Is AT&T slowly dethroning the almighty iPhone?

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>> The new iPhone has finally arrived, yet there seemed to be less excitement around this release compared to previous ones. Maybe it's the economy. After all, times are tough and these devices aren't cheap. Or maybe it's the competition. Google after all has a phone now. Palms pretty, pretty much sold out on day 1 and the Blackberry lineup has been beefed up as well. But I'd say the Dark Shadow being cast over the iPhone is the relationship that it has with AT&T in the US. No, this isn't me pointing out how poor the AT&T service can be with an iPhone. That's been the case since the original device came out and yet people have looked past it just to have the technology in their hands. No, this is about other things like AT&T's lack of support for MMS messaging. Though they say that's coming later this summer, it's also about AT&T's lack of support for tethering the 3G internet connection from the iPhone to a computer, a feature that's being ruled out with other iPhone carriers around the world, but has no launch date yet in site under AT&T. And these is also about contracts and how the earliest of the early adapters found themselves locked into AT&T's 2 year commitment for the iPhone that they purchased last year. And ineligible for this kind of price in this time around. Sure, contracts has such been around for a long time. But this is the iPhone, the king of the smart phones. And for some reason, people expect the rules to be different. Maybe this is a sign that the almighty iPhone isn't as almighty as everyone thinks it is. Don't get me wrong. I'd love to have one, but not at the cost of having to deal with AT&T.

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