UK iPhone price, 3G, and 8GB

[Ashley Aitken]

Howdy All,

Firstly, the price of the UK iPhone was a bit of a shock (GPB 269  
which equates to about US$538) given the recent drop of the US  
iPhones from US$599 to US$399.  Steve mentioned that it includes VAT  
(17.5%) which makes it GPB 229 (exc. VAT) but that corresponds to US 
$458 which is still a premium over the US iPhone but nothing new for  
non-US Apple products.   I guess the details of the plan may also  
factor into the pricing (total cost of ownership for UK users).

Also interesting to read Steve's explanation of the reason for  
leaving out 3G in the UK (and US) iPhone.  Good to see they are  
thinking about these design decisions and going with the best  
solution (which isn't always the obvious solution).  I would be  
interested to hear of people with current 3G phones though, to hear  
if the battery usage is really that bad, and similarly from people  
who know if new low-power versions of the 3G chips are coming out  
next year.  Was Steve on the level or just spinning a story?

So I can probably live with the EDGE network (considering I don't  
think I will be using much mobile data anyway - at least not rich Web  
browsing) but the more I think about it the more I don't like the 8GB  
memory limit (which is a strange thing to say given most phones and  
PDAs have considerably less ;-).  I know how big my current Mail  
folders are on MacOSX (GBs) and wonder if that will eat up all of the  
iPhone memory.  I know one can turn off caching but without using the  
Internet having cached copies of emails is important.

So allowing about 1G for OS, a few GBs for Mail (say 3 over time),  
that only leaves 4GB for photos, music, and movies.  16GB would  
surely be a lot nicer ... and perhaps something to wait for.

Cheers,
Ashley.

--
Ashley Aitken
Perth, Western Australia
mrhatken at mac dot com
Skype Name: MrHatken (GMT + 8 Hours!)