The original UK reseller of the Apple handsets has made available the latest iPhone 4 on prepay, at the starting price of £495 with O2.
The 16GB version of the new Apple mobile is just £5 shy of £500, where the 32GB iPhone 4 model comes in a £595. Apple’s own online retail store has the 16GB iPhone 4 at £499, with the 32GB version selling for £599 - where there’s not a great deal of difference between the costs.
O2’s tariff backing up the Apple phone has 300 text message and 500MB data allowance a month, if the phone is topped up with £10-£14. To obtain 500 text messages, the top up fee is £15-£29 and the unlimited message deal is priced at £30 a month.
This deal isn’t as attractive as Vodafone’s offer last week, where the purchase price of the phone includes a data allowance of 250GB a month, along with 1GB of free BT Openzone WIFI access.
O2 reportedly lost the exclusivity to selling Apple iPhone handsets in the UK when they opted to be the sole network provider to the Palm Pre mobiles, where the popularity of that series of phones has yet to make the impact O2 had once perhaps hoped.
Website Jailbreakme.com offers a simple way of jail breaking an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad by just visiting the website and letting them do all the hard work - so that non-iTunes App Store applications can be run from the device.
The website itself holds all the necessary tools for the automatic jail breaking of an Apple product, where the visitor just agrees to the process being run and in no time at all the device is unlocked.
It’s been reported the jail breaking process does not free the iPhone from being locked to the mobile phone network it is subscribed to, instead it’s only freed up to access applications from other sites besides the Apple App Store.
The browser based software takes control of the phone running any iOS below the latest 4.1 developers build, and then simply unlocks the phone in which the video below from the website 9to5mac.com clearly highlights.
Jail breaking of an iPhone or iPod Touch allows applications to be downloaded and used from resources such as Cydia - which holds software that wouldn’t make it past Apple’s reportedly strict qualifying process as to what the app can or cannot do.
However, Apple still regards jail breaking of a device as voiding the warranty no matter what the Government says in whatever country the site is being used within - the good news is, the process does appear to be reversible.
Mobile phone network Vodafone has brought the iPhone 4 on to a pay as you go deal, where the cost of the 16GB model is £480 with some incentives included to attract potential buyers to purchase the phone from them - rather than SIM free and unlocked from Apple.
The latest Apple 16GB iPhone mobile phone is just £20 shy of £500 with Vodafone, where the 32GB version comes in at £570 and the network is even selling the older 8GB 3GS at £385. In stark contrast, Apple’s own store has the 16GB iPhone 4 at £499, the 32GB version at £599 and the 8GB 3GS is retailing at the largest margin of £419.
Vodafones’ handsets are of course locked to that very network, where they are hoping to win customers over by the tariff bundle they are now included with every iPhone pay as you go bought.
Included as part and parcel of the purchase price is a data allowance of 250GB a month, along with 1GB of free BT Openzone WIFI access a month. Calls and text messages are on their Simplicity tariff, with a charge of 20p a minute and 10p for a text message.
Whether this offer will entice new iPhone 4 buyers time will only tell, although the data allowance does appear to be a good deal for light users where the heavier data users might struggle at keeping within the limits set out by Vodafone.
Mobile phone networks T-Mobile and Three both announced over Twitter today they will be retailing the Apple iPhone 4, as of Friday this week.
Unveiled in a very low key way, whilst also showing the two networks have embraced social media was the unusual way they publicised they will be stocking the new iPhone, both in their shops and online too.
T-Mobile and Three have previously never sold Apple handsets directly, nor have they officially supported them on their own networks.
It has been reported their staff have undertaken sales training this week in preparation of the stores early opening hours on Friday morning, solely for the expectant rush of sales over the counter and also for those who have pre-registered and ordered the mobile phone in advance.
T-Mobile announced and confirmed the arrival of the new Apple mobile in the twitter message ” #iPhone 4 launching on T-Mobile on Friday July 30th. Official pricing announcement expected imminently “.
Mobile phone network Three was more subtle, by responding to a Tweet from a customer with the message ” iPhone 4 will be on sale in our stores from Friday!! ” .
T-Mobiles prices for the iPhone 4 were the highest of all the networks, although there could be a revision of the unwelcomed prices due to the end part of their message.
Three has the most competitive costing model of the larger networks, where they undercut most deals with a cost of just £99 on a £30 a month tariff.
Apple has announced in a press statement to the media there will be a delay in bringing the white iPhone 4 to market, despite claiming at their recent press conference it will be available in July.
The statement comes after a month of waiting and the question constantly being asked to Apple store staff and also the handset resellers, as to when the white iPhone 4 will arrive with many supposedly holding out for that very model.
The announcement by Apple states: “White models of Apple’s new iPhone 4 have continued to be more challenging to manufacture than we originally expected, and as a result they will not be available until later this year.”
No more further details than later this year have been given to the media, which will gravely upset those who saw the slide from their impromptu press conference of late that mentioned “End of July” for its arrival.
