Optus have revealed their pricing plans for the much-anticipated iPhone. Two options are available -
post-paid (or normal contract plans) and
pre-paid.
Data charges are about what you'd expect - not great. A $79 / month plan, which sits smack in the middle of the monthly contract options, includes 700mb of data. Excess data charges look like $0.35/MB.
Make sure you read the fine print, which takes up more than half the page.
Posted 02:07pm 03/7/08
I heard $279 and $30/month from Optus, no idea on data though.
Posted 02:07pm 03/7/08
Posted 02:10pm 03/7/08
Posted 02:13pm 03/7/08
Posted 02:35pm 03/7/08
Posted 02:37pm 03/7/08
Prepaid pricing. Add $80 to have it unlocked within the first 6 months of owning the device (or put $80 worth of credit on the service to have it unlocked for 'free').
Not too bad though - About what I think was expected?
Posted 02:40pm 03/7/08
Edit: to be fair Telstra had their pricing out a few days ago.
No outright purchase though.
last edited by TicMan at 14:40:54 03/Jul/08
Posted 02:43pm 03/7/08
I would have thought the competition is now between Windows Mobile and iPhone. Symbian seems to just plain suck for development, at least from what I've been reading, plus its just lame to use.
Posted 02:45pm 03/7/08
You're right that the competition is now Windows Mobile & iPhone but unfortunately the wifey dictates that my competition is now between an iPhone and the N95 as the WM devices I was looking at (HTC Touch, SE X1 Xperia) are too expensive :(
Posted 02:49pm 03/7/08
Holy crap @ the call rates, flag fall, voicemail charge, data excess charge, phone price.
I'll pass, this is incredibly unappealing.
Posted 02:49pm 03/7/08
Posted 02:55pm 03/7/08
Posted 02:56pm 03/7/08
Posted 03:02pm 03/7/08
Posted 03:06pm 03/7/08
Posted 04:29pm 03/7/08
Woah... Woah... Woah...
Thats he biggest mobile phone company in the world you're talking about there. I think they're doing okay for themselves.
Google currently have 0% market share. Apple have about 1% and WMM has about 10%. I'd hardly be worried about any of them if I were Nokia...
Posted 04:37pm 03/7/08
edit: oh yeah I was talking abnout exchange synching, somehow missed to point that out
last edited by Le Infidel at 16:37:56 03/Jul/08
Posted 04:33pm 03/7/08
Posted 04:41pm 03/7/08
Admitedly, I believe LG and Samsung are in the OHA, but still... What percentage of mobile phone users do you think really care about the operating system of their mobile phone?
last edited by mongie at 16:41:45 03/Jul/08
Posted 04:41pm 03/7/08
Posted 04:41pm 03/7/08
For corporate stuff Europe is mostly Symbian, Japan mostly Symbian, US windows mobile, china that un-editable embeded linux stuff and Australia just has too much of a mix of different products for such a small market so doesnt count.
Posted 04:42pm 03/7/08
Mail for Exchange is available from here, but it's only supported on Symbian Series 60 (possibly even Series 60 3rd Ed - haven't been in the mobile space for over a year now).
Posted 04:50pm 03/7/08
Posted 04:57pm 03/7/08
Posted 05:31pm 03/7/08
Posted 05:38pm 03/7/08
Posted 05:42pm 03/7/08
Posted 05:49pm 03/7/08
The iphone isn't much about 'oh wow its a just a phone' its more about the sales people and steve jobs and the general hype bandwagon telling the world that this is how a phone should work, wether its right or wrong.. they're in the business of telling the world that its the right direction and people/competitors are following in that direction...
Posted 06:01pm 03/7/08
that being said i hope someone writes an app that lets you connect your laptop via bluetooth to the iphone to harness it's 3g net for when traveling :)
Posted 06:45pm 03/7/08
I was with a colleague in Seoul when he whipped out his old phone and start showing me all these TV channels that are broadcast for DVB-M - one was even 24x7 Starcraft goodness.
Posted 09:16am 04/7/08
This kind of thing really annoys me; I think all "$X worth of phone calls" advertisements should be banned. As others have commented in this thread, the call costs are high, which unsurprisingly matches up to a high value of "free" calls.
I say it should be banned because it is just a scam to deceive customers. A 30 second block of talk time has no intrinsic value; the mobile providers can (and do) just pick a value almost at random.
