Orange to offer unlocked iPhones for €749 Orange France will sell Apple's iPhone to consumers who don't want to be tied to the carrier, provided they cough up €749 for the handset - €250 less than T-Mobile Germany's unlocked iPhones cost. Orange said it will offer four iPhone-oriented price plans ranging from €49 to €119 per month. Data usage is capped at 500MB a …
Orange Frc and T-Mobile germany are clearly making a mockery of the EU law about not locking people in.
Other than going for the unlock option, I wish they were forced into asking for the whole 18mth contract fee up front - then we'll see how the price would miraculously drop to consumer friendly sums.
@DrXym - the iPod Touch is actually a quarter to one fifth the cost of a german unlocked iPhone, which reveals everything about the true cost of the iPhone and how much they're bumping on top.
Ridiculous money grabbing arses.
.
I'm sticking with my WM6 upgraded T-Mob MDA Vario II and hacked iPod Touch (incl google maps + everything else except the phone) combo! They both add up to about a half the price of one iPhone.
Oh and I can send an SMS to multiple people atst!
I really think they have us all confused with people who actually care about this sort of thing. The IPhone is a gimmick for creative types who or those who need to show off due to some mental flaw.
Me - I'll stick to my N95 - it does what I want at a fraction of the monthly cost || Initial fee.
>>"those who need to show off due to some mental flaw"
A phrase that seems to some up all the N95 owners of this parish, almost all of whom can seem to be able to do nothing but tell the rest of us how capacious, feature-packed their phone is.
Heysoos, these Nokia fanboys could teach the Apple fanboys a thing or two...
Cards on table: still using a knocked about Palm Treo 650. Does the job. Enough said.
and you cant even send texts to more than one recipient at once. Sod all the other features, it cant even do bog standard basic stuff.
I agrree with thecomments above; cheap contract, free phone and iPod touch for the cheaper than a N800 web browsing device with better media capability. Maybe an industrious thrid party developer will do what apple forgot to do in february and make it do the stuff that every other mobile phone on the market can do, might be worth it's price tag and crap contracts then... but i doubt it.
"Orange said that actually unlocking the thing will cost a further €100.... Orange just told us that the €100 fee only applies for the first six months of iPhone ownership."
What? Surely unlocknig is a one-off cost anyway? You don't have to unlock it once a month or once per SIM do you?
I had an iPod touch. It was fantastic. However, none of the internet features work when you step out of range if a wifi hotspot. And they aren't all that common outside of city centres. I was left with a great iPod but none of the extra functionality was useable. So I got an iPhone, where for a little extra money I can use most of the features in most places (O2's not very good coverage notwithstanding) and I don't have to worry about my mobile scratching my iPod in my pocket. I'm a very happy bunny.
Look what happened in the US, the iPhone was reduced in price by $100. The SIM free version will get cheaper as will the contract phone. In the UK, O2 and CPW will put pressure on Apple to reduce prices as sales are not as good as expected - see www.mobiletoday.co.uk for the end of the week news round-up. The iPhone, with Apple's current business model, is just over priced and most people know that. It can't be a mass market product at the moment.
I ended up watching a bit of Watchdog, purely because when I turned on the TV I saw them saying "are Carphone Warehouse lying about the iPhone?". Unfortunately, I wasn't blessed by an article exposing how bad the phone is and how overpriced it is, or telling us that Carphone Warehouse were failing to tell customers that they could probably buy it for less in a few months anyway. It was about insurance, and once again they drew attention to "people queuing for the iPhone!" and called it the "must have gadget this Christmas". Reminded me why I don't watch that terrible programme.
On another note, who uses their phone for P2P? Surely it's not fast enough or battery saving enough to be feasible? And doing it with the shit net that the iPhone has???
I have got an N95, and do you know how many of its features I ACTUALLY use? Probably about 3, aside from standard phone calls and text messages. It was a huge mistake going for the most feature packed phone instead of sticking with the make I've always liked (Sony Ericsson).
From what I can gather (from the people I know who have "similar" phones) very few people will actually use the "additional" features of an N95 or an i-phone, so bragging about them is just pointless willy waving. And yes I am aware that is ironic considering I own one, just blame it on a moment of madness.
If you don't like it, don't buy it. FFS!!!!!!!!!!
If someone else wants to spend their money let them, it's theirs, not yours, they probably don't like your 3 Piece Suite and think you paid over the odds for it, but it's yours, not theirs.
Get it?
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