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  • Aug 24, 2011, 2:13 PM

Is the Sprint iPhone a Better Bet?

By Kelli B. Grant

iStockphoto

If you sell it, will they come? Third-place carrier Sprint certainly hopes so.  The Wall Street Journal reports that the carrier will join AT&T and Verizon in offering the much-anticipated iPhone 5 when it launches this fall.

The news is clearly a win for Sprint: analysts are already talking about the potential for bumper fourth-quarter sales. It’s a great opportunity for the carrier, which has lagged behind Verizon and AT&T, to grab back some of its former customers who left to get the iPhone elsewhere, says Todd Day, an industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan. “Ultimately, it gives them a level playing field,” he says. (Sprint declined to comment on reports that it is getting the iPhone.)

But will iPhone owners – current and future — benefit? Sprint customers will, if they want an iPhone without the hassle of switching carriers. For everyone else, the benefits are a little less certain.

From a price perspective, “it almost doesn’t matter which carrier you have,” says Alex Goldfayn, a consumer electronics expert who hosts the nationally syndicated radio show “The Technology Tailor Minute.” Apple sets strict pricing controls that will keep handset prices the same at all three, and competition will prompt the carriers into near-identical plan pricing to avoid waves of defecting customers.

Right now, owning an AT&T iPhone costs $84.99 per month — $5 less than Verizon’s monthly rate — for 450 minutes, 2GB of data and unlimited text messages. Sprint currently offers 450 minutes and unlimited data and messaging for $69.99, but that’s likely to change once the iPhone launches, Goldfayn says: iPhone users tend to use a lot of data (think streaming video via Netflix or Hulu), so it’s not in the interest of the carrier to keep data pricing low. Verizon phased out its unlimited data plan within months of introducing the iPhone. A Sprint spokesman says the carrier will continue offering its unlimited plans, but will “monitor our plans as they relate to the marketplace.”

Where you live could be the bigger iPhone factor.”Some carriers are better than others in specific metropolitan areas or regions,” Day says, “and everyone has an opinion.” Texas customers tend to be Sprint loyalists, for example, while the Northeast loves Verizon (and loves to hate AT&T). Testing call quality before you switch can be a tricky business, but it’s doable. Sites like BillShrink.com gauge signal strength for the various carriers in your zip code, and carriers also offer at least two weeks for a penalty-free cancellation of new service. Keep in mind, too, that an influx of iPhone users has slowed speeds — if your Sprint connection isn’t great now, there’s the chance that it could be even slower come the fall.

Update, 2:30pm: This story has been updated to include a comment from Sprint.

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      • 2:40 pm May 2, 2013
      • Harvey wrote:

      I believe everything composed made a ton of sense. But, what about this? what if you were to create a awesome headline? I ain’t suggesting your content isn’t good., however what if you added something that makes people want more? I mean Is the Sprint iPhone a Better Bet? – Pay Dirt is kinda vanilla. You ought to glance at Yahoo’s home page and see how they write article titles to get people interested. You might add a video or a pic or two to get readers interested about everything’ve written. Just my opinion, it might make your blog a little livelier.

      • 11:04 am December 9, 2012
      • nnm..ru wrote:

      By WebOsPublisher

      I can’t take it anymore,I have looked everywhere fopr a good,functioning example of how to:

      1. main image in cell
      2. a rollOver button in another cell
      3. rollOver button swaps out main image to image2
      4. button onmouseOut swaps back to main image
      5. 6 buttons in all swaping 6 diffferent images