Its only a matter of time until we see "$1000 worth of calls" and the underlying rate being multiple dollars per minute.
Posted 09:42am 04/7/08
Posted 10:02am 04/7/08
Posted 10:08am 04/7/08
Can't we just make $1m of calls per month?
Posted 10:09am 04/7/08
I think its somewhere in between Nate. My Vodafone contract has "550 of included calls" for 80 dorras. I was very skeptical about it as the call rates were 20-30% more than my old Telstra plan.
In practice though the difference is pretty big. Using the phone sparingly on my Telstra 50 dollar plan I often racked up 100+ dollar accounts. On my ew Voda plan I haven't managed to get over 300 of the included call value, and I've gotten really lassiere-faire about the thing, making calls at random on a whim.
Actually my telstra plan was the worst kind of deceptive account keeping I could imagine. I could never work out the bill! So many inclusions, exclusions, bonus time etc - all I knew was that my "$50 plan" was costing me over a hundred a month regularly.
In contrast my Voda plan is very clear - stuff is included in the cap or not, and I can easily check my billing status online.
Posted 10:18am 04/7/08
I would argue the reasons for people buying an iPhone are as follows... (in preferential order)
1) They need a new phone and they've heard how awesome the iPhone is from newspapers and apple fanboys. (Hype)
2) It looks awesome and does "all these cool things" (Novelty)
3) Its an iPod + Phone in one, which I will admit is actually very convenient.
I HIGHLY doubt that many people would really look at this phone because they think that its features are the best.
Hell, I bet you most people aren't even aware that phones have "operating systems".
Posted 10:47am 04/7/08
Mobile internet is still prohibitively expensive, more so if you end up having to roam on another network. With the way the internet is in this country it is very unlikely that it will change. That added cost coupled with an already expensive mobile plan means most people just don't use the net on their phones very often if at all. Most applications are based around using the net and are great for countries where mobile internet is relatively inexpensive but here only a very small percentage of mobile phone users are going to care if their favourite app is supported by a particular phone.
Posted 11:05am 04/7/08
Posted 11:40am 04/7/08
If I could get an iPhone for a decent price and just use my current sim with my current prepaid crap I'd do it, but theyre almost 950 after unlocking which doesn't really sound like "Half the price!" as Apple seems to think they are...
last edited by ³dee at 11:40:12 04/Jul/08
Posted 06:03pm 04/7/08
Well, I'll be upgarding my current 16gig iphone to the 16 gig 3G iphone because it'll have faster net access while I'm not in a wifi area for one thing. I'm also looking forward to checking out the build in GPS stuff becuase I like to take the kids out Geocaching (look it up if you dont know what this is).
As for the device itself, I fuckin love it. I was so sick of the Windows Mobile try hard phones. They are so clunkly compared to how slick this thing is to opperate. The fact that it has a 16 gig drive so I can load a shit load of movies for the kids and have that showing on screens for them in the back of the car without worring about a dvd jumping back to the start every time I hit a bump is FUCKIN AWESOME.
I had never had an apple device before this thing, but I have to say, damn its good.
Edit, and by the way, its the only phone I think I have ever had that has worked correctly without any drama with blue tooth devices.
last edited by E.T. at 18:03:47 04/Jul/08
Posted 07:39pm 04/7/08
Posted 04:47pm 06/7/08
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Posted 07:40am 07/7/08
And get access to taskmgr.exe!
Apple so paid them out for that.
Posted 11:40am 08/7/08
http://www.vodafone.co.nz/iphone/plans.jsp
$NZ599 up front for the 8gb iPhone on a minimum $NZ80 plan for 24 months?
I'll pass!
Posted 02:29pm 08/7/08
Posted 09:54am 09/7/08
http://store.vodafone.com.au/iphone/
last edited by darkjedi at 09:54:06 09/Jul/08
Posted 09:55am 09/7/08
iPhonephone plans ever.Ooh interesting, went to the site and viewed plans, hit refresh and now it's back to the "Pre-register" page.
Posted 10:14am 09/7/08
They are planning on sending an SMS to everyone registered on Friday morning with plan details. Way to leave it to last minute.
I just rang the 3 city stores to see if i could even find out when they are opening on Friday and the Wintergarden one didn't answer, neither did the Queens Plaza one. The Central Plaza one did and the guy knew nothing. Best i got was him "believing" that all the city stores would open at normal time of 9am on Friday. He could not even say which stores would be stocking it.
