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Fully SIM Unlocked iPhones
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Nope, not going to happen. There will be a charge, and a large one, for the phone itself regardless of how long the contract is for.
Calling code?
So I live in the UK and I want an iPhone so bad. If I bought one from America and unlocked it to the UK's O2 network, when dialing a number, would the numbers come up with the American code layout (e.g. 1-(888)-555-1212). Or would it come out with the UK code (e.g. (01254) 67948)?
So I live in the UK and I want an iPhone so bad. If I bought one from America and unlocked it to the UK's O2 network, when dialing a number, would the numbers come up with the American code layout (e.g. 1-(888)-555-1212). Or would it come out with the UK code (e.g. (01254) 67948)?
I'm in the UK, and no, it doesn't format numbers correctly. I doubt that that's in the software yet as the phone shouldn't be here yet. I'm sure when it actually comes out the updated software would support this.
So do you have an iPhone? If so, how did you unlock it without that software which has yet been unreleased... Thanks
Given the fact that I could walk in to a T-Mobile store and buy a T-Mobile phone, despite the fact that I don't have a T-Mobile account, there is no way that they can force you to extend your contract. If it is a policy, it is a stupid one, and one that is not very enforceable. Simply refusing to give them your account number (phone number) when you make the purchase, saying that the phone is a gift for someone else, etc., would quickly bypass this policy. With GSM phones, all you need is to buy the phone then install your SIM chip. So long as the phone is either unlocked or locked to the network you're on, then you can use any phone you like.
Yes I have a phone. I can't use it to make calls, but I have managed to be able to type numbers in and check the format.
omg... well someone who actually reads up . actually i can take advantage of exchange rate
My source says it will be released for free. The larger (GB) model will have a charge.
My view; the contract is for 2 years - thus getting money back. A large charge wouldn't work in England... £300 for a phone?? Then £35 a month? £35 a month is already more than the US customers pay.
Obviously that is not T-Mobile's policy. I think the point of his story was that the sales rep was not too bright or helpful.
"Thus getting money back" - that's not a complete sentence, explain what that is supposed to mean. The fact is Apple has a product that everyone wants, so why would they give it away for free? Are you telling me that you don't think ANYONE would pay $500 for the iPhone with a two year contract? Amazing that anyone would say such a silly thing after seeing it happen in the US.
A charge will work just fine - are you telling me that no one pays for a phone in England? What's the most expensive phone you can buy over there in a retail store? Over here the iPhone is about the most expensive phone you can buy except for the new Nokia. You can expect the iPhone to be on par with the top 80% of most expensive phones in your stores.
Patent law is not like that... An individual patent holder can pick and choose which alleged infringements it wants to pursue, and which it wants to ignore.
A trademark holder must be vigilant, and is obliged to pursue every alleged infringement as soon as he hears about it, or risk losing the trademark protection.
Copyright law is clear on the specific topic of using software circumvention to unlock cell phones - until at least the next time the LoC reviews its regulations, the practice is legal.
You're right - I should have said that £35 over two years is £420. On top of this, I can't see the iPhone being sold for more than £100.
I am sure there are many people, as in the USA, that have too much money, or have more money than sense. By no means am I saying that people that have the iPhone are stupid - but you won't see me paying £300 fr a phone, that I am expected to keep for two years whilst being tied to the UK for another two years.
Take the 'new nokia' you refer to... is this the N95? It comes free on nearly all plans in the UK. The UK is years ahead of the USA in terms of mobile phone usage. We don't pay to receive calls for one thing, and our handset range is second only to [South East] Asia for another.
I would rather get a free SE P1i than an iPhone. That way I can keep my £15 per month contract, for 12 more months. Not two years at £35. The market changes so much - I am sure this deal will be crippled two years down the line.
A charge will not work fine over here. If Apple tried this they'd limit themselves to a tiny niche market of poseurs. Most geeks wouldn't even touch it.
Sure, on low price plans people will pay for a decent handset. For example, if you only want a £10 per month deal, then the better phones aren't free. The most expensive handset I could find on Vodafone at this level was the Nokia 8600, their usual prestige, stainless steel encased offering, at £350. This is the only handset priced over £200!
At the higher price plan point, around £35 per month, all phones are free. Not most, but all!