      Does anyone have any links for this concept. I have found one but it just does not work,perhaps because teh buttons themselves have rollOvers.
      onMouseOver Image Swap
      tutorials
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      April 26th, 2006, 11:34 PM
      #1
      dude9er
      View Profile
      View Forum Posts
      Visit Homepage
      444
      posts
      +)
      444
      –
      onMouseOver Image Swap
      I can’t take it anymore, I have looked everywhere fopr a good, functioning example of how to:
      1. main image in cell
      2. a rollOver button in another cell
      3. rollOver button swaps out main image to image2
      4. button onmouseOut swaps back to main image
      5. 6 buttons in all swaping 6 diffferent images
      Does anyone have any links for this concept. I have found one but it just does not work, perhaps because teh buttons themselves have rollOvers.
      Thanks for any help!!
      Reply With Quote
      April 27th, 2006, 12:14 AM
      #2
      Ankou
      View Profile
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      posts
      Procrastinator
      659
      –
      Depending on how large the images are you may want to preload them. Otherwise there will be a delay when you mouse over the button to the time it takes for the image to load.
      This is old code I had laying around — but it works:
      js.js file:
      Code:
      // Preload image – incase they are large images.
      if(document.images)
      var main = new Image(); main.src = "main.gif";
      var img1 = new Image(); img1.src = "1.gif";
      var img2 = new Image(); img2.src = "2.gif";
      var img3 = new Image(); img3.src = "3.gif";
      var img4 = new Image(); img4.src = "4.gif";
      var img5 = new Image(); img5.src = "5.gif";
      var img6 = new Image(); img6.src = "6.gif";

      function change(imageName)
      if(document.images) document['main'].src = eval(imageName + ".src");

      function changeBack()
      if(document.images) document['main'].src = main.src;

      Sample html file:
      HTML Code:
      <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
      <html xmlns="w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
      <head>
      <title>JS Image Swap Example</title>
      <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
      <script type="text/javascript" src="js.js"></script>
      </head>
      <body>
      <img src="main.gif" name="main" border="0" alt="Image Info" />
      <br /><br />
      <a href="#" onmouseover="change(‘img1′)" onmouseout="changeBack()">Image 1</a>
      <a href="#" onmouseover="change(‘img2′)" onmouseout="changeBack()">Image 2</a>
      <a href="#" onmouseover="change(‘img3′)" onmouseout="changeBack()">Image 3</a>
      <a href="#" onmouseover="change(‘img4′)" onmouseout="changeBack()">Image 4</a>
      <a href="#" onmouseover="change(‘img5′)" onmouseout="changeBack()">Image 5</a>
      <a href="#" onmouseover="change(‘img6′)" onmouseout="changeBack()">Image 6</a>
      </body>
      </html>
      You should be able to toss the HTML and the javascript into files, put them in a folder along with some images (named main.gif, 1.gif, 2.gif … 6.gif) and then give it a try.
      It’s just a sample on how to do this. If I needed to use something like this now, I’d probably recode it. Or at least check into browser support a bit since like I said it’s old JavaScript code.
      Hope it helps…
      Γνώθι Σεαυτόν
      Reply With Quote
      January 17th, 2012, 09:10 PM
      #3
      gregjmackay
      n/a
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      Fade out/in
      Hi,
      Is is possible to add a fade in/out as the images show/swap in this example??
      Your help would be most appreciated…
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      • 12:19 pm August 25, 2012
      • Marek wrote:

      I hardly leave a reopsnse, however i did some searching and wound up here Apple’s Japanese Site Let’s the Cat out of the bag. iPhone 4S launching Oct 14th. | GeekAhead.Com. And I actually do have 2 questions for you if it’s allright. Could it be just me or does it look like some of the remarks look as if they are coming from brain dead folks? And, if you are posting on other places, I would like to follow anything fresh you have to post. Would you list of every one of your shared sites like your Facebook page, twitter feed, or linkedin profile?

      • 11:41 am December 1, 2011
      • 8redrobin wrote:

      New iphone applications has made available Kindle reader.
      It saves on paper usage and trees. There are many apps. to download for the kindle device. Check out this site for more info. HTTP://KINDLE-READER-GADGET.BLOGSPOT.COM/ thank you for the visit.

      • 4:14 pm October 4, 2011
      • John wrote:

      Boost moble sprint shrinkage plan never shrinks..the plan keeps going up..go figure ?

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