Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

iPhone Likely Set to Launch in the UK Next Week

Posted by Zonk on Sat Sep 15, 2007 04:29 AM
from the leaving-the-brits-in-the-cold dept.
Businesses Communications Handhelds Toys Apple Hardware
An anonymous reader writes "According to CNet, the iPhone is likely to be launched in the UK next Tuesday. 'Yesterday we were invited to an Apple press conference to take place next Tuesday — and we think it's most likely going to be the UK iPhone launch. Apple, as always, is keeping tight-lipped but there are several clues that point in the iPhone's direction'. No word yet on a UK operator, pricing or whether or not it will have 3G."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: iPhone set to launch in the UK next week by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

iPhone Likely Set to Launch in the UK Next Week 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • I don't think no 3G is really a problem (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Realistic_Dragon (655151) on Saturday September 15 2007, @04:36AM (#20614529) Homepage
    You can get a 3G plan (with data card) for your laptop for 10gbp/month here which is a bit more convenient than hooking up a cell phone.

    I use my N95 as a modem (it's faster than my home DSL! 10gb/mo transfer for $25) as well as streaming BBC radio (the on demand service) over the internet direct to the phone. However most people are not geeks and don't use the software toys that come with the handset.

    However they will have problems if they think they can charge for ring tones here (especially 2gbp/4usd each, which would be 2* the iTunes price as per the US). Unlike the US devices are *much less* locked down in the UK - USB mass storage mode is enabled by default and a cable comes in the box etc. This is true even of many sub $100 cheap phones. While people aren't geeks this doesn't extend to copying on/off ring tones where suddenly the most undereducated yob seems to acquire the technical skills of an IT expert. It must be something to do with motivation.

    • You can get a 3G plan (with data card) for your laptop for 10gbp/month here which is a bit more convenient than hooking up a cell phone.
      Yes, what could be more convenient than carrying a laptop around in your pocket all day.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Yes, what could be more convenient than carrying a laptop around in your pocket all day.
        Typing on keys the size of pencil erasers?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Selling a device like the iPhone in a market like Europe without 3G support is destined to failure. 3G is a much bigger deal in the UK than in the US.

      • Selling a device like the iPhone in a market like Europe without 3G support is destined to failure. 3G is a much bigger deal in the UK than in the US.

        That's true from a consumer point-of-view. However, a 2G iPhone would also have problems with the network operators here. Even if it were able to provide a near-3G experience (*), they have invested heavily in 3G and would be unlikely to want to subsidise a phone that goes against this grain.

        The iPhone being a bit more expensive than its rivals may not be a major handicap in itself- after all, the iPod shows that people are willing to pay a bit extra for Apple's UI design and fashionability. However, the

    • Re:I don't think no 3G is really a problem (Score:4, Informative)

      by FyRE666 (263011) on Saturday September 15 2007, @03:40PM (#20618649) Homepage
      I think it's fair to say that if Apple don't add 3G, then the iPhone will be dead in the water over here in the UK. It's pretty poor in comparison to most current phones here (as the parent mentioned, we don't have too many restrictions on the phones here; due to more competition between companies I guess) It's got a pretty poor still camera, no video, no replacable battery, and if there's no way to move files - like games, ringtones etc - on and off it via USB/Bluetooth, then it's not going to have much of an audience beyond the wide eyed "oh shiny!" gumbies that seem to buy Apple kit.

  • Oh, Steve Jobs, your lock-in turns me off (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2007, @04:44AM (#20614553)
    In the middle of the night, in the middle of the night iPhone your name...

    Anyway, Mac OS X is going completely closed source - 10.4.9 [apple.com] was the last open sourced release of the base kernel/BSD toolset. InputManager plugins - i.e. the technology underlying just about every Safari plugin - have been disabled as a "security risk" in Leopard, even though any application installed as a regular executable is able to cause as much mischief. Apple's iPhone has no official SDK support, the iPods have disabled video out unless you're using an official Apple dock, and a hash in the music library on the player means 3rd party clients can't sync properly with the new iPods.

    As such, although the iPhone appeals to my desire for Apple's approach toward usability, its increasingly Microsoft-like lockin puts me off investing in any new Apple hardware or software. Come on, Apple, compete on merit, not on artificial restrictions!
    • The removal of Inputmanager plugins seems like a good idea. What little OS X malware there has been seems to feature them more often than not. But I'm with you that the closed nature of the iPhone stinks.
      • What little OS X malware there has been seems to feature them more often than not.

        What OS X malware are you talking about?

