It was only ever available on O2 and cost £269 with a new contract.
https://www.apple.com/uk/pr/library...O2-as-Exclusive-Carrier-for-iPhone-in-UK.html
They did sell them off cheaper when the 3G was released but I thought they also were on contract.
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Apple Released the iPhone Eight Years Ago Today
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It was only ever available on O2 and cost £269 with a new contract.
https://www.apple.com/uk/pr/library...O2-as-Exclusive-Carrier-for-iPhone-in-UK.html
They did sell them off cheaper when the 3G was released but I thought they also were on contract.
I miss the days of iPhones being released in June 
The original iPhone was sold for $600 but no contract was actually required. I purchased two, but only activated one of them. It was however locked to AT&T. If you didn't activate it, you didnt have a contract. However without a jailbreak, you couldn't use it.
I miss the days of iPhones being released in June
Me too! I wish they would bring it back to WWDC. The end of year product update schedule is pretty jam packed
In my opinion that is the only reason that android exist now. If the iPhone was on Verizon early on most people would have chosen that over anything that Android put out.
Same price as on contract because the first generation iPhone wasn't subsidized.
I do remember that now but it wasn't officially sold off contract because you were supposed to sign up to a new contract when you activated it to use it.
The power of the original iPhone first hit me when I showed "pinch to zoom" and screen rotation on an instore demo model to a co-worker who was a totally non-tech guy... he went from zero-to-astounded (complete with jaw hitting the floor) in a split second.
eight years later (a long time for tech) and the storage for the base model has only doubled from 8GB to 16GB!
Wow so long ago...I remember watching The demo and immediately said I wanted one...Since then I have owned every single iPhone except the 6+
The 5C, which is still sold, has the original 8GB capacity. Apple should really switch to 32/64GB base/old model capacity.eight years later (a long time for tech) and the base model has only doubled 8GB to 16GB!
I had the iPhone on launch day, and it was exciting, but it was obvious how long it had to go before it was a truly great product. So many things were missing -- things other phones already had at the time. The lack of 3G made the mobile web almost unusably slow. No GPS receiver made maps less useful. Couldn't sync with Exchange. Super slow CPU.
Hm - I hadn't thought of it before, but I think you might be right. At the same time, I think making it exclusive to a single network was part of the agreement that made it so that the network had minimal branding on the device (just their name in the status bar.) Would it still be the iPhone if Apple had allowed the network to have any further control over the device? IE, if Verizon had been allowed to have their own exclusive app store?
Is it worth buying one of these? They go for over £1000 on ebay at this point, does anyone think they'll just keep rising?
I thought it was $799 or more when it was first released and then there was a $200 price drop 3 months later.
In the UK, O2 had the iPhone exclusively.
The way you got one was very different to what had been the norm up until then.
Traditionally, you went in, selected a phone, paid and walked out with your new phone and SIM all working.
With the iPhone, you paid your fee (£269 from memory) and then went home, hooked it up to iTunes and selected and signed up to an O2 tariff and then the phone was activated.
A friend of mine (also on O2) and I got the original iPhones when stores were clearing out for £159 in 2008, readying up for the release of the 3G.
We got them back, hooked them up to our PCs, activated and jailbroke them and stuck our existing O2 SIMs in them!
They were the days!