If you go into the Dataquest "Apple" shop in Zurich at Bahnhofplatz, they have forms on the counter that you can fill in so you're first in line when the iPhones arrive. Go fill one in, it doesnt actually oblige you to buy one.

assuming that you have an american address and dont mind paying roaming fees, an american iphone will work in europe.

however, it would be awfully and rediculously expensive to run one, since all calls would be charged on a roaming tariff.

it might be that you can have also a european mobile phone contract, since you seem to live in germany also, and simply swap the sim (assuming american sims work in the same manner as european ones?), therefore paying monthly charges for both phones but simply using the iphone in europe with your european carrier and with at&t when you are back in the states.

however, these would be fairly expensive methods to simply use the iphone in europe.

in addition, it is not actually 100% confirmed that the iphone has a slot for a sim-card. steve jobs did mention that there would be a slot for a sim, when the phone was announced in january... however there has been some recent but not disproved speculation that it may no longer use a sim... probably as a defense for people buying american iphones and unlocking them for use around the world... i.e. against what you are considering.

we will know more soon enough i suppose.

krlock3

thanks fraser for that good information!

however, that assumes that dataquest will in fact be able to sell the iphone. it might be that you can only get it from the outlet of the carrier, whoever that will be.

krlock3.

I've seen those forms - but Apple has clearly said several times that the phones would only be available through the Apple Online Store and the phone provider they choose for distribution. Chances for getting the phone through Dataquest are 1%, I'd say :-)

the iPhone has a normal SIM-card slot - it's stated in the specs they released last week.

dawiz

ah yes, seems like it indeed.

jobs gives his wwdc keynote today. maybe he can tell us when the phone will or wont be in dataquest zurich!! i doubt it though.

krlock3

I'm looking forward to the watching the consumer backlash unfold on this one. It's been so extensively hyped (not necessarily Apple's fault) that disappointment is inevitable.

true. but even if it is great, there will be a lot of critics.

there's an anti apple group on every corner it seems. . . .
no doubt the phone'll bring out another !!

The Stuff Just Works !

Its a touch screen phone. I think a touch screen is a bad idea on a phone. Whatever it does beyond the primary function of being a phone is unlikely to redeem it in my eyes.

dave

Remember the Newton ?

No, I don't
am I too young ?

US SIM cards work on a different standard, so a UK or European SIM card will not be transferable. Also as you note, the phones are locked to ATT, my understanding is that it is almost imposible to make it SIM-free, i.e will be unlockable ....

doh, was thinking about signaling standards ... ANSI v ITU ...

Eh? I swap my sim cards all the time. I've got a t-mob card from the US and Swisscom and United mobile ones from Europe (and have had Vodafone UK and Vodafone NZ cards previously).

Now GSM rides on different bands in the US and other places, but that has to do with the phone and network, not with the SIM cards. I think that the iPhone will be Quad-band, so that shouldn't be a problem either.

There was also some recent legislation in the US allowing for anyone to legally unlock their phone. Though it's to be seen how easy it will be to unlock the iPhone. I've still got an old Nokia 5110 that I've not managed to have unlocked yet.

I have used US (T-Mobile) cards in European phones before - never had a problem.

Permanent SIM-locking is illegal in the US. If a customer calls Apple, they have to unlock his phone for free, whether they want to or not.
http://www.dsltarife.net/news/2297.html (unfortunately I only found this German article).

dawiz

Touch screen isn't necessarily bad. From a PDA point of view it's excellent, and the modern smartphones are just PDAs with phone capability. It will be a pain when texting though.

I'm using a Nokia 'Symbian' phone at work and the lack of touch screen is a real pain, it really prevents the device realising its full potential IMO.

My gripes with the iPhone are:

Price - Ridiculously high for the spec.

Battery life - there's no way that thing is going to last longer than a day once you start to use any of its multimedia features. And the battery is not user-swappable.

Not 3G - If you have a whizz-bang multimedia oriented internet browsing phone then you will want to use the fastest connections possible when you're out and about. Not having 3G is just silly, EDGE networks aren't as fast and aren't ubiquitous in Europe and WiFi isn't universally available (and an additional expense on top of an expensive contract).

No API for developers - This will stifle the development of useful software for the device. You can see from the Windows Mobile phones that there's a world of possible applications out there which as things stand we'll not see on the iPhone. Supporting AJAX isn't good enough.


I'll be getting a HTC Kaiser when they are released sometime this month. It has GPS, 3G (with HSDPA and HSUPA), touch screen and slide out thumbpad and an OS with loads of third party apps. I already have an old PocketPC PDA which I have some really useful applications on, so this will be a great PDA upgrade for me.

The Torygraph reports today that there have been some last-minute updates to the iPhone with regards to battery and screen:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...wiphone119.xml

An interesting article on Apple and the Iphone. Not one for the fanboys.

Quote - Yet the most common descriptor applied to him, by friends and foes and even Jobs himself, is “*******.”


http://nymag.com/news/features/33524/

Nice photo on page 2 of that article.

Certainly suggests a man with a flair for design who knows what the public wants before they do.

And a deviant.

thanks simon, interesting article!

http://www.theonion.com/content/info...les_new_iphone