        There's been one OS X malware release in the wild, and that was a social engineering attack over AIM. The only protection against social engineering exploits is user education. You can't solve them through hardening the OS or applications (though you CAN avoid them by not training people to answer affirmatively to routine security dialogs by having as many of them as Microsoft does. Alas

    • Re:Oh, Steve Jobs, your lock-in turns me off (Score:4, Insightful)

      by arivanov (12034) on Saturday September 15 2007, @05:13AM (#20614649) Homepage
      Merit is in the eye of the beholder.

      The artificial restrictions are a definite merit as far as shareholder value and suitability for media from the perspective of the MAFIAA is concerned. Most MAFIAA members are making funny noises about going elsewhere with their wares. So, I would expect Apple to show itself as even more compliant and more determined to deliver obscene market models. They want the MAFIAA members back onboard and they do not care about the consumer in the slightest.

      • The artificial restrictions are a definite merit as far as shareholder value and suitability for media from the perspective of the MAFIAA is concerned.

        It's ironic that Apple should buy this unsubstantiated ranting by Big Media, though, considering that they are the single most successful example of doing something Big Media basically claimed couldn't be done for years: making a lot of money by selling legal downloads cheaply.

        Most MAFIAA members are making funny noises about going elsewhere with their wares.

        The MAFIAA have been making funny noises about a lot of things for a long time. But realistically, Apple should be their best friend right now, and they should be aggressively promoting similar services as a new distribution chan

    • Mac OS X is going completely closed source - 10.4.9 was the last open sourced release of the base kernel/BSD toolset

      That's what people were saying the last time Apple was slow getting an update out, during the Tiger release.

      If Apple doesn't support InputManager plugins, Unsanity or someone will hack them back in. Apple can't stop that because OS X is not an embedded platform, it's a general purpose operating system, based on an open systems platform, with powerful debugging tools. Unless they completely red

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by argent (18001)
          the OpenDarwin project has been shut down

          That was not Apple's decision, and they have continued releasing Darwin updates since then.

          macosforge has seen no posts since November 2006

          I know, and it's annoying that this seems to have been a PR response to the last time this came up... but on the other hand it may have been a matter of testing the waters. Remember, that means nothing from Apple *and* nothing from the rest of the open source community either. If they were testing to see if the FOSS community woul

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by yabos (719499)
      Hey dummy, we're only at 10.4.10, one point release past the latest kernel source. You don't even know how much the kernel changed during that time anyways. I think this is good that they keep the source one point behind because then the assholes who pirate OS X and run it on their PCs with a hacked kernel are always behind a true Mac.
      Apple has said it's going to keep releasing the source so STFU about stuff you don't know about.

  • UK pricing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr. Stavros (808432) on Saturday September 15 2007, @04:51AM (#20614577) Homepage

    No word yet on a UK pricing

    For a good first estimate, simply take the US price, and change the $ to a £ symbol.

    In the U.K., we're well accustomed to paying an awful lot more for tech goodies than do Americans. We'll complain a lot, but only to each other (or like me, on Slashdot), and nothing will get done about it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Indecision Bob (52021)
      Indeed. At the time of writing:

      iPod Touch
      8Gb - $299 (~= £150) - £199
      16Gb - $399 (~= £200) - £269

      The US iPhone is the same price as the 16gb iTouch, so I imagine that's the price it'll be over here.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by .netatemybaby (948280)

        Do those US prices include an equivalent of VAT?

        At the UK rate of 17.5% the difference in prices isn't quite as large:

        • 8Gb - $299 (~= £150 + 17.5% ~= £175) - £199
        • 16Gb - $399 (~= £200 + 17.5% ~= £235) - £269
          • This is something that always bugs me. People quote US prices without realising that they *don't include sales tax*; so they're never as cheap as they appear. Even if an American in a given state had to pay bugger all sales tax, you still can't use that as a reason to attack the company selling in Britain- they're not the ones who get the money, after all!

            Another justification for goods being *slightly* more expensive in the EU is that we have stronger consumer guarantee laws. In the US, Playstations and

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by arivanov (12034)
        Add VAT to 150 and you have 150*1.175=176.25
        Add further 10-15 pounds for compliance with the EU Electronic Waste disposal directive and you are more or less there. If it has radio (I do not know the spec) there is an extra levy for EU which will put it bang on the 199 mark.
        This is actually much better than the usual 1USD=1GBP price conversion practised by most US companies.
      • iPod US price does not include sales tax.

        iPod UK price surely includes 17.5% VAT.

