The iPhone was introduced to-day, how exciting! (other European carriers are to be announced throughout the week, i.e., German and French) The revolutionary iPhone will be released on the 9th of November in the UK.
It will retail for £269 (inc VAT), which is about $535 (the iPhone retails for $399 in the US). Also, there is an 18 months contract with O2, the official UK carrier—O2 has had to partner with the Carphone Warehouse because of its limited number of retail stores.
Voice plans range from £35, £45 and £55, which include 200, 600 and 1200 minutes, respectively. The cheapest plan includes 200 text messages and the other two 500 messages.
Also, they have an agreement with The Cloud allowing customers to to use its 7,500 hotspot-strong Wi-Fi network gratis. Otherwise, customers can roam on O2’s EDGE network. However, only 30% of the UK will have EDGE coverage by launch time!
Personally, the iPhone—as presented in the UK—is very unappealing, since there don’t seem to be any hotspot locations in Northern Ireland (PDF1). Also, there is no information about EDGE coverage though it’s highly unlikely that there would be any in Northern Ireland by the 9th of November.
Of course, this is not taking into consideration the cost of the iPhone, the 18 months contract and also the not so unlimited unlimited Internet (1,400 pages per day according to the ‘fair usage’ agreement). I think I’d be better off just buying the iPod Touch, when I go home, since it’s $100 cheaper there!
And it seems I am not the only person not impressed by to-day’s announcement (Engadget).
1 Link was originally http://support.thecloud.net/ics/support/DLRedirect.asp?fileID=54307 but is no longer available, 3 July 2023.