iPhone on O2 in the UK released soon.

[mildlyAmused]

Try to fix it yourself with parcel tape and chewing gum?

[DR]

Well depends if you go to the US a lot..

[rentagas]

O2 and apple are just greedy. the £35 18 month tarriff normally gives a £300-400 subsidy of the phone or costs £15-£17 with cash back or SIM only.
To pay full price for the phone AND full price for the tarriff is a rip off. Still since 02 has the highest tariffs for data of any of the UK providers (all the others charge £7.50 -£30) for unlimited data against £90 per month from 02. The offer of unlimited data subject to unspecified "fair use" seems good but at 56k it's going to take a lot of time to get any decent data throughput (I get 1.2Mbps from tmobile).
I have spent a great deal of money on ipods in the past but this one is not for me

[charleski]

40% of the monthly charge goes to Apple.

From Engadget:
10:24 - Q: What's the contract length, and does unlimited usage truly mean unlimited?

Matthew: "18 months contract. There is a limit: 1,400 internet pages per day would break the deal as part of fair usage agreement."

I estimate their idea of "fair usage" comes to less than 100MB/day, probably a lot less

[Funkstar]

Well it only has to be about 30-35MB a day for it to have a similar fair use policy to many domestic broadband accounts (1GB), so i can't see that being too much of a problem. Especially at EDGE speeds

And when you consider a bandwidth of 236.8 kbit/s (using 4 timeslots, according to Wikipedia) that reduces the problem even further. It's not clear what ping times would be like, but definitely 100ms+ (100ms is quoted as a reduced latency figure using multiple carriers, so no idea what you can expect in the real world).

All in all, it could be a painful browsing experience.

[Merlin4458]

If u buy from US, unlocked(which is illegal over here right), wot if u get a fault? You cant take it bk to bestbuy and say yeh its broke, but unlocked... :S

[Funkstar]

You cant take it bk to bestbuy and say yeh its broke, but unlocked... :S

I'd like to see you try taking it back to Best Buy anyway

Only available in the US in Apple stores or through AT&T

Un the UK they will only be sold directly through O2, the Apple stores and the Carphone Warehouse. Apparently that because Apple don't think O2 have enough of a retail presence.

[Funkstar]

Something else i've been thinking about.

The UK mobile market is use to the following pattern.

• High end phones usually have a subsidy on more normal tarrifs and are free on the expensive ones.
• The phones then get cheaper, and they are free on lower and lower tarrifs
• Eventually they are available in pay as you go deals
• Phone is disconinued

I wonder how the market will deal with a handset that doesn't follow that pattern?

[Dreaming]

Yea, much better if you want an o2 contract to get a n95 to sell it on ebay, they're going for more than the iphone (and are free on 12 month £35 contracts)

[DR]

If you want one buy one if you don't then don't

Apple have always replaced never added to their product line - I suspect when this one becomes EOL it will go and be replaced with another phone at that price point

[iamtheoneneo]

ipod touch it is then, rediculous deal - apple have got it wrong big time with this. end up paying so much on a stupid plan only for a revised version to come out in 6 months time.

[Dreaming]

If you want one buy one if you don't then don't

Apple have always replaced never added to their product line - I suspect when this one becomes EOL it will go and be replaced with another phone at that price point

What I'm saying, with the price, if you get an o2 contract with an n95, sell the n95 and buy an iphone, you'll probably make money on it rather than paying £200 odd. Makes sense

[charleski]

The one thing that makes me boggle is that I have yet to find a handheld product that would make me want to ditch my 4yr-old Palm T3. So much for progress.

[Artonox]

Don't care about the iphone that much. You can have all the best features all in a mobile phone but at the end of the day, you would want to use it as... a mobile phone.

For music, I'm sure you all have at least a music player (i'm guessing you all have more than 8gb players as well) so do you want to make your player obselete? All those shaking functions and without keypad feature are all just novelty imo. After 2 months of usage, I think people might be complaining about no stylus to text properly or phantom clicks due to poor hardware design etc.

[Stoo]

I was waiting for the announcement to see what the deal was.. stuff it tbh..

If the contract was better I might consider it, but for less minutes/less texts + unusable data tariff outside major cities, I'll be changing to t-mobile web n walk flext on a 12 month contract and get something like the N95 or new samsungs for free..

30% EDGE coverage tends to rule out most places, the chap in the O2 shop helpfully said: "but that does include wi-fi at 'Cloud' hotspots, and there are over 7500 cloud hotspot locations in the UK"..

I asked him how many were outside London, he looked a bit sheepish, then I asked him how many were in our town, and he said.. "One. Well, not yet, but it'll be here soon - all the O2 retail outlets are being turned into Cloud hotspots.."

Wonderful! No 3G, no EDGE to speak about, and the only compatible hotspot will be inside the O2 shop... That's bloody brilliant, where do I sign up?

[Dreaming]

Im fed up with phones sales people. Obviously 90% of them picked it up because they had no career direction, and don't really know anything about phones except 'ooh this one is a nice colour, it plays mp3s'. When you tell them what you want, they just say WHY you don't want that. You *really* want their more expensive contract because you get an inferior phone, but it looks nice.