        £150 + 17.5% = £176.25 (13% difference)
        £200 + 17.5% = £235.00 (11% difference)
        • As you've noted, VAT is 17.5%, all too often us Brits get charged 50% - 100% more for some items over US prices, with no valid excuse other than simply ripping us off.

          It's not going to change though because it also benefits the goverment far too much in that if the consumers are being ripped off, there's an even bigger amount for them to scrounge as tax to make up for all the shite they waste our already plentiful taxes on. Having worked for the goverment, I'm simply sickened by the billions of pounds that
  • Congratulations to the UK. What about us poor Canadians? I haven't even heard a rumor about when we might get our hands on one of these little gadgets.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonwil (467024)
      You could always buy one from the USA and unlock it with the new software unlock.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo (59147)
      There are lots of rumors about the iPhone in Canada. As far as I know Rogers has officially said it's coming, but not sure exactly when. Some rumors say before Christmas, some say before next spring.

      Rogers has said officially that you'll be required to buy a data plan for it. Rogers data plans are EXPENSIVE. There's a petition going around for Rogers to bring the iPhone data plan in line with the rest of North America.
  • [[whether or not it will have 3G]]

    (sarcasm)Yeah, like Apple would piss off all the americans by providing a 3G iPhone to UK user first!
    (/sarcasm)

    *Sigh*

    • Yeah, like Apple would piss off all the americans by providing a 3G iPhone to UK user first!
      What is the state of 3G in the US like anyway? From what I've heard, even 2G coverage is far from complete there (to be fair, this is partly due to the much larger area of coverage required per head of population).

      I'm just guessing, but unless 3G penetration is even *close* to 2G there, it sounds like most people would have a better experience with 2G anyway.
      • This is my first "more than a phone" cellphone, my previous one had no internet browser. Just a phone and a camera. And from what I've experienced on my iPhone with a service called "Orb" that allows me to stream music over the internet from my home PC, this "2.75G" is great. I'm not downloading torrents of the latest games with it, but I can stream music (and video) just fine.
    • I fear Apple's going to piss off European customers by charging the same amount of euros as dollars. 399 = $554. For that extra $155 I expect 3G to be part of the deal.
    • Most (all?) of the UK operators have a UMTS (3G) network with almost the same coverage as their GSM networks. I don't know of any with an EDGE network, although O2 was talking about deploying one a while back. Selling a phone in the UK with only GPRS (which the iPhone would be, since EDGE won't work anywhere) doesn't sound like it makes sense.

  • Operator (Score:4, Informative)

    by jaavaaguru (261551) on Saturday September 15 2007, @05:33AM (#20614717) Homepage
    Isn't it O2?

  • Not likely to be UMTS (Score:2, Informative)

    by Echemus (49002)
    According to this article [theregister.co.uk] on The Register o2 are busy upgrading their network to EDGE. The Register's suggestion that this is linked to the iPhone is a compelling one.
    • There is an alternative explanation. Based on personal observations O2 and TMob are nearly up to capacity on GPRS due to the recent crackberry explosion. If you are in the morning on a UK commuter train you get nearly 90% packet loss on the downlink on GPRS. Regardless of how much they hate RIM the crackberry is the biggest sources of data revenue by far outstripping any other data product. So having the network loaded to the point where it stops working is very bad news.

      AFAIK Crackberries have been doing E
      • O2 and TMob - that should be O2 and Vodafone and the last BB actually does 3G (mea culpa).
      • It seems strange that the UK networks (who have invested heavily in 3G) would spend lots upgrading 2G networks to EDGE just to support a single device, even one as popular as the Blackberry. Wouldn't it make more sense for them to get RIM to develop a 3G Blackberry, or to support a 3G-enabled rival?

        And the other obvious question is that if the 2G GPRS network is overloaded with Blackberry data, wouldn't it be better to "encourage" all other device makers to use 3G instead?

        (Does EDGE actually provide muc
        • Does EDGE actually provide much more capacity over standard GPRS anyway

          On average - you get 3-4 times more capacity with EDGE compared to GPRS. The investment to do this per MBit via an upgrade where applicable is only a fraction of the investment into deploying the same capacity via 3G. In addition to that if you are using dynamic channel allocation on the base station (and most operators do), deploying EDGE capacity for data frees some GSM capacity for voice.

          EDGE is no replacement for 3G, but not deploy

  • Next headline in 3 weeks (Score:5, Funny)

    by EveryNickIsTaken (1054794) on Saturday September 15 2007, @06:05AM (#20614839)
    Apple announces 200 GBP price drop!

