While the iPhone usually gets most of the glory, plain old Symbian or Windows devices can do most of us just fine.

For instance, I like having the option of hooking up internet phone calls on my cellphone using Skype. Skype has an application, called Skype Lite, which lets Java phone users dial into Skype via a regular cell phone call, with the call forwarded from the local connection to your Skype contact anywhere in the world. That’s a great way to save on international phone calls, but if you want to avoid the phone call charge itself, you can make a free Skype call using your smartphone, if you’re using a wifi connection. What if there’s no wifi? A smartphone lets you easily switch between the different connection options, such as WAP or 3G.

My Nokia 5800 phone is a Symbian device, and as of now Skype doesn’t have a native application for Symbians. So, I use an app called Nimbuzz, which very neatly lets you connect with your Skype account and call your contacts – as well as your the contacts in your phone book (I used Fring for awhile, but found Nimbuzz to be much neater in its approach).

Other notable apps that let you hook up with the rest of the world: Qik, a great app that lets you broadcast (via e-mail, Twitter and Facebook) whatever is happening around your phone live to the rest of the world; vTap, a video sharing site for mobiles; and Waze (http://www.waze.co.il or http://www.waze.com), which uses your phone’s GPS settings to determine where you are, and informs you of traffic problems or speed traps in your area.

As I wrote in the Jerusalem Post, you can connect to services like these via wifi, or 3G. But when using cellular internet, you are being charged by the kilobyte for all data you transfer on the network. For Orange customers, for example, the basic surfing package gives you almost unlimited surfing within the Orange site network, but once you try and connect to the rest of the world, you find that the 30 MB in data transfer you get with the basic NIS 21 package just isn’t enough.

Unfortunately, the concept of unlimited data connection is unknown in Israel, unlike in the rest of the world. On the other hand, the commensurate cost of the data connection is cheaper, because you get to choose from one of four data connection packages, so you can decide how much or how little you want to spend. Fortunately for me, I’m able to do a lot of my work in wifi-friendly environments, so I use my phone’s wifi connection to connect to most of the cool services I use. But having that 3G backup “insurance policy” is essential; for example, I was able to use soft modem Joikuspot to get my work done while helping my wife keep vigil recently at the hospital for a sick relative.

Having already received a warning that I was running out of allocated data time, I decided to upgrade from the 30 MB to the 150 MB package, which costs NIS 41 a month (to fund it, I dropped the GPS, which was NIS 21 a month, so my bill is essentially the same). The next package in the series, 5GB of data connection time, should put paid to any concerns I would have about going over the transfer limit; but that package is NIS 81 a month.

Since I don’t want to pay any more on my monthly bill than I already do, I didn’t upgrade to the 5GB plan – but if I could drop another NIS 40 in existing services that I don’t need as much, I would. Unfortunately, since most of my bill consists of set charges (for minutes and SMS usage), there’s almost nothing I can cut out without going to a different call package. But if I could shave off some of that cost – maybe take a package that doesn’t include 200 free SMS messages (I don’t use nearly that many), I could cut down the talk package and apply that money to the data package.

So here’s what I’m planning to do: I’d like to call Orange and figure out what the absolute cheapest package they offer is, and figure out whether signing up for that, along with the 5 GB data package (or even the 20 GB package, for NIS 80), comes out cheaper. My wife, for example, pays a basic charge of NIS 8.57 per month, and then by the minute (about 60 agurot). Which sounds expensive, and would be if I used it to talk the 200 plus minutes a month I usually use my cellphone. But – what if I were to make all my calls using Nimbuzz/Skype? I’d still have to pay SkypeOut minutes if I call non-Skype customers, but maybe that would be cheaper than paying for the cell phone minutes.

And even if it cost the same (I suspect it would), I would have the greater flexibility of being able to use the data package anyway I wanted, which is much more efficient than having services I don’t really need or want (extra SMS messages, which Orange is always giving away for free anyway – their latest promo was 1,000 free messages in honor of Ramadan!). With 5GB (or 20GB!) of data connection, I wouldn’t even have to use Skype; I could contact everyone directly on Facebook, Messenger, or e-mail, with actual talking over Skype taking place only when necessary (how many times do we just need to convey information, as opposed to getting into a conversation, when calling colleagues, customers, etc.? That’s why SMS messages are so popular!). If nothing else, this would be a cool topic to write about. I figure I could get three columns out of it!