OK, UK iPhone fans, O2 has released its iPhone 3G S pricing plans for monthly and Pay & Go customers. Depending on your plan, your 16GB or 32GB iPhone 3G S could be free (but you'll be paying a healthy monthly tab).

The full details for monthly and Pay & Go plans are on O2's site, but here's the rundown:

The 16GB iPhone 3G S will cost you anywhere from £184.23 (about $300US) to £0 on an 18-month contract. If you are willing to sign a 24-month contract, you'll pay either £87.11 (about $141US) for the 16GB iPhone 3G S or get it for free.

The 32GB iPhone 3G S will range between £274.23 (~$444US) and £96.89 (~$158US) for an 18-month contract and £175.19 (~$283) and £0 for a 24-month contract. Contract prices range between £29.38 (~$48US) and £73.41 (~$120US) for 18-month terms and £34.26 (~$55US) and £73.41 (~$120US) for 24-month terms. All plans include unlimited UK data and WiFi.

UK Pay & Go customers can get the 16GB iPhone 3G S for £440.40 (~$715) and the 32GB iPhone 3G S for £538.30 (~$874). If you purchase an iPhone 3G S with Pay & Go, you'll get a year of unlimited web and Wi-Fi for free.

As in the US, your upgrade options will depend on when your contract is up, though the O2 site says that you can usually upgrade during the last month of your term.

So UK readers, will you be getting an iPhone 3G S on June 19th? Let us know in the comments!

The BBC reported today that a TV ad for the iPhone has been banned in the UK by the government's advertising standards watchdog group for being misleading.

The Advertising Standards Authority received 17 complaints about the ad above, which showed web pages, the Maps application, and mail attachments loading in fractions of a second. The group said that the ad "led viewers to believe that the device actually operated at or near the speeds shown," the BBC story read.

The ASA said after reviewing the complaints, "Because we understood that it did not, we concluded the ad was likely to mislead."

Apple argued that the claims in the spot were "relative rather than absolute in nature," comparing the 3G speeds to the speeds of the first-generation iPhone. Nevertheless, the ad cannot be run on UK airwaves again in its current form.

One of the complainants was a man named Roger Browning, who said in a post at The Guardian that he complained about the advertisement as retribution for a bad customer support experience he had with O2.

Apple has run afoul of the ASA before, with a claim in August that the iPhone could view "the whole Internet." Since the iPhone doesn't support Flash and Java, the agency decided the ads were misleading, and yanked them off-air.

[Via MacDailyNews.]

This would be an interesting deal -- rumor has it (that crazy rumor always has something, doesn't it?) that Apple may start selling subsidized MacBooks in the UK, with O2 including the notebooks with their wireless plans. Quite a proposal -- the idea, of course, would be for O2 to pick up a subscription by offering a discount on the already (relatively) cheap $999 MacBook. This plan has been rumored for a long time with iPhones (and I still believe it'll happen eventually), but with mobile broadband subscriptions on the rise, O2 and other services might start giving kickbacks on notebooks, too.

Of course, whatever discount you saved early on would cost you in the end with the continued cost of the broadband subscription. Which makes this deal as unlikely for people to buy into it as it does for Apple to agree. But you never know -- analysts especially are leading the call for cheaper and cheaper MacBooks, and a subsidy might be just the thing (even if it isn't actually popular with consumers) to push the MacBook down to around the $800 price where stockholders want it to be.

Apple has started their Back to School promotion in the UK. It is similar to the Back to School promo that ran in the US, with the exception of people in the UK being able to get one of the new iPods that released at last week's iPod event.

This promotion is good on the purchase of any new Mac and iPod nano (or touch). Qualified purchasers are "student[s] at a higher education institution, a teacher or a lecturer." When you purchase your new Mac and an iPod nano, or iPod touch, Apple will give you up to £95 via a rebate check. This deal ends October 31, 2008.

You can visit Apple's UK website for more details. Do you plan on purchasing a new Mac in order to get a new iPod nano or touch? Which iPod would you choose? Be sure to take part in our poll!



Thanks, Dan!

Mobile Today, which tracks mobile trends in the UK, is reporting today that the 3G iPhone is selling very well. Specifically, retailers are averaging 27,000 phones sold per week.

That's good news for Apple, especially since the 3G launch went rather poorly in the UK. Specifically, activation issues were rampant and ongoing. Sound familiar, Americans?

Apple and O2 are hoping for continued strong sales during the holiday shopping quarter. Considering O2's a pay-as-you-go option, they just might get it.

[Via MacNN]

After several years of planning and waiting, the Highcross shopping center in Leicester (UK) is finally ready to go and with it the Highcross Apple Store.

Apple Store Highcross will open on Thursday, September 4th at 10:00 AM. The store is located at the Upper Mall. You can get full travel directions here.

As usual, we're asking any TUAW operatives who visit this weekend to send us stories and photos. Good luck, have fun and we're hoping you score a T-shirt!

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!

With 237 (and counting) almost universally glowing reviews, iFooty is one app that's scoring well on the UK iPhone App Store, riding high on the Top 25 Free apps list.

What it does it pretty simple -- aggregating football league data and news articles from a variety of BBC sources -- but it does it very well and with great style. As many of the user reviews [App Store link] point out, it's one of those apps that's really, genuinely, use-it-six-times-a-day useful.

I should point out, for the vast American majority of readers on this site, that when I say "football," I mean it in the UK sense of the word. I suspect you know it better as soccer. But over here it's football, or just footy, and iFooty's comprehensive coverage of the uppermost football leagues in England (Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two) and Scotland (Premier League) offers something for many millions of fans. And, better yet, it does so for free.

