3G iPhone Expected in June 167
MaineCoasts writes "The Times Online reports that European sellers of the iPhone are braced for 'significant losses' on unsold inventories of first-generation iPhones which must be cleared away for the new 3G versions expected in June. The three European distributors of the iPhone 'sold 330,000 units to the end of December, but industry sources say that European sales of the iPhone were forecast to be between 500,000 and 600,000.'"
Features i'd like before considering getting one (Score:3, Insightful)
3g
uncripled bluetooth so it pairs with a gps mouse
mms
copy/paste
camera with flash
flash support in browser
The ridiculous monthly fees (Score:1, Insightful)
Nerd as I am I don't have any friends, girls and don't do phone calls. So the "services" I get for the monthly fee are more or less completely useless. Just give me the gadget!
I've been thinking about getting one and unlock it but I'm to lazy to read how it's done, but I've got the impression it's easy and you can do it yourself nowadays? But I don't think they are sold in Sweden yet so I still have to buy it from some other place and then someone have probably already unlocked it and try to earn some cash on it.
Unlocked (Score:5, Insightful)
boo-hoo (Score:3, Insightful)
What they really say is: "Damn, we shoudn't have been THAT greedy." or "Hm.. maybe our pricing model was too over the top?"
Everybody buys them in the US (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The ridiculous monthly fees (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The ridiculous monthly fees (Score:5, Insightful)
Imports? (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, since iPhone unlocking is so easy now, I'd consider buying one if it worked out to be cheap.
Phones doesn't require monthly fees. (Score:5, Insightful)
Over here you can buy a card with credits on it which you spend if you make phone calls, so it's easy to have a cellular phone which doesn't cost anything / month if you don't use it. Or you can get a real cheap subscription with free calls within the network and eventually other networks and/or landlines to.
If I could get the iPhone for 3000 sek as a gadget and then only pay for the phone calls I would actually make I would probably have gotten one by now.
Re:Features i'd like before considering getting on (Score:3, Insightful)
Very few phones have camera's with flash
I disable flash most of the time now anyways,
I will take 3g and either uncrippled bluetooth for a GPS dongle, or my favorite a car adaptor dock, with a GPS receiver built in. That way GPS runs off my car battery not killing the iphones battery. Copy paste, is a software/interface issue. figure it out and release it as a patch apple.
Sources My Ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And one more.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In other news.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The ridiculous monthly fees (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like to take a moment to say: I told them so! (Score:3, Insightful)
Says who? O2/T-Mobile, or Apple... Apple is the one demanding a cut of the carriers' revenue. [businessweek.com] Hence, no carrier subsidized iPhones.
What I find interesting is.. oh wow, only 50 posts in the first 90 minutes? Where are the fanboys now? Seven months ago, when I predicted with prefect accuracy that Apple would fail, [slashdot.org] you couldn't get them to STFU. They were gaa gaa over the iPhad, and now look... They are nowhere to be found. Fair weather fanboys as always. Those fanboys aren't real Mac fans. They don't care if Apple is delivering great products. They buy Apple as a status symbol.
Apple has failed. Apple failed for reasons I outlined months... almost a year ago. I predicted it before the phone even launched. Apple is selling a locked product that is defective by design. Worse, Apple is spitting in the face of the Mac developers who are truly the most hardcore mac fans out there. That's bad business.
Re:The ridiculous monthly fees (Score:3, Insightful)
They're currently trying hard to hang on to their walled-garden and discourage customers from using the real Internet (blocking ports, recompressing images, blocking 'unsafe' sites - including YouTube).
Re:In other news.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I'd like to take a moment to say: I told them s (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope so, because I'm unlikely ever to use AT&T, and I travel overseas far too much not to swap SIMs. (I'm more likely to buy the Japan version of the iPhone than the US one, if push came to shove.)
Re:Unlocked (Score:1, Insightful)
This is a very valid complaint against Apple.
Re:Why I won't buy an iPhone anytime soon (Score:4, Insightful)
It's got a number of features that the iPhone doesn't... but i could say the UX is a toy compared to a regular mobile laptop, and that such a laptop is a toy compared to a desktop replacement, so really everyone should lug around a desktop replacement.
The iPhone easily slips into a pocket, and fills it's intended role well. I'm very happy to see the shock it's given the market. There are 4-5 iPhone-esq phones that should be available in the US in 2008, which will hopefully encourage more than incremental improvements from apple.
The UX is 5.9x3.75x1.5 inches and weighs 1.2 pounds. It's certainly tiny, but it's not something that would fit into most pockets. They're built different roles, and should be judged as such.
Re:Why I won't buy an iPhone anytime soon (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of sites are your browsing that require *Java* these days? If the bulk of your daily visits is to sites with scientific visualizations, I can buy this, but most of the web has been Java free since the applet craze of the late 90s passed.
At any rate, yes, if bulk of your web browsing requires Flash or Java, then, yes, the iPhone is certainly not how you should be doing it. There's a large enough chunk of the web that doesn't need it that the iPhone remains a great browsing tool for most people.
Until the iPhone can hold a candle to one of these [dynamism.com] running Xubuntu ( Ubuntu + Xfce ) , then I will just consider it a toy, with its one redeeming feature being multi-touch integrated with a great UI.
Also, it's a phone. And 1/3-1/2 the price.
Don't get me wrong -- I think the UX series are pretty cool, and I think they're also the right product for a lot of Slashdotters who don't like the iPhone because it's not the ultimate open palmtop computing environment they've always wanted.
However, it's not a phone. EVDO + SIP is close, but it's not really quite ready based on my tests anyway (and it's a TOS violation for some carriers).
The iPhone is a successful product for its target audience because it's a pretty good phone, plus an iPod, plus part of the small set of mobile phones that have web browsing experiences that don't suck. The extra computing stuff, closed as it may be, is reall icing on the cake.
Re:Unlocked (Score:4, Insightful)
You're quite right that the iPhone can be unlocked easily, but that's not the point. It shouldn't be limited to those with the technical savy to do so. Anyone should be able to buy an iPhone handset and use it on any network they please.
In the not so distant past, iPhones unlocked with the simple as pie hack you suggest were bricked by a subsequent Apple update. Non techies should not have to worry their unlocked iPhone may die in this way.
Whether we can hack our way around the roadblocks is irrelevant. We shouldn't have to play these games with devices we spent a lot of money on.
Re:I'd like to take a moment to say: I told them s (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Features i'd like before considering getting on (Score:3, Insightful)
Cell phone camera's are dumb. The only good reason they have to exist would be for a video phone that no one uses.