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How a WiMax iPod Touch could be a non-AT&T iPhone alternative | Crave : The gadget blog
So, recently my mobile phone started acting up and since I've had it a few years and I am not under contract with Tmobile anymore I decided to exercise the benefits available to me as a free agent and look into my upgrade options. When i got my current Samsung T809 phone, i used it mostly for talking. Now, I barely talk on it at all and use it primarily for SMS messengins and AIM chat. I realized that i would benefit from a internet capable phone, but that the subscription fees are out of hand. A blackberry capable of doing what i want, and not terribly well, would cost me $90 in suscription fees for phone, text and data every month. This did not jibe.
I started looking at internet tablets, like the Nokia N810, which is pretty much exactly what i want in a mobile device. It has a open source based OS, a fully featured browser based on the firefox engine, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a host of third party communication applications, notably jabber an dskype. In a wifi environ, this device would operate just like a open platform iPhone with a mechanical keyboard and no subscription fee. Very tempting indeed. But even a San Francisco resisdent is not eternally and consistently bathed in the eddies of a 802.11g field. There are dark pockets of resistance, underground shelters, and remote peaks where the Precious Frequency cannot be obtained, and so I was uncertain.
Then I discovered an amazing thing, namely, we as a nation are not floating in the ocean of telelcom, merely treading water, but are actually being drawn forward in a gathering wave, one that is due to crest in a matter of weeks, and spill us all into the wide blue unknown. WiMax, or 802.16 [wiki], is upon us. It is a long range version of wifi, and a cobination of Asus, intel, Nokia and Sprint are rapidly building devices and networks to take advantage of it. Soon, you will be able to subscribe your computer (laptop, tablet or otherwise) to a data plan without a phone plan attached to it, at speeds of up to 4mbits/sec. Pay as you go, or flat rate, without being locked into a contract. An announcement from pretty much every company involved in the project is said to be coming on April 1st, at CeBit 2008.
I walk the golden path, it seems. I need but to realize what my desire is and it is provided to me. This data-only phone/computer is going to make a big change in the coming year, I can promise you that. I have linked to a what-if acrticle on cnet with ruminations on the potential for a suped-up iPod Touch to compete/complement the iPhone as a WiMax alternative to AT&T. Apple has been rumored to be working on a tablet, and given they're close relationship with Intel, and Intel's great enthusiasm for building WiMAx chipsets, this doesn't seem like a far fetched theory at all.