The official iFooty web site doesn't tell you much; you're better off going to the App Store for more info.

Look Dougal, we've done it!

Done what, Ted?

We're on iTunes, Dougal! In the UK store! Look at all the happy people waving at us! Wave back!

What people are you talking about, Ted?

The people out there with their Apple Macs.

It's not even raining, Ted.

Just shut up and wave, Dougal!

Are you imagining things again, Ted?

What do you mean, Dougal? When have I ever imagined things? I'm very rational, you know.

Well there was that time with that money...

It was just resting in my account, Dougal, I've told you before...

(Addendum, for the mystified: Father Ted was a hugely successful 1990s sitcom, broadcast by the UK's Channel 4, about three mad Catholic priests and their equally insane housekeeper, all living in peaceful chaos on a remote Irish island. If you've never heard of it before, just move on to the next TUAW post and pretend this one never happened. Any further questions will be answered by Father Jack: "That would be an ecumenical matter!")

Tate Liverpool, one of the Tate art galleries scattered around the UK (the two main galleries are in London, another is in St Ives) has opened an experimental online exhibition tour for iPhone and iPod Touch owners, which it says is the first of its kind in the country.

From now until the end of August, visitors to the Gustav Klimt exhibition will be able to browse the free guide content to their iPhones over the gallery's wifi network, or download it beforehand as a podcast. Spare iPod touches with the content pre-loaded will be available for hire for just $6 (£3).

According to an article about the experiment in Design Week magazine, the guide has been very popular and upped average visit times from 45 minutes to three hours.

If you want to try the tour for yourself without making the trip to Liverpool, you can enjoy it in full on the web.

Thanks to Jonathan for the tip.

Londoners like to know what's going on in the tunnels beneath their feet. The Tube is how every Londoner gets pretty much anywhere, and when bits of it are broken, it helps to know before you walk to the nearest Tube station.

The beauty of the Tube, (well, the central zones in particular) is that the lines are so intertwingled that it's often quite easy to route yourself around breakages or blockages. If the Northern Line's hosed, maybe the Piccadilly or Jubilee Lines might get you close enough to where you need to be. And if the Circle line's running slow (which is often is), you might be able to skip round the problem via one of the many other lines that bisect it.

Which might explain why TubeStatus (App Store link) by Malcolm Barclay is such a good idea.

Oddly, though, Malcolm had been hoping that it wouldn't appear in the App Store, while he sorted out some copyright issues with Transport for London, the body that manages not only London's transport network but also the data feeds about it that make apps like TubeStatus work. If we hear anything further on the status of TubeStatus, we'll let you know.

iPhone and iPod touch software 2.0.1 became available yesterday, and today several iPhone 3G owners are reporting problems.

Specifically, users who paid to have their 3G iPhones unlocked by Vodafone* are unable to re-connect to the service following the update, and instead receive a "0xE8000001" error message. How helpful. It seems to happen on both Windows and Mac OS X.

As you remember, Vodafone is selling the iPhone in 10 countries, and a quick look at Apple's Discussion Boards reveal this problem popping up in Spain, Italy, Sweden and more, which leads us to believe that it's Vodafone's issue.

We haven't come across a fix yet, but we'll keep you posted. In the meantime, let us know if you've been able to squash this bug.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

*Update: Some of our tipsters have had luck restoring the phone to reconnect to Vodafone, but not all. Also, a reader from Finland reports the same issue with his locked phone on the Sonera network, and a Belgian correspondent chimes in with the same problem on Mobistar (Orange); looks like the issue is more widespread than just Vodafone's customers.

Indie developer Rory Prior expects to release version 1.0 of his iKanji application this coming Thursday, he announced today.

iKanji is a tool for anyone learning Japanese, and combines meaning, reading and writing training and tests. Over 2,000 Kanji characters and 20,000 example words are included. This is an app for advanced learners who already have a grasp of the hiragana and katakana characters (which are covered in Rory's existing iKana app).

Until release, iKanji is still in beta and Rory is still accepting beta testers, with priority given to students. If you're interested, let him know sharpish. Pre-orders are also being taken, and they qualify for a 10% discount on the standard price of €20 (about $30).

Rory also makes photo gallery maker InstantGallery, and news reader NewsLife.

Apple will open a new store at 9 a.m. this coming Saturday, inside the Liverpool One shopping development. There will be the obligatory opening day fun and games, including T-shirts for the first 1,000 people through the door and sweepstakes prizes (MacBooks, iPods and the like). Liverpool One is still under construction; a full Grand Opening is expected in October.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

For our friends and neighbors in the UK (and elsewhere: see the update below), the MobileMe quagmire continues to fester. Infinite Loop is reporting that some users were erroneously charged to the tune of £121, and Apple is offering those users another free month of service.

Apparently, when someone tries to create a trial account in the UK, a 50p pre-authorization is placed on the user's credit card. (Not unlike buying fuel and paying with a credit card.) Unfortunately, instead of 50p, someone mashed the keypad, and users were billed £121 instead.

For debit card users, it's worse: the money is actually removed from your account, of course. Once the mistake is corrected it takes as much as a month for the funds to reappear.

Apple is, of course, refunding the charges for credit cards, and "working to have these holds removed earlier" for debit card users.

These users now have four months to try the service.

Update: According to some of our commenters, this affects users in Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, and Canada too. Wow.