2 minutes research on a UK site would have revealed this to you. Or you could have just accepted the word of the folks who actually live here. But no, you have to assume that everything's just like America with odd spelling, displaying your ignorance to the world.
No reason to get snippy, folks.
It is likely Apple will want some kind of charge for the iPhone, even if "tradition" in the UK/EU is that such charges are not assessed, and is probably one of the reasons Apple is working with "exclusive providers" in the UK/EU just as they did in the US. If Apple didn't expect to charge for the hardware, then they'd have just released it "in the wild" overseas and recovered the handset cost from the service providers themselves.
Now, it is certainly possible that the service providers will "eat" the cost of the handset themselves, especially at the higher monthly price points, to help push units. But exclusivity and "chicness" is a powerful financial motivator around the industrialized world so I tend to think nobody in the UK/EU would refuse to pay for the handset in addition to the service charge, especially if that handset charge is not as hefty as it is in the US.
It is likely Apple will want some kind of charge for the iPhone, even if "tradition" in the UK/EU is that such charges are not assessed, and is probably one of the reasons Apple is working with "exclusive providers" in the UK/EU just as they did in the US. If Apple didn't expect to charge for the hardware, then they'd have just released it "in the wild" overseas and recovered the handset cost from the service providers themselves.
Now, it is certainly possible that the service providers will "eat" the cost of the handset themselves, especially at the higher monthly price points, to help push units. But exclusivity and "chicness" is a powerful financial motivator around the industrialized world so I tend to think nobody in the UK/EU would refuse to pay for the handset in addition to the service charge, especially if that handset charge is not as hefty as it is in the US.
So you're saying that £420 for a $500 phone and two years of unlimited data and a basic phone plan seems reasonable?
How much is a typical unlimited data plan over there? Must be about $2 a month.
So you're saying that because you would never pay it, O2 won't charge it? Not great logic. I don't have an iPhone either, but I don't think that ATT should start charging everyone the same price I would pay to get the iPhone.
I'm going to need some corroboration to believe that an $800 phone comes free with a $35 plan over in the UK. If that's the case, who is ACTUALLY paying for phones? Is it all taxes/subsidies to the phone companies? Because there's no way they can make enough profit to cover an $800 phone on a basic data plan at that price.
In that case you'll have to educate me. I went to the Vodaphone website and selected an N95.
It comes up free, yes, but only if you get a £25 per month plan which after 6 months turns into a £50 per month plan. Oh, and in case you missed the fine print, here's what it says for that plan for data: you can visit the Vodafone live! home page and My Account for free. Up to £1 for 15MB in a day. £2 for every additional MB. More Info
So you pay £30 per month for data, and that ain't unlimited. That's 15 MB, with each additional MB costing you a staggering £2.
By my math, that gives you this:
£15 x 6 months +
£30 x 12 months +
£1 x 18 months
-----------------
£468 = $940
{{Edit - whoops - I made a mistake - I thought that plan was £15 for 6 months but its actually only 3, so add £45 to the final total to bring it to $1030}}
Since there's no way to calculate what it would cost you to ACTUALLY use the unlimited data, I'm going to just leave it to the imagination what an additional £2-4 per DAY would add up to if you went over 15 MB per day.
Hope you never try to download a large data file!
Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just a stupid American after all.
By the way - Vodaphone does offer a plan that lets you pay for the N95 up front largely - £270 which is about $550. Voice plans are then £10 per month at best and data, sadly, still is £1 for 15 MB and £2 per meg after that.
I'm in the UK, and I've bought lots of phones here in my life. The most expensive phones are NEVER sold free with anything but the most ridiculous contracts. Sure, if you pay £50 a month for your contract and sign up for 2 years then you *might* get a half-decent phone.
If you are in the UK and believe the iPhone is going to come free when you sign up for a £20/month contract then you are going to be sorely disappointed.
My prediction is that the iPhone will be sold in the UK at £299 and £199 for the 8 and 4GB models respectively.
If you are in the UK and believe the iPhone is going to come free when you sign up for a £20/month contract then you are going to be sorely disappointed.
My prediction is that the iPhone will be sold in the UK at £299 and £199 for the 8 and 4GB models respectively.
