AT&T to subsidize thinner 3G iPhones for 200 clams?
Fortune's Techland blog is reporting that a source close to Apple is claiming that the upcoming 3G iPhone will be sold at a $200 discount by AT&T... if you sign up for a two-year contract. In other words, standard rugby for cell phone companies... sell the phones cheap or give them away for free, then make your money back from a subscription.
Interestingly, the source claims that you won't be able to get this deal from an Apple store, but only from AT&T directly. Also, it'll be locked so you can't take it to another carrier... or will be for about five minutes before the Internet figures out the newest way to hack it.
All the other usual rumors are confirmed by the source: early June, 3G and GPS. They will still apparently come in only 8GB and 16GB flavors, although that seems a bit hard to believe to me, given the iPod Touch comes with up to 32GB. Finally, in keeping with Apple's design philosophy, if you can't figure out a way to improve its looks, make it thinner: the 3G iPhone will allegedly be 2.5 mm thinner than the original.
Take with the usual grain of salt, but it all parses.
AT&T to cut the price of Apple's New iPhone [Techland]
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I think AT&T and O2 in the UK got burnt by the cost of ownership. O2 knocked £100 off the price of their existing stock and they have been leaping off the shelves. It would be interesting to see how many buyers have actually signed up to the £35 per month tariff as well - there are quite a few not on O2 in this office, for example.
I assume that this is the phone providers being practical rather than Apple accepting that their model was wrong, as of course, Steve is never wrong.
Because claims by some nitwit who has connections to source close to apple always pan out. I love how much attention things like this get.
2.5 mm thinner?? WTF is that about?
It's plenty thin enough now, making it thinner won't make it fit into a smaller pocket ( ok it will fit into a 5mm smaller pocket. ) that's less than 4 percent less girth at a cost of about half its volume.
That is beyond stupid! I'm sure that there is something else in there besides battery, so they are talking about cutting the battery capacity by more than half. Even if they make the thing vastly more efficient, I'd rather have more battery , more memory , maybe a better camera , but throw that out to make it thinner? Even if they have magically got it so it can play movies for 48 hours straight , I'd still rather have more battery capacity than thinness.
This is as stupid an iphone rumour as I have heard.
Hep:
How does 2.5 mm thinner relate to HALF the volume, or HALF the battery capacity?
Also, and I could be wrong, but I'd imagine that the 2.5 mm is actually the depth (the thinner side of the phone), not the width (or girth as you called it).
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And this story is running on many other sites.. still a rumour, but that is what it is being reported as.
http://news.google.com/?ncl=1154976847&hl=en
Word is that the phones can't have as much memory as the Touches, because the room the phone-only ICs take up.
I want this to be true. I've been holding off buying an iPhone until it had fast data, so it can replace my Treo, and/or 32GB, so it can replace my 5G iPod. Ideally both, but I'd take either.
I reeeeeally want this to be true.