  • Differences in the UK market (Score:5, Insightful)

    by abigsmurf (919188) on Saturday September 15 2007, @06:52AM (#20615023)
    I have the nagging feeling that Apple will try to clone what they did in the US in the UK ignoring the differences in the market. The UK is big on all the things the iphone can't do or does in a restrictive manner. People want to download ringtones, wallpaper and games. Picture and video messaging is something people expect from expensive phones as well, the UK is big on messaging in general. As far as I know the iphone doesn't support this kind of messaging and doesn't even notify if you've received one you can't view. Other major point is the price plan. People simply won't pay £399 and have a £30+ 18 month contract. You could get a prada phone AND an N95 for that price.
    • iPhone doesn't currently support picture-via-SMS messaging. Although I would like that feature, its lack doesn't seem to bother people all that much in the U.S. because SMS picture service *still* doesn't work reliably between different telcos. The messages sometimes go missing no matter what the handset is on either end. iPhone users send plenty of pictures via email which works no matter who you send it to and no matter if you are on same or different telcos. Presumably this feature could be added to

  • Good luck with that (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    hurray , i can now buy a phone that has less features (no SMS, no MMS, no video calls) than my old Nokia did in 2001


    • hurray , i can now buy a phone that has less features (no SMS, no MMS, no video calls) than my old Nokia did in 2001

      Can someone verify this? (I'm feeling really lazy today)
      If the iPhone doesn't text, it is dead in the UK. DEAD. Everyone texts here.
      I can't see that Apple would make that big a mistake here, so even if the US one doesn't, I would expect the UK one to.

      So if someone does know, please enlighten me.
      • From wikipedia "Text messages are presented chronologically in a mailbox format similar to Mail, which places all text from recipients together with replies. Text messages are displayed in speech bubbles (similar to iChat) under each recipient's name." It seems capable, though I've seen a comment that it's incapable of sending a message to multiple recipients, which is a bit shit. Also, speed texting on an iphone, http://youtube.com/watch?v=dU33DfFAV9w&v2 [youtube.com]

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by iJed (594606)

      hurray , i can now buy a phone that has less features (no SMS, no MMS, no video calls) than my old Nokia did in 2001

      The iPhone does support SMS (and always has.) It also has real email (which is far more useful than MMS has ever been), a real web browser, a high-quality video player and arguably the best music player ever on a phone. It has also become very easy to install third party software [fiveforty.net] on and has a rapidly growing community of developers. Someone has even managed to implement video chat [macdaddyworld.com]!

      The iPhone

      • Okay it's thicker, but it's also smaller, and although it has a smaller screen my SE K800i has all of what you list plus 3G, MMS, video calls, a 3Mp camera, a video camera, decent bluetooth with PAN, and a media player which will play iTunes+ tunes and H264 video. Okay it doesn't look as flash as the iPhone (and yes we analysed one at work which we'd bought in LA) but it was *free*.

        The primary use for my phone, apart from being a phone and occasionally media player, is providing my laptop a network when I'
  • I expect the UK iPhone will be as horribly overpriced as the US one - expensive (and blah) handset, expensive tariff and one specific vendor. I wonder how that will work out when you can get virtually any phone for free on most tariffs in the UK. You could save so much that you could probably buy an iPod Touch and still have a pile of money left over.
  • Don't get me wrong, am an avid Apple fan when it comes to some of their products, but the lack of flexibility with the iPhone is causing me concern. I have played with an LG Prada, which while lacking the raw power of an iPhone or Nokia N95, for example, does more than people think and has a great GUI. And from the video on this CNET Review [cnet.co.uk] it looks like their new 3G equipped Viewty now fixes the flaws in the Prada and does even more, such as the cool slo mo video and a haptic touch screen. The iPhone exist
      • Agreed. But, people have a choice. Apple are not forcing anyone to buy one, and if they upset people, they will see returns and lawsuits and change their ways. Believe it or not, the only thing I like about the iPhone is the ease of use and photo viewing as it syncs with iPhoto. But then, with the Viewty, you can take the photos on the phone and keep them there, while with the iPhone you take photos with your posh camera, upload them to your Mac or PC and then have to sync them with the iPhone! Confusing re

  • I am waiting for the Belgium release (Score:3)

    by houghi (78078) on Saturday September 15 2007, @11:55AM (#20617011) Homepage
    In Belgium locking phones is illegal. That would mean that there won't be a single operator who can get an exclusive deal. That would mean everybody would be able to buy it and use it anywhere in the world.

    Also it means that the price will be the price for the phone and only for the phone.
    • I'm so sick of that lower-case 'i' in front of every fucking product name I see. It's enough to drive someone to iMurder.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.