I don't get why all 3 providers are doing their best to fuck everyone around. How hard would it have been to anounce plans, opening times and stock levels at least a few days before the launch.
Posted 10:20am 09/7/08
Why you would want to rush out before all the details are out from all the telcos is beyond me, but I bet heaps of people do.
last edited by ara at 10:20:32 09/Jul/08
Posted 10:22am 09/7/08
Posted 10:29am 09/7/08
Posted 10:34am 09/7/08
People at work(telstra) atm are doing 4day training for it as they basicly have to know the ins and outs of the phone/software.
so yer..
they have also yet to be told the plans, they seem to be keeping it pretty close to the chest atm.
So basically only stores that have done the training packs will sell the iphones from day 1.
Its also very likely stock will not last long. =Z
last edited by 3x0dus at 10:34:23 09/Jul/08
Posted 10:39am 09/7/08
Are any of the Brisbane stores being listed as midnight? Stuff on news.com.au suggested noone is opening at midnight up here.. Not that it worries me, I've learnt how badly early adopters get screwed over :)
Posted 12:50pm 09/7/08
so looks like only that sydney store is midnight with all the rest being 7am
Posted 01:17pm 09/7/08
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Posted 01:42pm 10/7/08
Posted 01:44pm 10/7/08
Posted 01:50pm 10/7/08
Posted 01:53pm 10/7/08
Telstra's 200mb data for 89 a month. liek wtf?!?!
What happened to 3G 5Gb for $39 on a pc? Why are mobiles so much more expensive when it comes to data??????
Half the point of the iphone is to USE data!
Posted 02:04pm 10/7/08
Posted 02:09pm 10/7/08
no wonder they waited until the night before to release pricing
oh well. Possibly a $29 cap plan + X-series 1G data plan for $30 might be the go?
Posted 02:20pm 10/7/08
So apparently that pricing is just for $30 plan with incrementally larger data packs tacked on... so for a $50 it would be different.. and so on.
I did read that you can use for free all of Telstra's Wi-Fi spots however. Are there lots of those around? I think AT&T have the same thing here.
Posted 02:32pm 10/7/08
Posted 02:40pm 10/7/08
A lot of Maccas have them. One in Wintergarden in the city for example.
Posted 02:53pm 10/7/08
don't you need to run a voice account with 3 to get the x-series addon?
Posted 03:23pm 10/7/08
Reading around, it seems many people are happy with just several hundred meg a month over the wire. Maybe Telstra's not such a dud afterall..
Posted 03:27pm 10/7/08
Posted 04:20pm 10/7/08
so maybe it would be a cheap way to use the iphone with telstra's network coverage.
Posted 11:16pm 10/7/08
Posted 11:44pm 10/7/08
Posted 05:34am 11/7/08
Optus
Vodafone
Telstra (Some stores open from 6am today, I am heading down there now, NOT!!!!!!!!!. As if you would bother, every one knows that the first people always pay more)
From what I can see unless you are prepared to go on the more expense plans you can forget about getting any real data included.
I think I will just stick with my Nokia E65 which my work pays for, also the big features that iPhone are missing for me are Bluetooh sync with a lappy and series business apps.
My company gets all their phones from Optus so maybe one day they will offer the iPhone as a choice of handsets, I can dream right?
Posted 08:46am 11/7/08
Posted 10:08am 11/7/08
ACCC should ream them all for selling a product without suffecient retail quantities
Posted 10:18am 11/7/08
Posted 11:09am 11/7/08
Also:
True that ... my Telstra mobile plan was very fucked up, heaps of credits and charges and deals that somehow managed to add up to fucking expensive every month.
Posted 12:05pm 11/7/08
Not worried about data, will look at that down the track. All I want atm is just the one device with both ipod and phone.
Anyone want to buy a GC nokia 6500 classic in bronze???
Posted 12:19pm 11/7/08
Friend will want a white one so in a week or so when he gets a black one we will swap. Or else they said i should be able to swap it myself.
Optus was pretty cool in Queen St Mall. They were entertaining and supplied us with free bacon/egg muffics and coffee and hot chocolate. Then douughnuts and cupcakes.
Did the full show there with heaps of cameras and interviews and all that.
I am just waiting on Telstra to cancel my account and it be swapped to Optus.
Posted 01:19pm 11/7/08
I tried to copy & paste but it wouldnt work, so I gave it to the receptionist.
Posted 02:28pm 11/7/08