Naquada

Just around 10am this morning (or rather just after) Apple announced the release of the iPhone in the UK, ending months of intense, practically insane speculation about who what where and how it would be provided, it was confirmed that O2 was given the exclusive UK rights.

O2 and Apple will launch the device in the UK on November 9th for £269 including VAT (this is the 8gig model). Price tariffs are already up on O2’s site (which also looks like it’s buckling under the strain of 3 million mac geeks hitting it!), but basically Unlimited data comes standard, with the voice plans at £35, £45 and £55, which include 200, 600 and 1200 minutes free talk time respectively. SMS’s are included as well at 200 SMS on the cheapest plan, but 500 messages for the other two.

It’s also worth keeping in mind is that the package includes free access to The Cloud, Europe’s leading WIFI network, apples have agreed the deal to have access to over 7,500 wifi hotspots throughout the uk. When the iPhone is out of range of hotspots, it will pick up data access on the Edge network, covering any holes the cloud doesn’t cover in the uk.

Fair usage policy seems a bit confusing; Steve Jobs this morning said 1,400 web pages a day would be the limit (but thats a fair amount, but how does that equate to googlemaps etc usage as well)

Carphone Warehouse is being pulled in to beef up retail presence for O2, with 1300 retail locations, each with an expert (which has got to be a first for carphone warehouse!!) on the iPhone, but for those of use who hate CPW, you can buy the iPhone through your local O2 retail store, online store or an apple store (again online or retail)

Having also spoken to O2 today.. existing customers hopefully should be able to just add the iPhone data plan to their existing tariffs and continue as normal, (though they do seem to be swamped this morning, asking you to hit the website on the welcome phone messages rather than the service guys), no mention of the inclusion of long weekends etc… The iPhone price plans should be available to existing customers on 1st of october (I assume meaning you can have the ability to pay for a whole month before having an iPhone!!)

For other networks, O2 have also assigned over 1000 staff to manage migrations from other providers to the O2 network.. for me migration should be fairly simple already having planned early and swapping to the O2 network at the end of last year..

sadly though the 8 gig storage is woefully small for becoming an iPod replacement.. But as a internet device is does come in strong.. Safari (web), Mail, Maps, Widgets, youtube, basically running Mac OSX means that the device is a nice mac PDA and phone application. Apple say the device is true web (i.e. real internet not PDA, WML, not mobile web content) it also seems to support WEB 2.0 type applications.. although how the inbuilt camera and Flickr will work.. time will tell…

All the ads and campaigns for the iPhone have been updated with UK voiceovers, but the general USA media has remained…

good or bad… keep in mind this is probably still going to be a first generation apple product (unless a second generation comes out from the US before november), and as a geek it would be handy to have one.. it would have been nice in Ireland last week to not have to run down to the internet cafe in ballylickey to check in for our flights etc..

I think I might be buying myself a birthday present this year…

Technorati Tags: Apple, iPhone, iphone tariffs, Mac, o2, OSX

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 7:38 am and is filed under Geeking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.