Has Android Based Phones Made the iPhone Lose Some Luster?

Has the iPhone lost it’s luster? This past week, after all the Droid and HTC news with Verizon, I’ve been considering leaving AT&T and the iPhone behind and moving to an Android based phone on the Sprint network because of the Employee family plan discounts (which are awesome).

I currently have an iPhone 3G, pay for a text messaging plan, and data, while sharing the minutes with my family (4 extra lines). The monthly bill comes out to around $170 (after taxes), and that’s not including data or texting on any other phone besides mine. At the same time, the Sprint Everything Plus Referral Program, offers 1600 minutes, unlimited texting and data for every line (5 lines) for around $155 before taxes (should be between $175-180 after taxes). That’s a big difference considering my siblings all want texting on their phones and one of them needs data cuz she’s doesn’t use her computer much. So, what’s holding me back from going through with this plan? The high ETF fees.

There’s about 6 months left on my current AT&T Family Plan contract. I researched the cost of the ETF’s for AT&T and found out that AT&T offers a pro-rated ETF charge, which is $5 less for every month a customer stays with the company. Even with the current set up, I’d still be forking around $85 per line (counting down $5 per month to 6 months left). That’s still a lot of money for me to pay to cut off the service 6 months ahead, and then move over to Sprint. I called Sprint to see if they were willing to cover the ETF charges, but apparently they don’t pay for ETF fees but they once did. If Sprint were to cover some of the ETF charges, I would leave AT&T in a heartbeat and grab an HTC Hero (really like the phone) and buy an iPod Touch (or keep the iPhone and use it as an iPod Touch).

The more Android news I hear and the more phones compete with the iPhone, the more I’m more tempted to leave the iPhone and jump over to an Android based phone. In the beginning I would have never thought about giving up the iPhone but now it’s lost some of it’s specialness. While the software is top notch on the iPhone, Android is making great strides and Apple hasn’t done anything new to make the iPhone more appealing. Many will argue that the App Store along makes the iPhone better than other platforms, but I don’t use many apps from the App Store, so it doesn’t affect me much. So with that said, Apple will need to do something extraordinary when the new iPhone comes out in June, because if they don’t do something special, they’ll lose a lot of users to new phones like the Droid or HTC Hero. They’ve already lost one…

Now if I could only get Sprint to pay for the ETF charges…