No PAYG 3G iPhone in UK until Christmas
Carphone Warehouse names the date
The Carphone Warehouse has announced that pay-as-you-go 3G iPhones will be available "in time for Christmas" - a rather longer wait than hopeful buyers were anticipating.
Carphone Warehouse has trumped O2’s PAYG 3G iPhone launch
CW released a bland statement today letting punters know that it’s started taking orders for the phone – if you’re willing to sign onto an O2 contract. However, a paragraph within the statement said: “The iPhone 3G will also be available on pay as you go at The Carphone Warehouse in time for the Christmas period.”
The retailer’s yet to confirm how much a PAYG 3G iPhone will set you back, but it has promised to publicise the details “closer to the time”.
Meanwhile, O2 has posted a message onto the PAYG iPhone section of its website stating that the “iPhone 3G for Pay & Go will be available later this year”.
CW's statement ties in with a story published by Register Hardware early in June reporting after reader was told by an O2 staffer not to expect the handset until Christmas.
O2’s yet to officially state how much the PAYG 3G iPhone will cost. But unconfirmed reports have already claimed that O2 will price it at about £300 for the 8GB model and £360 for the 16GB model. Others have said the price will be higher still.
US carrier AT&T has AT&T has already confirmed that a contract-free 8GB 3G iPhone will cost $599 (£301/€382) - exactly what the first version was priced at when it went on sale a year or so ago.
COMMENTS
Top Trumps?
While the iPhone doesn't win at feature-for-feature Top Trumps, it does happen to urinate upon the other available devices from a superior elevation for usability.
Seeing as we spend time using our phones instead of waving features at each other, this is a very important aspect to get right.
@Sam
HTC Touch Diamond is not an alternative to the iPhone, similar functionality is also not to be mistaken for "as good"
It's a quite different device and probably the best Windows Mobile unit out there, but the UI is as clunky as hell by comparison.... it tries hard but doesn't quite deliver in the same way the iPhone does. That said it's an excellent phone.....
/Scott who's just sold an HTC Touch Diamond for £380 to buy an iPhone (the iPhone is the expensive one here.... despite me ending up with change aswell as twice the memory etc)
O2 are money grabbing ....
Its pure greed ... oops I mean pure marketing! They are milking the early adopters (for iphone 2.0) by restricting access to cheap(ish) and unlockable iphones.
So as I don't need one but only wanted one and certainly not on O2 then I'm going to pass and use my Three 3G modem on an Acer Aspire One instead until O2 or Apple come to their senses and offer reasonable handset prices which can be unlocked (somehow anyhow!).
O2 are a good carrier for voice but their 3G network is apparently minimal ... tried their 2.5G/GPRS a few times but the handset sucked so gave up and just use it for voice/text. "Three" on the other hand are excellent and their 3G broadband just works for me and is CHEAP (although not unlimited but in reality you don't need that much data when mobile!) and so I would love to use an iphone on Three even if it means using a TurboSIM approach.
Most people here don't get it
The vast majority of people buying iPhones (or any phone, for that matter) couldn't care less about the technical details.
The UI and design sell the phone, and rightly so. That's what the competitors need to grasp. Don't stuff your phone full of TLA's, make it something punters actively want to get their hands on.
And making something of 'similar functionality' to the iPhone won't cut it either. Make something better.
Paris, because she knows the value of having a user-friendly front end.
@Craig
I've no idea how cheap the iPhone will be at Christmas but I suspect not that much (name me one piece of consumer electronic equipment which hasn't got cheaper over time?)
What will be interesting to see is what the market for second hand iPhones (2G or 3G) looks like in a year or so's time. I've had loads of cheap phones from Nokia or Motorola in the past, most of which have stopped working after 18 months or 2 years and even if they were still working were completely useless and worthless at that point, but an iPod of that age is still perfectly usable. I imagine an 18 month old iPhone which you can then jailbreak and stick any old SIM in would still have quite a reasonable resale value.
