But what's the monthly rental? 50quid? 40quid?

If it does happen, it'll be worth getting one as an iPod replacement. And maybe it'll be worth cracking so it'll be easier to sell in June.

one of those co-op affiliate marketing sites, quidco.com has £100 cashback for all O2 connections. I beleive that's a "special" offer until the 26th

Er... £156 + 12 months line rental @ £35 month= £576 ;)

That's if you can get a 12 month on 'promo', otherwise:

£156 + 18 months line rental @ £35 month = £786

That's much cheaper than an I-Touch... Man you are I-Stupid!

So which 'Labour' run public school did you attend...?

Honestly, no wonder this country is fuxored with displays of intelligence like this...

I'm expected to shell out another £269 for a 3G iPhone and chuck my current 2.5G iPhone that I paid £269 for in the bin?

I can't resell it - it's locked to my contract. Little chance of a trade in scheme, 2.5G is so last summer..

On second thoughts, they might take a trade in to keep unlocked 2.5G's off the streets...

It's a bit of both: sales targets not being met and, therefore, a lot of inventory to shift before his highness releases Mk. 2

You can bet that there have been some feverish negotiations with Cupertino about the handcuffs applies to sales: no massive subsidies to sell the toys and Apple getting a take of the revenue in exchange for the networks' exclusive rights to sell the bricks. Let's hope the dive in sales puts an end to Apple's attempt to control the market.

Oh, and fanboys - this is not a dig at the technology. I've got a Mac and I've always liked Nextstep. I've see the brick and had a play with it - excellent kit but not for me. Currently sticking with my E65 until the SE G700 and G900 arrive.

£35, £45 or 355 dpending on how many minutes/texts you want.

Still not worth it as an ipod replacement in my eyes because of the O2 contract price, still can't believe that there is anyone willing to pay for the handset plus a stupid amount each month. There's much better handsets and plans available and it would work out cheaper so you could still afford to buy a nice ipod with a decent amount of storage. Even with 100 quid off it is still overpriced tat in my eyes but I'm sure there will be people willing to take them up on the offer.

Seeing as you can get an additional £100 cashback with a new contract through sites like Quidco, £69 might make a tempting price.

Think I'd rather be greedy and have an even bigger capacity though.

...for 3G and a decent camera. How long before the powers that be come to their senses and offer the iPhone free on a contract? I would say the reality distortion field would be to be removed first :-)

A colleague of mine just bought one at full price with no intention of registering it, just "unlock and go". After he got back from the shop I read this article.

The point of this note being, we had spent some time discussing the rather slippery "contract to buy" he had to sign and whether you had any chance of taking your iPhone back if you hadn't taken out the line rental contract with O2.

It appears not, even if the b*stards drop the price by £100 half a day after you buy it.

The only possible solution we came up with was to artificially get a bad credit rating, try to register the contract, get denied, print "Bad credit" note out and take the phone back.

So, anyone know how to get a bad credit rating in an afternoon BUT have it be obviously a mistake so you can get it cleared off a while later. (other than hacking the data feeds to experian...)

As the title says, it is official, just not public. O2 has let CPW know about the price cut and they've internally publicised it, or so I have been informed by sources. I would have emailed the Register with this (and a copy of the internal memo) but considering that every time I have done similar in the past my emails go ignored (leaving another news site to get a scoop) I didn't bother this time.

I'm anonymous because I don't really want anyone to know who I am, and you lot at the Reg should be able to tell who I am anyway.

It'll work as an iPod touch, i.e. through WiFi.

> And maybe it'll be worth cracking so it'll be easier to sell in June.

If it's cracked, it'll then work as a phone on PayAsYouGo. Much cheaper than O2's standard iPhone rates.

But since O2 increased the minutes in Feb, the O2 iPhone deal's about as good as you can get (I tried looking around on the Highstreet one bored Saturday and found that Vodaphone would match the O2 minutes but cap the data at 120Mb/mo for £37.50). Voda's a better network than O2's though.

I'm not certain this'll work, but you could pretend it was a gift for a teenage friend. Most kids have gotten a bad credit rating at one point or another - ask a kid to ask friends - you're bound to find someone fairly quickly. Throw in a bottle of cheap cider and you should have your dodgy credit report.

just wondering what that better phone you mention is...

I bet its one of those where marketing have basically come down to engineering with a feature demand list, and noones taken 5 mins to wonder how it will all work together.

>Seeing as you can get an additional £100 cashback with a new contract through sites like Quidco

I know of far too many people who have been short changed by a lot of these cashback etc. type of dealer. Wouldnt go anywhere near em myself.

@Chad H

> just wondering what that better phone you mention is...

In my case, one which will run two essential apps properly, Memory Map and TomTom. But of course neither is available for the Jesus phone (or any other apps of worth come to think of it).

Anyway I thought the Iphoney's had run their course over this and were less defensive nowadays :)

Quidco isn't a mobile dealership offering cashback - they are a co-operative cashback scheme that passes referral commissions from online purchases onto its members. It's free to join and all they take in return for running the service is the first £5 you earn each year, so in this case it would basically be £95 for free for someone who hadn't used it before (or £100 for a member who has already earned over £5 of cashback this year) - all you need do is go to quidco.com to register and then click through their affiliate link to the O2 site before you buy.

Quidco is very good... another advocate here!

As for the cost of the tariff... i'd love to know where so many many people are getting such a great mobile tariff from a reputable place (by reputable i don't mean dial a phone advertising in the back of the Sun as i struggle to believe them...) i really don't think £35 a month is all that bad for what you get on the basic tariff... 600 minutes, 500 texts, unlimited data. I admit i'm somewhat out of the loop as i have a company phone, but based on what my other half pays £35 a month *really* doesn't seem all that bad to me.

Hey ho.... anyway, i'll watch this keenly, so long as v2.0 of the software gets hacked soon i'll have one in a flash, i'm not even that fussed about 3G if i'm honest.