In June, O2 kind of announced that there would be a pay-as-you-go plan for the iPhone, and now they've finally set September 16 as its launch.

UK customers can buy an 8GB iPhone for £350, and a 16GB handset for £400. Both plans come with free web browsing for the first year. (After the first year, it's £10 per month for unlimited data.) Pricey. Less pricey than, say, Greece, but still pretty steep.

Tariffs will be based on the "Favourite Place" scheme. A £10 – £14 top-up gets you 500 minutes to any UK landline, £15 – £29 gets you 1000 minutes, and £30 or more gets you unlimited minutes. Texts are 10p each.

Taking your iPhone abroad could get spendy, though: downloading 1MB of data in any EU country will cost three quid -- six outside Europe -- though this is no different than other O2 plans.

O2 also said they will give customers 10 percent of the value of their top-ups over the last 18 months as call time worth up to £200.

[Via iPhonesTalk and Total Telecom.]

Thanks Ash and William for the heads-up!

The Daily Mail (of London) is citing "an industry source" that says Apple will release a £150 (≈$295) "iPhone nano" for O2 pay-as-you-go customers.

The 8GB iPhone 3G is currently on offer for £99 (≈$195), but requires a £30 (≈$59) per month service charge for 18 months.

In the article, the Daily Mail cites an "expert" who says the iPhone nano will include a touch wheel on the back of the handset so numbers can be "dialed" from behind. As much as I love my rotary-dial telephone, not just no, but heck no.

In fact, the seven-sentence, poorly-cited Mail story is little more than linkbait, which is why we're not linking directly to it. The newspaper, from what I understand, is something of a rag in the UK. TechCrunch UK noted that the Mail is going after pageviews, and the crowd that follows Apple rumors would be good for some hits. Shrewd, but crude.

Harry McCracken notes that he anticiaptes an iPhone nano at some point in the future, but this ain't it. All I want for Christmas is an iPhone that works on the Verizon network. I'll have a long wait, I reckon.

O2, the sole provider of the iPhone in the UK, sent out emails and text messages to its customers offering to send them the new 3G handset to arrive on Friday, the worldwide launch date.

Figuratively billions of people wrote us to say that the site was crushed under the load of people trying to purchase the iPhone 3G. Moreover, O2 very quickly sold out of the 16GB model, leaving only the 8GB version on offer. Now, O2's website says that all models of the iPhone 3G are "currently out of stock online."

Customers are encouraged to "come back on 10 July for more information." Instead, many are participating in an Apple Discussions thread about it. From the responses in the thread, it appears that a few people were actually able to complete the purchase process, but are waiting for a confirmation email.

In other O2 news, the company announced that Pay & Go plans for iPhone 3G will be available "later this year."

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

UK mobile provider O2 posted a page earlier today offering the iPhone 3G with a pay-as-you-go plan costing £300 (≈ $593) for the 8GB model, and £360 (≈ $711) for the 16GB model. The plan includes six months of WiFi and browsing. After the first six months, you can purchase browsing and WiFi access for £10 (≈ $20) monthly.

The offer is available to all new and upgrading customers who purchase an iPhone 3G with Pay & Go until December 31.

The page, however, was taken down moments later, replaced with a page that omitted pricing. Some of the other pages (Tariffs, for example) were not found on the server. Strange. The page says that more information "will be available shortly so come back in a few days."

Your conspiracy theories are always welcome in comments.

Thanks, Matt, Visa, and Lewis!