iPhone 3G on Pay As You Go (UK)
July 17th, 2008
photo: b_d_solis
The iPhone 3G went on sale a few days ago and it’s been hugely popular here in the UK. It’s significantly cheaper than the original iPhone which is great news! The contract tariffs here in the UK are listed on the O2 website.
They start at £30 a month ($60) where you have to pay £99 for the 8GB iPhone and £159 for the 16GB model. In my opinion it’s a pretty poor tariff as it only includes 75 minutes and 125 texts. For £35 a month ($70), you can have 600 minutes and 500 texts.
On the cheapest UK contract and the 8GB model, the cost of ownership is £640 for the 18 months, assuming that you don’t require any extra minutes or texts. Unfortunately, extra texts on a contract cost 12p per text which is more than a standard text on Pay as you Go.
photo: Mat Honan
I’m personally holding out for the Pay as you Go (PAYG) iPhone which should arrive later this year. O2 haven’t yet officially released pricing details probably because that’ll take away business for the contracts. Pocket Lint managed to take a copy of the tariffs from the O2 website when they accidentally released details, before the page was removed from the site.
The 8GB model costs £300 and the 16GB costs £360. This includes unlimited browsing over both 3G networks and BT OpenWorld Wi-Fi for 6 months. After that, you can get unlimited data as a bolt on for £10 a month. This brings the total cost of ownership to £420 over the 18 months - significantly cheaper than the contract. And in the past, I’ve talked about how you can get free texts or minutes on O2 when you top up. Assuming that you can still use an O2 Online tariff with the iPhone 3G, the £420 includes unlimited browsing plus 300 texts every month.
photo: magerleagues
Is the iPhone 3G affordable? For many people, still perhaps not. For me, the pay as you go option looks attractive. £300 is certainly very steep for a phone. However, my old phone needs replacing and I’m happy to spend £100. I’m interested in buying an iPod and happy to spend around £200. Put it together - seeing as the iPhone provides both, £300 looks like a reasonable price. At the moment I probably spend an average of about £6 or £7 on my phone, so £10 a month is very acceptable to me given there is the bonus of unlimited data.
What really sells the iPhone 3G is App Store and the ability to add your own applications. I’ve always wanted to have Internet Radio that works on the move. The Pandora application, though presumably US only, provides that. Hopefully Deezer works on the iPhone. And I can think of quite a few occasions with which Google Maps and checking train times on the move would come in handy.
I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who already has the iPhone 3G on what they think of it. But I think it’s looking like an attractive and affordable option for the first time.
[...] I want and to run the programmes that I want to, when I want. It’s been rumoured that the iPhone will cost £300 on Pay As You Go. That’s probably at least three times the cost of any other decent phone on the market. But [...]
i need to buy iphone as Pay and Go so please advcie where can i find it out in th UK.
birmingham or london