Apple is going to sell a boat load of 3G iPhones

I'll be upgrading to a 3G iPhone from the 1st gen. I originally shunned the iPhone: price,lack of 3g and lack of applications were my reasons. Good reasons, I think. Then CPW and O2 dropped the price of the 8Gb to £169, and at that price, if I didn't sign a contract, it was worth a punt. So, I got one, unlocked it and put it on T-Mobile. Big mistake. The cheaper PAYG deal sounded good on paper, but the iPhone likes to use data and at GPRS speeds, it's not a happy camper. It can also go through the lack of a data plan - even capped at £1 per day at a rate of knots. I bought into an O2 contract @£45, the same sort of price I signed up to a 3 X-Series Gold account for many moons ago... I was pleased to learn that O2 would let me out of that contract, and I'd get a shiny new 16Gb model for £60. More space, 3g, same contract terms.. How can I say no?

I believe that at this price, and with the faster speed internet, this handset will fly off the shelves faster than Apple expected the first to.

It doesn't have a 5MPix camera, which some people are mad about.. but it has a darn good 2Mpix camera - better, in my comparisons, than a 5Mpix viewty. It lacks video recording.. but App store makes it a very real possibility to add it on, if you're desperate for the feature.

MMS should be addable from appstore too - it doesn't need to run in the background, just be able to parse the text message you get with URL and Password, and automatically fill them for you into Safari.
Sending MMS is only a matter of specially crafting some SMS messages, and I'm sure that has to be possible too (only leaving O2 then to enable the feature!)

There's debate as to whether writing GPS software is allowed or not. I think Apple's wording suggesting not is there for 2 reasons. 1) so they don't get sued by Americans for not being navigated correctly. 2) so that they can work with a particular reputable navigation software company so that they can make sure the software has iPhone look and feel and isn't just a straight port from Symbian or Windows Mobile. You can bet this is happening right now.

Copy and paste would be a really useful feature. Even if (in the meantime) they made certain text trigger actions when tapped, that'd be a huge step forward - urls, telephone numbers, addresses, emails, appointment times.. All of these are recognised in Leopard's email client, it would be logical to extend that capability to iPhone.

What Apple have shown is that even if you don't want (or can't get benefit from) the new 3G model, they're not leaving you out in the cold (as most [all?] other manufacturers do) you get to benefit from all the new software. This means two things:
1) It shows developers that their applications have a lifespan longer than a single model.
2) It shows customers that Apple intend to continue to support the older models.

Even the recently leaked PAYG deal seems good, particularly if you can place your old SIM into it, I can see some of the earliest adopters purchasing another phone outright, and staying in this contract.

The other thing people complain about is the keyboard. I have found that with practice you can almost touch type on the phone (not so easy when moving) but importantly, it requires no actual pressing of buttons, which with fingernails on small buttons is difficult... and once you get used to the automatic correction, it is more often a benefit than a hinderance.

There are still going to be people who like Symbian, Windows Mobile or Android, because they are used to that platform's quirks. I think that this generation of iPhone is going to win a lot of fans from those camps however.

It might sell well in the US, but its not clear in Japan it will. I would anticipate the $199 price point won't be matched here, and we'll get gouged more by the service contract. Plus SoftBank ain't the most reliable mobile phone service. With 3 name changes and three different owners in the last 6 years, you could hear the collective groans from prospective Japan iPhone owners when it was announced SB would be the sole Japan iPhone service.

Well yes, when you start adding up the monthly fees as a total, then the figures can indeed look high - but then, you could do the same thing with any mobile phone contract.

My current contract cost around £500 in monthly fees and handset costs - and we're only talking a fairly basic phone and talk+text package. Is that prohibitively expensive? Well, if you were to ask me for all that money upfront, then yes, it might be a big ask - but let me spread some of it over 18 months and it's a bit more manageable.

I would also point out that you get what you pay for - I doubt that the £9 ASDA phone can double as a mobile computer in the same way the iPhone can, nor will any PAYG service you sign up for include unlimited data /and/ WiFi usage.

I bet on it !

Yes, I LOVE the new iPhone 3G at $199. Yes, I expected AT&T's monthly data fee to go up. No, it's not enough for me to give up my Palm Centro on Sprint's SERO plan ($30 per month for 500 min. talk time, unlimited data & text messaging). Now, I'm not saying Palm's Centro can in any way compare to the iPhone -- no contest there -- however, it's the monthly price that I need to fit into my budget. Lots of people told me I'd regret giving up AT&T to move to Sprint six months ago, but I've actually had fewer dropped calls than on AT&T, and Sprints customer service has been good to me. I guess YMMV. I certainly intend to buy an iPhone someday -- I just don't want it on AT&T...

Assuming we can fit the data plan into our budget, my wife was talking about possibly getting me an iphone for my birthday.
Given that we're already on an AT&T family plan, we'd just be tacking the data plan on to my iphone. If I have to trim the budget elsewhere (probably from my mad-money) I might be willing to do it.

The dealbreaker will be whether or not I can keep my work discount. Lopping 15 percent off the cell bill each month has been wonderful, and I'd rather keep it that way, even if it means no iphone for the forseeable future.

I was hoping for a cheaper iPhone, I even stated that if it was under 200, I would get one. But now the plan is more expensive, leaving me to rethink it all. I just may end up with a regular cell phone even though I am a big time Apple fan, and have lusted after the iPhone since its introduction. The monthly rate is more important to my wallet than the initial price of the phone. If it isn't less than $50 monthly, with unlimitied text messages, then verizon here I come.

Don't get me wrong; I think this is a brilliant addition to the Help menu system, for user's looking for, you know, help. It just doesn't make any sense as some sort of power user tip or as part of a routine workflow.

Don't get me wrong; I think this is a brilliant addition to the Help menu system, for user's looking for, you know, help. It just doesn't make any sense as some sort of power user tip or as part of a routine workflow.

Let's assume that each potential new customer is already a cell phone user and has the $39.99 voice package. Are we to believe that the same person who is conscious enough to avoid a device that costs $599 is also oblivious enough to miss the $480 in data plan costs that they will incur over the year following their purchase?