You can go into a retail store, and walk out with an iPhone 4 after paying that price. I'm sorry if you want to play word games, but that is retail by any definition EVEN THOUGH it is subsidized.
Since the poster ALREADY stated he "would carry a phone anyway" that rendered the subsidy point moot, since he would BE PAYING FOR PHONE SERVICE ANYWAY. A contract price doesn't factor in if you'd have a contract regardless.
I'm not even sure where to begin with all your flawed reasoning in this post. Guess we'll start at the top.
Retail is defined as the total cost of the phone. A subsidized phone with contract is not defined as retail. Look it up. It likely even says retail or MSRP on the little sign in the AT & T store/ads. You'll see $299 with contract and then in smaller type $800 MSRP or retail or whatever term you want to use. By any definition, and by any reasonable person (which we will establish you are not, clearly), retail is not defined as a subsidized price.
But since as you say that applies to both platforms, and there are around a hundred thousand more apps on the iPhone... that's ONE THOUSAND excellent applications you cannot use. Oh wait, I was calculating that 99% of applications were crap... you were saying 95%. Make that FIVE THOUSAND good/great applications.
I can't even think of 100 apps that I find useful, much less 5000. So again, your numbers are meaningless. And again, I will state I have not found a single application on the iPhone that I would use that does not have the same or nearly same application on Android. Let me put it more simply for you, so that you may better understand the point: Any application that is useful and worthwhile on the iPhone is already on Android. The number of apps in the respective app store is completely meaningless.
WTF? There is no plan under which you would spend that much. The unlimited (well, 2GB plan which most people will never exceed) costs me around $70/month. I dropped my "real unlimited" plan just to save $5/month, because there's simply no way I'd reach 2GB even tethering.
I could go with the 256MB plan, and it would be around $60/month recurring. I can't even get a MiFi for that price!
I don't know where you get your magical numbers from, but I got my numbers from the AT&T website.
But your right, my numbers were way off. I had forgotten a few features I had on my T-Mobile plan. Here's the real numbers:
$89.99 for 1400 Min family plan
$30 for 3 additional lines on that plan
$90 for two comparable data plans
$4 for phone insurance
$30 for unlimited messaging
That's $244 a month for the same plan, with 100 more minutes a month, that I get from T-Mobile, which costs me $169/mo. So that's $74 a month it would cost me for a lesser plan with AT&T, just so I can get an inferior piece of phone hardware... but hey, I'll have access to 100,000 useless apps! Yay! So for a 16GB iPhone model (since we are comparing like models), I would have to pay $50 more per phone and $74 more per month, or $2024 MORE for an iPhone setup similar to my Galaxy S setup. TWO THOUSANDS DOLLARS! That's enough to pay for more than additional year of service on my current plan!
Do you not see the huge disconnect in your own figures there? The screen isn't nearly as good as the iPhone 4 (especially if you ever use the phone out in sunlight) and the Galaxy doesn't have as much storage. The iPhone4 battery life will just cream the Galaxy. Not to mention, as noted, the lack of applications and an OS that is rougher around the edges than iOS. There's a reason why the actual price of the iPhone4 is twice as much - in consumer electronics you do get what you pay for.
No, I don't see the huge disconnect in my figures. The only disconnect I see is in your magical figures. I've already said the screen is superior to the Galaxy S (even though I've not personally seen the iPhone 4 screen, I'll still concede the point). The lack of applications are meaningless, as we've already established, yet you keep harping on it like it's some benefit when it's not.
I've not had my battery run out on the Galaxy S, so I can't really make any statement there... my phone lasts a couple days on a charge with normal use, and that's good enough for me. I charge my phone every night anyway, so additional battery life is meaningless.
The OS is not rougher around the edges, which is what I've been saying. Compared to my iPod Touch, which is running iOS 4, which I assume is the same OS on the iPhone 4, iOS 4 is clunky and archaic compared to the modern Android platform. I used to think the iPod interface was cool when I had my previous phone, now I find it cumbersome and annoying when I'm forced to use it after using the latest iterations of Android. iOS shows it age and stiffness more and more as each day passes and various implementations of the UI are introduced for Android. iOS is old and crappy now, sadly. It was cool at one time, but not anymore... sorry. It reminds me very much of how cool Fisher-Price toys were when you're a kid, now, though, once you grow up, the toys are hilarious in their juvenile nature and you can't understand why you loved them. iOS is very cartoonish and Fisher-Price-esque.
You're right, you get what you pay for in consumer electronics. In the case of the iPhone, you are paying for the Apple name! Hope you like paying for nothing useful!
Not a hard choice at all - if you want a slightly worse platform experience that will cost you more per month, by all means choose Android. But as I said I'm a practical person so I can't let Android FanBoism draw me in, where there are so many other reasons to go the iPhone route.
A slightly worse platform, how? Again, you've shown nothing useful on the iOS platform that the Android platform doesn't already have. With the Galaxy S line, now the hardware is superior in almost every way (with the exception of the screen, again.) As for costing more per month, I've just established that it's $74 MORE per month for the Apple platform.
Android FanBoism... lol. Every point you've made I have shown to be completely flawed, yet you aren't an Apple FanBoi. Whatever... It's always useless to argue with Apple Zealots. *shrug* Your facts are flawed. They can be demonstrated as being flawed and yet you won't even admit they are flawed when the information is presented to you by AT&T's own website. Sorry... can't help you out if you won't even accept the numbers from AT&T.