iPhone in the UK - Sums and play?

diamonds

3G i-phone still avail 8GB/16GB here

http://shop.o2.co.uk/promo/iphoneindex/Pay_Monthly/3G

£29.38 a month / 18 months

75 mins 125 texts

8GB £96.89

16GB £155.61

---

£34.26 a month / 18 months

600 mins 500 texts

8GB £96.89

16GB £155.61


So what dumbum is going to go for the £29.38 plan ??

Reeves

still cost a fortune .... no sign of the equivalent $99 pricing being adopted by O2 here in the near future.

Reeves

[£34.26 a month / 18 months

600 mins 500 texts

8GB £96.89

16GB £155.61]

after £35 a month they still have the cheek to ask you to pay for the unit as well when the upgraded model is out! :eek::eek::eek:

chriz1000

Reeves wrote: »

still cost a fortune .... no sign of the equivalent $99 pricing being adopted by O2 here in the near future.

What you have to remember is with AT&T the cheapest package is $75 + tax a month and is on a 24 month contract. For this price you get 450 mins 200 txts and unlimited internet. Plus they have a onetime activation fee and a few other hidden charges too like the Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee.
Mobile phones are one of the things we don’t seem to get too ripped off in Britain with, especially when compared to most other EU countries.

diamonds

^ yes that the one thing i credit 3 with, bringing competition

mrochester

Reeves wrote: »

still cost a fortune .... no sign of the equivalent $99 pricing being adopted by O2 here in the near future.

Our iPhone 3G is already cheaper than those $99, so there's no price drop in sight here.

Camp_Freddy

chriz1000 wrote: »

What you have to remember is with AT&T the cheapest package is $75 + tax a month and is on a 24 month contract. For this price you get 450 mins 200 txts and unlimited internet. Plus they have a onetime activation fee and a few other hidden charges too like the Regulatory Cost Recovery Fee.
Mobile phones are one of the things we don’t seem to get too ripped off in Britain with, especially when compared to most other EU countries.

That's fair enough, but I don't think you can compare two sets of things like phones and tariffs. This seems to me to be a ploy so that we end up spending roughly the same, when we don't have to. You compare handset prices with handset prices and tariffs with tariffs.

Last year, O2's handset pricing matched Apple's prices at $199/$299 on the cheapest tariff, only taking exchange rates and a few minor cost variables into consideration. This year, Apple keep the $199/$299 pricing structure, yet O2's prices are £175/£275? Today, Xe.com says that $199 is roughly £124 and $299 is roughly £186.

Had O2 priced the 32GB 3Gs at under £200, I would have been down the shop today upgrading. £275 is taking the urine something shocking though and 16GB is useless to me with a need of 23GB of music plus photos, videos and extra space for applications.

Reading elsewhere, a lot of people seem to be of the same opinion. Those look for the 32GB version are either downgrading to the 16GB version or considering a different phone/carrier.

chriz1000

Ofcourse you can compare the Handset and the Tariff costs, they are part of the same product. The only difference is you are paying a larger amount upfront if you go for a cheaper contract as less of the true price is incorporated in the phone tariff.
If you want the Apple 3GS 32GB totally for free you can do as long as you take on O2’s most expensive 24 month contract.
How you can contemplate that the tariff and the phone costs are unrelated I don’t know.

Camp_Freddy

chriz1000 wrote: »

Ofcourse you can compare the Handset and the Tariff costs, they are part of the same product. The only difference is you are paying a larger amount upfront if you go for a cheaper contract as less of the true price is incorporated in the phone tariff.
If you want the Apple 3GS 32GB totally for free you can do as long as you take on O2’s most expensive 24 month contract.
How you can contemplate that the tariff and the phone costs are unrelated I don’t know.

But they're not the same product, are they?

The handset is, yes. The handset you buy in UK, Germany etc. is the same you'd buy in the States. The network(s) (and thus the tariffs associated with them) are different in terms of scale, infrastructure, technology etc.

That's why you can do a direct comparison between the UK and the States with handset prices, but not handsets/tariffs as a complete package.

At the business end of things where most people would be looking to buy an iPhone (i.e. the £35 per month contract), O2 are charging roughly £50 more than the States for the 16GB Gs and £100 more for the 32GB Gs.

mooner76

new iphone coming out now - don't know if this will change things / make the older models cheaper

new model not that much better than the old one to be fair

still want one :rolleyes: