Europe Getting 3G iPhone June 30, 2007

Carphone Warehouse and Vodafone will make interesting bed fellows - seeing as Vodafone ditched Carphone Warehouse as a reseller / agent some months ago ...

Well if its now going to be on t-mobile and vodafone (shudder) you can now put me on the list for one. Just an excrutiatingly long wait till we get them.

This is the most pointless, worshipless pap I've ever seen. Really, the iPhone is a Joke. Other phones and mobile devices have been able to do this for a while. Take those other phones with Windows Mobile and a Touch screen. They make phone calls, the play music, the play videos, and even run applications. The iPhone is just a arrogantly branded copy using the label of an unnecessarily over-rated brand. "The iPod" has even got it's own brand. The world has forgotton what an MP3 player is, even though there are more compatable, more feature-filled cheaper alternatives available on the market. Why do people buy it? Simply because everyone else has one, and the name.

Jasper: by your own logic, then, Windows is also a joke, given its release after Xerox's invention of the GUI and the Macintosh operating system. Therefore, so is Windows Mobile, which has many competitors preceding it with nigh-identical feature sets; so is anything that succeeds Ferdinand Verbiest's steam-powered car of circa 1672; so is every aircraft after Wilbur and Orville Wright's glider of 1900; so is every recording of Beethoven's Symphony Number Five since the original... for Christ's sake, when are you people going to realise that the reason people prefer iPhone over that Windows Mobile crap – just as people prefer iPod over Zune – is that it's just bloody simple? That's something M$ will never have over Apple.

I agree with Cal, Jasper has no clue the iphone is revolutionary, the design of both the device and the software is second to none, it is the simple navigation and ease of use that makes apple products so appealing. I will certainly be buying a iphone when they come to the uk and feel vodafone would be the ideal network as their 3g service is the best in the uk and would make most sense as vodafone ceo has a strong relationship with steve jobs.

I wouldn't say it's revolutionary. It has less features than other phones. To be revolutionary it has to do things much better and have more capabilities.

The only capability the iPhone has over competitors is multitouch. Nothing much else is unique. A visual voicemail app is available for Windows phones.

It is a phone with a nice interface, well designed and very simple to use. The browser looks useful and there's some nice touches.

I tend to buy sim-free phones and if this is only ever on contract I won't get one.

I'm sure Edison told people his cylinder phonograph could do everything the new-fangled disc machine could do. And more! His machine could even record onto the soft wax of the cylinder. The disc machines couldn't do that.
He overlooked the simplicity of the disc machines and ease of use, refused to make discs for some years, and eventually had to abandon his entire recording business.
The Apple critics fail to understand the "completeness" of the iPhone design. Like poor old Edison and his wax cylinders.

As with the N95, jack of all trade, master of none.
'Completeness'...Nothing is ever complete.
There's nothing simple with an Ipod. People buy it because everyone has it. Because its a 'fashion statement'(my a**).
If you want something that is easy, get yourself a simple flash mp3. Plug it, copy/paste yr files. Use it as mp3 or as a memory stick!
Now that's easy! Not to mention the price tag!
What's easy with a touch screen phone?? A lot yet you can text on the move, yet people, who otherwise would never get a touch screen, will still buy the iphone!
You want a 'complete & simple' phone, get a k750, a 6230! It does exactly what it says!

Before anyone starts having ideas, I am not a pro-nokia/SE!
What i like is value for money!

Hey the only reason I got an iPod was because they were so unique back in 1999. Ironic that now everyone has them now.

D:
Many ppl got the ipod for its good looks and for the breakthrough when it first appeared!
But the market is now booming with mp3 players as good or better than the Ipod! And cheaper!
So y do ppl still go for the ipod???

Have you seen Vodaphones data tariffs?
The only way you would get one of these is if you were on T-Mob's webNwalk...

The only reason people buy an iPod is because everyone else has one? Eh?

Flash mp3 players are simpler than the iPod? Double eh?

I'm sorry, but I'm not a follower of fashion, I use the tools that work for me with as little fuss as necessary and that's why I use a Mac. That's why I've used a Mac for 20 years... they just work, as do nearly all of Apple's products.

As for the iPod, there's nothing yet to touch it's simplicity on the Mac. Why bother having to manually drag all the mp3's you want on your player to the device when you connect? What could be simpler than the way the iPod works - connect it, the Mac opens iTunes, the iPod syncs, unplug the iPod, walk away... much faster and more convenient than the whole drag n drop routine. Although if I WANT to manually update the iPod I have the option to do that as well.

Sure, there are players with more features (line-in recording straight to AIFF/WAV/MP3 is the most obvious huge omission from the iPod I can think of as a pro audio user, meaning it's useless as a digital recorder out of the box), but very often they're either fairly evenly matched on price, or even slightly more costly than the equivalent iPod. I can choose an alternative OS for the iPod and set it up to dual-boot if I feel like it, extending the functionality far more than the stock OS allows, so that negates most complaints.

From what I've seen the iPhone simply extends this simplicity and ease-of-use to include other devices... phone, portable computer... and is simply unmatched in it's elegance. I'd like to see how the competition stacks up against the iPhone's syncing facilities when plugged into a Mac. Do they sync iCal/AddressBook/Mail/Bookmarks/Music/Video in one go, or do they need to run several apps to achieve this, or even a part of this?

So in summary, foolish Americans have all just bought a 2G phone that only works in the US.

Europeans get a 3G phone that works everywhere...

It's lucky very few Americans ever leave their own shores..

So euh...where was the "announcement" yesterday exactly?

I'd say if its anything like the ipod - the 2nd generation product will likely be the real deal.

As for Windows Mobile - I looked at a friends phone and didnt like it.

The iphone UI looks very simple and easy to use - where Apple excel.