Tag Archive for 'UK' Page 2 of 2



UK iPhone official news: £269, O2, no 3G, free wi-fi, 9th November launch

Thanks to Engadget for the live feed — great work, once again. We’ll update this post as news happens…

…£269? That’s really pushing it, we think, from a ‘perceived value’ point of view. But take out the VAT (that’s the UK’s 17.5% sales tax, for any US readers) and you’re down to £228, which is only around £30 more than the US price ($399/ £200).

O2 will be the operator, with £35, £45 and £55 tariffs offering unlimited data (probably with a 1GB ‘fair use’ limit, we’re guessing). The deals are on an 18-month contract.

No 3G… Oh man, that’s not going to go down too well. But Engadget seems to be talking about a free wi-fi service across 7,500 hotspots operated by The Cloud. Now that sounds very interesting…

…But O2 is talking about having just 30% network coverage for the iPhone’s 2.5G EDGE data. That’s absolutely dire. Steve Jobs claims that battery life is the issue with 3G in the iPhone, but also lets slip that it’s (unsurprisingly) on the way, saying that it is “something we think we’ll see later next year”.

Carphone Warehouse is the other UK partner, as rumoured for a while, and is planning to have an iPhone ‘expert’ in every one of its 1,300 stores. Yeah, right.

No news on other European countries, which is a little surprising. We guess that Steve Jobs must be on tour this month.

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is coming to the UK this month, which was a fairly predictable move — but still very welcome (considering how long it’s taken to get TV shows on iTunes here).



What could be coming in today’s UK iPhone announcement?

LoopRumors is reporting that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is in London for today’s big iPhone announcement. So if Steve’s in town — and according to online reports the Apple store on Regent Street is shrouded in black — what might we expect from today’s 10am press event?

  • O2 seems 99% likely to be the UK operator
  • Orange could have snagged the French rights; T-Mobile for Germany
  • The iPhone could very well, in proper Apple style, go on sale today in the UK at 4pm (when the store re-opens)
  • We’re now at best feeling 50/50 about a 3G iPhone turning up, following news of O2 upgrading its EDGE network. Frankly, this will suck big balls because the words ‘free’ and ‘wi-fi’ are rarely seen in UK coffee shops
  • There have been rumours of a 16GB iPhone being announced, and the US price drop suggests that there’s room at the top of the range for one… But again, we’d be (pleasantly) surprised if this happened
  • The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store could be announced for Europe (which would make sense
  • iPhone firmware 1.1.1 could be released immediately after the event, worldwide, adding one or two new features
  • Among those potential updates, an improvement to the iPhone’s SMS features would be well-advised for Europe, given the much higher popularity of text messaging here compared to the US

Historically speaking, Apple’s recent announcements have tended to slightly underwhelm, hence why we’re erring on the side of caution with our predictions. As for pricing, we’d be surprised (and disappointed) if the 8GB iPhone exceeded £249 on contract in the UK, because doing so would position the handset far beyond competitors such as Nokia’s N95. But time will soon tell, peeps…



QR codes hit the UK 28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks QR codes

Already Big in Japan, QR codes are a way of sending information to your mobile via its camera. The patterned black and white codes work like this: you take a picture of the code; software in your handset decodes it; information pops up in your phone. Kind of like bar codes but for cameraphones.

With the vast majority of new phones having a camera installed, QR codes are ready for the big time. One of the first big promotions to run in the UK is for the DVD release of sci-fi horror flick 28 Weeks Later, with a giant billboard featuring nothing but a QR code containing a link to the film’s website having gone up in the Shoreditch area of London.

Do the cash-money maths: HSDPA web access + cameraphones + QR codes = marketing opportunities gone wild. These things are gonna be everywhere soon, peeps.

(Via Guardian Unlimited)