The Nexus One (a very creepy name I must say) has been leaked that under contract will be $180 through T-Mobile, and for an unlocked version will be a whopping $530. I’m not kidding. Yes, this is a Google Android phone and quite a ritzy one at that. Per that $530 price tag, some will be more than willing to pony up the cost to have a completely unlocked unit. At present, that’s the price of wireless freedom, so to speak.
GSM, the cell phone protocol we all know and love, has had one leg of the GSM encryption it uses (which uses a 64-bit algorithm by the way) cracked. However nobody really seems to care due to the fact that consecutive packets are transmitted on different frequencies. In plain English: The likelihood of anybody tracing the exact route of one of your calls even with the GSM-cracker knowledge is slim to none.
New Yorkers really, and I mean really, hate AT&T right now. Well, let’s see here. If you’re an iPhone user in New York, life sucks for you right now. Dropped calls, 3G overload, and so on, and so on. Maybe this is an instance where you can blame it on a population problem. After all, New York City is the most densely populated region in the United States to the tune of 8 million people. To put this in perspective, I live in the major city of Tampa, Florida, and it "only" has just shy of 341,000 people. But even if you added in the entire metro Tampa area, that’s still "only" 4 million people compared to New York City’s 8.
Population statistics aside, the problem with AT&T’s network isn’t population but rather bad future planning. Their network is overworked, overloaded and simply can’t accommodate the masses. New York City in particular is a mess because yes, they probably have more iPhone users than anywhere else. But remember, the problem isn’t just limited to NYC. San Francisco has had their fair share of AT&T complaints as well.
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