Orange to offer unlocked iPhones for €749
€250 less than T-Mobile wants
Updated Orange France will sell Apple's iPhone to consumers who don't want to be tied to the carrier, provided they cough up €749 for the handset - €250 less than T-Mobile Germany's unlocked iPhones cost.
Orange said it will offer four iPhone-oriented price plans ranging from €49 to €119 per month. Data usage is capped at 500MB a month, and the carrier admitted that "modem access, VoIP, P2P and [bizarrely] newsgroup usage is strictly forbidden", though that's over Edge connections rather than the handset's built-in Wi-Fi link.
Buy an iPhone off Orange with a plan and it'll cost you €399. If you want an alternative tarrif, the phone will cost €549.
The €649 iPhone is described as the cost "without a plan", which simply means it's being sold without a SIM. Orange said that actually unlocking the thing will cost a further €100.
Update Orange just told us that the €100 fee only applies for the first six months of iPhone ownership - after that the process is free of charge.
We're awaiting clarification from Orange, but assuming the €100 unlocking fee is in addition to the €649, it still makes Orange's unlocked iPhone considerably cheaper than the €999 one T-Mobile is offering its German customers. The €749 Orange wants works out at around £536 if Brits fancy popping to Paris to pick one up.
French law prevents carriers from tying handsets exclusively to their networks - consumers have to be able to move to a different network provider and take their phones with them.
The iPhone goes on sale in France tonight.
COMMENTS
I'm sticking with my iPAQ
iPhone + contract on O2 = nearly 900 quid TCO
Virgin SIM (+ cash back) + (unlocked) iPAQ 514 = 160 quid TCO
Errr, I'll stick with a Smartphone. PS It has WiFi as well... Ok, you don't get free WiFi access on the Cloud, but really, who reads their email in the pub?
Nadir
I use a Nokia 8910, seeing as everyone is boring me to death with tales of their phones. Battery lasts for 2 weeks, call quality is superb and it's made out of titanium.
It's better than a Nokia N95, and it cost over £600 when it was launched.
What does any of this mean? I have no idea.
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
If you don't like it, don't buy it. FFS!!!!!!!!!!
If someone else wants to spend their money let them, it's theirs, not yours, they probably don't like your 3 Piece Suite and think you paid over the odds for it, but it's yours, not theirs.
Get it?
Anyone watch BBC last night?
I ended up watching a bit of Watchdog, purely because when I turned on the TV I saw them saying "are Carphone Warehouse lying about the iPhone?". Unfortunately, I wasn't blessed by an article exposing how bad the phone is and how overpriced it is, or telling us that Carphone Warehouse were failing to tell customers that they could probably buy it for less in a few months anyway. It was about insurance, and once again they drew attention to "people queuing for the iPhone!" and called it the "must have gadget this Christmas". Reminded me why I don't watch that terrible programme.
On another note, who uses their phone for P2P? Surely it's not fast enough or battery saving enough to be feasible? And doing it with the shit net that the iPhone has???
Fanboys.......
I have got an N95, and do you know how many of its features I ACTUALLY use? Probably about 3, aside from standard phone calls and text messages. It was a huge mistake going for the most feature packed phone instead of sticking with the make I've always liked (Sony Ericsson).
From what I can gather (from the people I know who have "similar" phones) very few people will actually use the "additional" features of an N95 or an i-phone, so bragging about them is just pointless willy waving. And yes I am aware that is ironic considering I own one, just blame it on a moment of madness.