Rumours surrounding the delay are that the mass production of the cases or iPhone 4 bumpers has taken precedence, which would make perfect sense - as 3 million customers need them to be able to make and receive phone calls.
An American company has produced a plaster or band-air for the iPhone 4 that covers up the gap in-between the two parts of the case, which if connected results in a signal loss.
Antenn-aid.com sells these band-aids in 6 different colours, all for $4.95 + packaging just in case you can no longer wait for your free case from Apple themselves.
The website states these Antenn-aids are precision engineered and when placed over the lower corner may improve performance, with a disclaimer mentioning it’s really only made for entertainment purposes.
There are even statements on the site such as “Ben
Franklin would approve” and “it has colours the human retina would see”, referring and making light of the high-resolution retina display of the iPhone 4.
When we first found out about the cases on offer as a result of Apple’s admission over the signal issues, we said these cases “effectively put a fairly literal plaster over the problem” - Antenn-aid is literally that plaster for the problem.
Visit the site for more info - http://antenn-aid.com/
Skype has released the latest application for the iPhone 4 to take advantage of its multitasking abilities, whilst also announcing at the same time there will be no surcharge levy for 3G calling.
The iPhone 4 version of Skype will also be available to other devices that now run iOS 4, such as the iPhone 3GS and the more recent iPod Touch devices as the application uses the multitasking environment of the new operating system.
All of which means the communications software can be run in the background, waiting for a call or a message whilst the phone is used for other tasks and even when the phone is locked, the app is still active.
Skype’s multitasking abilities do not stop there, as it’s now possible to switch to another application whilst keeping the conversation alive - according to information supplied by the company.
Previously it appears Skype has charged a fee for making calls over 3G, from when it was first possible back in May, where they announced today this will be waved in order to increase call time as well as the frequency of calls. Skype is aware of the high fee most are paying for data tariffs too, where slapping on an extra fee isn’t entirely fair.
Apple’s impromptu press conference to address the issues over signal problems with the iPhone 4 resulted in the offer of a free case, to all purchasers of their latest handset.
The case, or what looks more like the rubber bumper around the outside bumper cars at fairgrounds, will be available from the Apple website as of July 22nd where the iPhone 4 purchaser can also return their mobile for a refund if not fully satisfied with the results.
The free bumper that usually costs £25 and is wrapped around the sides of the phone, which therefore prevents the “death grip” or where the handset holder makes contact between the break in two parts of the iPhone 4’s antenna - which reportedly results in the loss of signal.
Apple mentioned the bumpers might not stretch that far and there will be third party cases available, as the demand will be high for the now 3 million iPhone 4 owners with this offer expiring on September 30th.
Apple’s boss Steve Jobs admitted “we’re not perfect. We know that, you know that. And phones aren’t perfect either”. In the press conference, he also said iPhone 4 wasn’t alone and roped in BlackBerry, Samsung and also HTC where he accused them of a similar fault in their latest models and went on to prove this with a drop in signal by using a similar grip.
Although the case will not resolve the issue entirely, it could effectively put a fairly literal plaster over the problem in the meantime.
Apple has released an update to their latest iOS 4 mobile phone operating system and ahead of their press conference, all with a view to resolve the issues that have surrounded the handsets signal problems.
The 180MB firmware update is available from the usual source of iTunes as of Thursday evening, for all those 1.7 million purchasers of the iPhone 4 along with the older iPhone 3G/3GS owners that have upgraded to iOS 4.
This service release or hotfix to Apple’s mobile phone OS is geared up to fix the signal issues that have been seen within their latest mobile phone, whilst at the same time supposedly correcting the display of the reception which apparently has been miscalculated in the past.
Apple notes in the accompanying documentation for the update states this “improves the formula to determine how many bars of signal strength to display”, although how they missed this problem in the past has gone unanswered.
It has already been noted by those early adopters of the update that Apple has increased the size of the bars in displaying the signal, just to make the reception visually clearer with its recalibration already firmly in place.
Is there a recall on the cards, or just a software update?
Apple has announced to the media they will be holding an unscheduled press conference this Friday, all in order to talk about the iPhone 4 with the possibility of the signal dropping issue on the agenda that have plagued the handset since day one.
The conference which will be held at the headquarters in the USA will be at 6pm UK time, where no further details have been mentioned. Speculation has been rife over whether they will recall the new fourth generation Apple mobile, which will be a vast operations seeing as they sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 handsets in just 3 days.
What could be a more likely scenario would be that Apple will put the world at ease by openly discussing the issue relating to the signal problem, as their open letter last month did not go down as well as they expected where its contents surrounded the miscalculation of the signal reception on their phones.
Another reason for the conference taking place would be around the announcement of the update to the iOS 4, or at the very least confirming a delivery date in which Apple believes this fix will resolve the signal issues by recalculating a more realistic reception algorithm for the phone.
Either way, we will bring you the news of what happens, so stay tuned – if you can get a reception that is.
Former UK only iPhone seller’s latest offer
