Vodafone iPhone 4 pricing confirmed

The iPhone 4 handset will cost £219 and there will be 18 and 24 month contracts. The 18 month contract will cost £30 per month with 75 minutes of calls, 250 text messages, and 1Gb of data. Although this works out at £10 more than the equivalent O2 contract with less calls and texts it does offer double the data. If you do go over the O2 500Mb limit just once then the Vodafone contract becomes cheaper.

Buying the iPhone on a 24 month contract does not change the handset price, but does drop the monthly charge to £25, making it cheaper than the O2 24 month iPhone 4 contract.

Click here to view the official UK Vodafone iPhone 4 pricing page.

iPhone 4 in short supply

With this in mind I was beginning to wonder if the Apple Stores will actually have any stock. I phoned round a few stores and managed to get the same reply fro all the stores I tried: “We will have stock, but it will be very limited. We will have to keep most of our stock for the people who have reserved their iPhones”.

The other wireless carriers have been a little quiet so we don’t really know what is happening there, indeed Vodafone, T-Mobile and Three have not declared pricing yet. No doubt things will become a little more clear next week.

It certainly seems to be leading up to the biggest Apple launch so far. So if you really must have the latest iPhone 4 then it looks as if choosing the right location may pay dividends. The best bet would probably be to try a smaller shop, but then again they will have less stock. It really will be a gamble if you haven’t pre-ordered.

Quote from the O2 site.

iPhone 4 will only be available for existing O2 customers at launch

iPhone stock will be extremely limited in the UK at launch and not everybody who wants one will be able to get one straight away. We want to make sure that our existing customers get priority so until at least the end of July, only existing O2 customers will be able to get an iPhone 4 from us.

Whether you’re an existing O2 mobile customer looking to upgrade, or one of our broadband customers looking to move your mobile to O2, our iPhone stock is reserved exclusively for you.

iPhone 4 price comparisons

Each time Apple releases a new iPhone I ask myself is buying it on contract the wise thing to do? If you are in the USA you have no choice it is AT&T signing your life away for 2 years: End Of!

It used to be like that in the UK too, but with the iPhone 3GS PAYG was introduced and that changed the game. Still on O2 and the iPhone was locked to the O2 network. But then O2 lost its monopoly and other carriers got in on the act. The result is that with the launch of the iPhone 4 we will have 4 carriers available and the iPhone will be available both on contract and SIM free.

So with all these options available what is the best way to own an iPhone 4? Read on to find out…

Well firstly you have to make a decision about how long you want to own it! That may sound a bit silly, but if you are like me you will be wanting the iPhone 5 (or whatever) in 12 months time. This means that I will have to suffer a penalty for early upgrade (if they will allow it) or as I did last year take the hit and have another contract until the old one expires.

I have costed out the options below for the full term of the contract on the assumption that you will have to pay them. Ownership for more than one year will change the costings, but even so the SIM free option would still be just £679 with no ties for 18 months.

As you can see it gets complicated and there are quite a few decisions to be made. So lets start looking at a comparison of Contract and PAYG iPhones. I make the assumption that you will select the lowest voice tariff, as nobody buys an iPhone to make voice calls…

The table below is based on the 16Gb iPhone 4:

T-Mobile and 3 are yet to declare, but from the looks of things if you want an iPhone 5 then getting an iPhone 4 SIM FREE is the way to go.

In my case things are slightly more complicated.

I still have 6 months to go on my current O2 contract. I can get an early upgrade, but that will cost me £100 and I will then still have to pay £209 for the new phone on an 18 month contract. Then I have to pay for the airtime £540 total cost for me to upgrade to iPhone 4 is £849.

So what if I let my existing contract continue: SIM Free iPhone 4 £499, £30 a month for 12 months (with unlimited data as I am not changing the contract) Total cost £859 and I get to keep unlimited data and can upgrade to iPhone 5 for no penalty…

Or alternatively I can let my existing contract run out then switch to PAYG. SIM Free iPhone 4 £499, £30 a month for 6 months £180, £10 for 6 months £60 Total cost £739 and no ties.

Conclusion:
If you are looking to get an iPhone 5 next year and you dont talk a lot on the phone then which ever way you look at it PAYG works out best. If you have an existing iPhone 3GS contract with 6 months or more to go then things get more marginal. I suspect that I will be opting for the SIM Free and letting my contract run out.

I had a text from O2 which I thought was telling me I had been unlocked. Foolishly I upgraded my iPhone from its YellowSn0w jailbreak/unlock to OS 3.1.2. Then I found that my phone had not been unlocked… I checked the text from O2 again and realised it was not the unlock confirmation…

A few days later I phoned O2 to check on the status of the unlock and was told it would happen within the 14 days which has a few days left to go. On the 29th December nothing had happened. So I tried phoning O2 again and after a long wait I was cut off.

Today I finally got a text telling me I was unlocked and to put a new sim in the iPhone and connect to iTunes. I duly complied and iTunes told me the phone was not unlocked.

As I am off to the USA for a month I could not afford to go through the process again. Having upgraded the OS I had also upgraded the baseband which prevented me from Jailbreaking using YellowSn0w again. After a quick check I found that the Blackra1n and BlackSn0w jailbreak/unlock actually recommended using the OS/Baseband I had upgraded to. So a quick download and in less than 5 minutes my iPhone was jailbroken and unlocked. I can now put my US SIM in it and not be clobbered for stupid data roaming charges.

Now looking back on the O2 problem it may well be my fault as I have switched my 3G and 3GS sims. However if that is the cause then I would have thought that O2 might have picked this up and warned me rather than letting me try to go through the unlock process twice and fail…

O2 – 2 strikes over 6 weeks. BlackRa1n – Home run in 5 minutes…

Tesco is to sell iphone

Hot off the press is news that Tesco have joined in on the iPhone war here in the UK. On the Tesco Direct website confirmation of their move has already been made. It is suggested they will do both the 3G and the 3GS but nothing as yet on pricings.

It is also to be noted that this is a joint partnership with O2 so we could speculate that the rates will stay the same but if tesco history of price slashing is anything to go by we may see them set a president for Orange and Vodaphone to follow.

Let the wars begin?

Should be in before Christmas.

Pay Monthly customers can unlock their iPhone, free of charge, at any point during their contract but they will need to pay the remainder of the contract (either monthly or in one lump-sum). Pay and Go customers will need to have had their iPhone for a year and will need to pay £15 for the privelege.

For more information and to apply to have your iPhone unlocked please go to O2′s Unlock my iPhone page.

Available on Orange from November 10th, the published prices are strikingly similar to the current O2 offering. Take a look at Orange’s prices here and feel free to compare them to O2′s here.

With any luck, Vodafone will be a little more daring in their prices when they launch in the new year and bring the price down on the iPhone 3G and 3GS – both of which are often regarded as over-priced devices!

You can register your interest at Vodafone’s iPhone website.

This is all very nice in theory. In practise, however, it is somewhat different…

My personal experience is not good – it simply won’t log in and returns a ‘Network Unavailable’ error. I could believe that a free app released by O2 would maybe cause some server overload but both ‘Mobile Allowance’ and ‘Mobile Minutes Tracker’ connected to the (same) server without any issues. I’m not the only one with problems either, if the AppStore reviews are anything to go by. One in every three of the reviews gives the same error as I received. Maybe it’s an OS3.1 issue, or maybe it’s because I have 2 account numbers with O2 (see previous comparative review) but both the other apps handle these fine.

Our recommendation? Don’t be so cheap and go grab Mobile Allowance for a mere 59p! IT – JUST – WORKS!!