You could buy an iPod Touch for less half the price of an unlocked iPhone. Then go and get a free phone on virtually any price place and spend the change in on a holiday.

It seems the iPhone (locked or unlocked) was put on this earth to identify people with more money than sense.

Are they truly serious? lol

Go get an N95.

even use it as a modem , can't access newsgroups , can't do voip and can't do a plethora of other things ... can you at least call with it or are you supposed to just stare at it ?

Orange Frc and T-Mobile germany are clearly making a mockery of the EU law about not locking people in.

Other than going for the unlock option, I wish they were forced into asking for the whole 18mth contract fee up front - then we'll see how the price would miraculously drop to consumer friendly sums.

@DrXym - the iPod Touch is actually a quarter to one fifth the cost of a german unlocked iPhone, which reveals everything about the true cost of the iPhone and how much they're bumping on top.

Ridiculous money grabbing arses.

.

I'm sticking with my WM6 upgraded T-Mob MDA Vario II and hacked iPod Touch (incl google maps + everything else except the phone) combo! They both add up to about a half the price of one iPhone.

Oh and I can send an SMS to multiple people atst!

I really think they have us all confused with people who actually care about this sort of thing. The IPhone is a gimmick for creative types who or those who need to show off due to some mental flaw.

Me - I'll stick to my N95 - it does what I want at a fraction of the monthly cost || Initial fee.

Because of course it's exactly the same....except

Smaller Screen.

< 5 hours battery life.

Crap ok..ok web browsing.

poor keyboard

It does of course, have gps and 3g, IF that's what you want.

Got both, prefer the iphone.

There's nothing really bizarre about banning newssgroups -- it's probably the same reason they're banning P2P: they want to cut down on the large bandwidth hogs (read: pirated content).

>>"those who need to show off due to some mental flaw"

A phrase that seems to some up all the N95 owners of this parish, almost all of whom can seem to be able to do nothing but tell the rest of us how capacious, feature-packed their phone is.

Heysoos, these Nokia fanboys could teach the Apple fanboys a thing or two...

Cards on table: still using a knocked about Palm Treo 650. Does the job. Enough said.

how popular the jesus phone is in Europe, so stop reporting on it. Honestly, somewhere someone everyday feels the need to do something to put possibly the worst phone ever made into the headlines and inflate jobs and the fanboi's egos even more. Stop doing it!

and you cant even send texts to more than one recipient at once. Sod all the other features, it cant even do bog standard basic stuff.

I agrree with thecomments above; cheap contract, free phone and iPod touch for the cheaper than a N800 web browsing device with better media capability. Maybe an industrious thrid party developer will do what apple forgot to do in february and make it do the stuff that every other mobile phone on the market can do, might be worth it's price tag and crap contracts then... but i doubt it.

"Orange said that actually unlocking the thing will cost a further €100.... Orange just told us that the €100 fee only applies for the first six months of iPhone ownership."

What? Surely unlocknig is a one-off cost anyway? You don't have to unlock it once a month or once per SIM do you?

I had an iPod touch. It was fantastic. However, none of the internet features work when you step out of range if a wifi hotspot. And they aren't all that common outside of city centres. I was left with a great iPod but none of the extra functionality was useable. So I got an iPhone, where for a little extra money I can use most of the features in most places (O2's not very good coverage notwithstanding) and I don't have to worry about my mobile scratching my iPod in my pocket. I'm a very happy bunny.

Shouldn't be an issue, given that the iPhone, er, doesn't have a newsgroup client on it...

We all know S. Ballmer's famous ad infinitum repeated 'developers'.

Here we read that Orange is calling on another category of people; people who have so much too much money in their pockets that they can barely walk.

'can you at least call with it or are you supposed to just stare at it ?'

Dont be foolish, you dont stare, you worship ;)

And for the money quoted in the article, in return, I would expect it to cure warts, std's, pick winning lottery numbers etc.

Look what happened in the US, the iPhone was reduced in price by $100. The SIM free version will get cheaper as will the contract phone. In the UK, O2 and CPW will put pressure on Apple to reduce prices as sales are not as good as expected - see www.mobiletoday.co.uk for the end of the week news round-up. The iPhone, with Apple's current business model, is just over priced and most people know that. It can't be a mass market product at the moment.

I ended up watching a bit of Watchdog, purely because when I turned on the TV I saw them saying "are Carphone Warehouse lying about the iPhone?". Unfortunately, I wasn't blessed by an article exposing how bad the phone is and how overpriced it is, or telling us that Carphone Warehouse were failing to tell customers that they could probably buy it for less in a few months anyway. It was about insurance, and once again they drew attention to "people queuing for the iPhone!" and called it the "must have gadget this Christmas". Reminded me why I don't watch that terrible programme.

On another note, who uses their phone for P2P? Surely it's not fast enough or battery saving enough to be feasible? And doing it with the shit net that the iPhone has???

I have got an N95, and do you know how many of its features I ACTUALLY use? Probably about 3, aside from standard phone calls and text messages. It was a huge mistake going for the most feature packed phone instead of sticking with the make I've always liked (Sony Ericsson).

From what I can gather (from the people I know who have "similar" phones) very few people will actually use the "additional" features of an N95 or an i-phone, so bragging about them is just pointless willy waving. And yes I am aware that is ironic considering I own one, just blame it on a moment of madness.

I use a Nokia 8910, seeing as everyone is boring me to death with tales of their phones. Battery lasts for 2 weeks, call quality is superb and it's made out of titanium.

It's better than a Nokia N95, and it cost over £600 when it was launched.

What does any of this mean? I have no idea.

If you don't like it, don't buy it. FFS!!!!!!!!!!

If someone else wants to spend their money let them, it's theirs, not yours, they probably don't like your 3 Piece Suite and think you paid over the odds for it, but it's yours, not theirs.

Get it?

iPhone + contract on O2 = nearly 900 quid TCO

Virgin SIM (+ cash back) + (unlocked) iPAQ 514 = 160 quid TCO

Errr, I'll stick with a Smartphone. PS It has WiFi as well... Ok, you don't get free WiFi access on the Cloud, but really, who reads their email in the pub?