This (http://shop.o2.co.uk/phone/Nokia/N95) was the top result for an N95 on a google UK search. Its £199.99 on a £25/month deal, or FREE on a £30/month deal.
In short phones in the UK are predominately free once the tariff goes above £30ish. As yet I'm not entirely sure whether Apple will be allowing this to happen on the iPhone, but they will lose a lot of sales in the UK if they price it too highly, as all their competitors phones will be FREE from at least one network.
The market in this country is so different to the US. I have never paid for a phone on a pay-monthly contract in the six years I've been on my current deal on Vodafone. I have had 5 new phones in that time, as each time the 12 (now 18 months) contract is up, I simply renew the contract and get a brand new FREE phone. I'm quite happy to keep renweing the contract as I get a new phone every year, keep the same number, and stay with a company I've never had a major problem with.
Its the same with most people here in the UK, and for Apple to come in and set high premium on their handset would be foolish considering EVERY OTHER PHONE in the UK can be found for free on at least one network providing you pay a decent amount for your line rental each month.
If the iPhone is free in the UK (and it definitely won't be) then you will not be able to buy them at Apple Stores. I mean, what would be the scenario if you could. You walk into an Apple Store, pick up an iPhone, take it to the counter and the clerk says "oh that's free sir, just walk on out with it... oh, and please make sure to sign up for an O2 contract for it later will you? Good day".
If the iPhone is free in the UK (and it definitely won't be) then you will not be able to buy them at Apple Stores. I mean, what would be the scenario if you could. You walk into an Apple Store, pick up an iPhone, take it to the counter and the clerk says "oh that's free sir, just walk on out with it... oh, and please make sure to sign up for an O2 contract for it later will you? Good day".
Thats an interesting point actually - with activation happening at home through iTunes, this does suggest that something will have to paid prior to leaving the shop with it. Hadn't thought of that one.
But that plan comes with no data! If you go to checkout you see that you can bolt on 2 MB of data (I assume that means per day, not per month, because it really never says which) for £3 per month. Find me a plan that gives me unlimited data and I'll consider it a fair comparison.
4 MB costs you £5 per month. Over 18 months that extra data costs you $200. And 4 MB is not even close to how much many people will be using.
Apple does not hope to sell 20% of the phones out there, they hope to sell 1%. That 1% will gladly pay their $500 for the iPhone even if other phones do the same things. iPod has never been the best MP3 player on the market in terms of features, yet it somehow sold for a premium. This is the same thing that the iPhone will do.
Your whole argument regarding data pricing is spurious. The current Vodafone tariff is meaningless when applied to the iPhone, except that it identifies the price point at which UK consumers expect and get free handsets. The £35 iPhone tariff from O2 will include enough data to satisfy all but the heaviest downloaders and it is the price point of the tariff that sets the premium that people are prepared to pay.
A 4GB iPhone for free or an 8GB model for £100 on a £35 tariff dovetails perfectly with the UK pricing structure.
Why is it so hard for you to get your head round this? The mobile phone world is a different economic ecosystem over here. Can't you just accept that your arrogance has misled you and that now you can't admit that your analysis was flawed for fear of losing face?
Actually, you probably can't! Boy, are you going to be embarrassed when the official announcement is made!
Anyway, you would like me to admit I'm wrong? So you can be proud of being right?
You do realize, don't you, that we're arguing over whether the iPhone WILL BE given away for free with a £35 per month plan. I'm pretty sure that my "admitting" that I'm wrong won't change what will actually happen, you understand that, right? Your "proof" of your correctness does not force Apple or O2 to do anything, you realize that, right?
And why is an extra charge for data not important? You did say that the iPhone would be free with a £35 plan, not a £65 plan. In the US you can buy almost every phone without a data plan. Not the iPhone. So how does your proof that every phone in the UK is sold for free with a £35 plan "prove" that the iPhone will as well.
Think up for yourself a friendly wager. That might help ground you to the fact that "winning" this argument will not make you right, even if you prove it in your own head. Something that I will do or say if you are right about the future choices of Apple and O2, and something that you will do if I am right.
You might also tone down the personal junk. I'm not sitting here insulting your country or countrymen, grouping you into a class of citizen that I insinuate is inferior, or call arrogant or ignorant. Those are your very words. Think about it.