Updated 17th June 2010
O2 have released their prices, you can see full details on the cost of an iPhone 4 on O2 and Orange in our iPhone 4 UK – Orange And O2 Deals Comparison.
Updated 16th June 2010
If you have pre-ordered your iPhone 4 you will need a new Micro SIM card, you can find out full details on how to get one below.
iPhone 4 UK, How To Get A Micro SIM Card
Update: 15th of June 2010.
Apple has now released pricing for the iPhone 4 in the UK, they are selling the iPhone 4 SIM free £499 for the 16GB and £599 for the 32GB.
iPhone 4 UK SIM Free Prices, 16GB £499, 32GB £599
Update: 14th June 2010
We now have details from Vodafone on how much the iPhone 4 will cost in the UK Vodafone Announces iPhone 4 UK Prices, 16GB £189, 32GB £280.
The Apple iPhone 4 is due to go on sale in the UK on the 24th of June 2010, and UK buyers will be able to pre-order the iPhone 4 from next Tuesday the 15th of June 2010.
The iPhone 4 will be available on five mobile networks in the UK, O2, Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Three. None of these four providers of the iPhone 4 UK have released any details on pricing or contracts as yet.
With the iPhone 4 being available on four UK networks this should promote some healthy competition between them, which is good news for buyers of the iPhone 4 in the UK.
Some of the four UK iPhone 4 providers have already put up pages on there website so you can register your interest and be notified when the iPhone 4 is available to pre-order in the UK. We have listed the links below so you can register with your network of choice.
O2 iPhone 4 Pre-order registration
Orange iPhone 4 pre-order registration
Vodafone iPhone 4 pre-order registration
T-Mobile iPhone 4 pre-order registration (none available yet this will be updated as soon as T-Mobile update their website)
Three Mobile iPhone 4 pre-order registration
As none of the above providers have given us any indication on price on the iPhone 4 for the UK, we have been working out a rough guide on what the iPhone 4 may cost in the UK, so check out our iPhone 4 UK price prediction article for more details.
The new iPhone 4 features a completely new design, and from the looks of the photos we have seen this is the best design to date. The new iPhone 4 measures 4.5 inches in height, 2.31 inches wide and 0.37 inches thick and it weighs in at just 137 grams.
The most interesting part of thew new iPhone 4 is the new display, Apple calls it a Retina display, the screen is a 3.5 inch widescreen multitouch display with a resolution of 860 by 640 pixels with a total 326 pixels per inch.
The new Retina display is much sharper than the display on the previous model iPhone, and it can display up to four times more detail than on the iPhone 3GS.
The iPhone 4 offers UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz) and GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) connectivity as well as integrated 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, there is also built in A-GPS, plus a digital compass. Make sure you read our iPhone 4 full specifications article for full details of the new iPhone 4.
As soon as we get some more information on how much the iPhone 4 will cost in the UK, both on a monthly contract with the four providers and also on pay as you go we will update this article.
Updated 10th June 2010 to include Three Mobile who are now offering the iPhone 4 in the UK.
It looks like we should get some information on the price of the iPhone 4 from some of the five UK networks on Monday, iPhone 4 UK Price To Be Announced On Monday.
Heres some more metrics…
Apple fans like to say “It’s all about the experience”, how about dynamic wallpapers in Android… I have sperm swimming on my phones desktop. With Sense UI, I added a contact, it automatically found that contact on Facebook and Twitter and suggested I link the accounts. It automatically pulled their info from the cloud including birthdate, email address, etc and added it to the contact. How about folders to organize not just your apps (coming in iOS4), but favorite contacts, rss feeds, pandora stations, etc. Desktop widgets allow for infinte customization and increased usability. True multi-tasking is the best thing ever on a mobile phone as long as the developers wrote their apps properly. The kickstand is actually a really awesome idea, you would have to use it to understand. When you lay the phone down flat on its back, it doesnt cover the speaker so its always loud and clear, it has dual led flash and native hdmi output. System and application updates are over-the-air, you can sync your phone on Windows, Mac and Linux WITHOUT iTunes or in the cloud with no computer at all. Froyo will stream your entire music library to the device without having those files stored locally. Different color blinking led for alerts of different types. A unified notification bar with TRUE push notifications local and from the cloud. Seriously I could go for days on what Android, Sense UI and Evo hardware offer that you don’t get with iPhone 4 and iOS 4.
Battery life is not at all as a few bloggers would have you believe, many people are having their phones work for 2-3 days without a charge, and in my area Sprints 3g is so fast I have never even enabled 4g other that to do a speedtest.net comparison. It all comes down to how you use your phone, what apps you have installed and how efficient those apps are written. Future OTA updates from Sprint and Android 2.2 (FroYo) will improve battery life and speed significantly. You can replace the battery or you can attach a battery pack, you can also dock it to charge your phone and extra battery simultaneously.
There are over 100,000 apps in the Google Market and growing rapidly. Thats after only 18 months, many developers are fed up with Apple have left them or will do no future updates or new apps for them, they have adopted Android instead.
Now with all that said, the stock Android (and Sense) music player has only the bare necessities, it really kind of sucks. Doesn’t support MTP, ReplayGain or Flac, etc. The Camera and Video apps got a nice update in 2.1 and again in 2.2, but still lack a bit behind Apple’s default apps and the many wonderful photo editing apps in Apples store. There is no iMovie or equivalent that I know of for Android, but i’m sure it wont be far behind. There is no gyroscope and currently doesn’t have a large selection of quality games. If these things are important to you, iPhone is a good device.
Flash support is stable in Froyo and works great. You can disable it completely if you wish, or enable it on demand by clicking the flash movie to start it. But at least the option is there and Flash and AIR opens so many possibilities for rich content and games that HTML5 just can’t deliver currently.
The screen on the iPhone will be amazing i’m sure, and will need to wait to compare it to the EVO but the EVO screen is nothing short of breathtaking. Just like MP in pictures, its not all about the PPI in screens.
HDMI out may not be essential to some people, but again, its an option available. Hell, I don’t use my headphone jack at all, does that mean its not needed on ANYBODYS phone? Kickstand, use it or not, its there as an option and its awesome.
Yes, it has a unified inbox. You can set up your pop/imap mail, your enterprise mail and your google mail all in the mail app and desktop widget.
Both the snapdragon and the a4 are 1ghz.
EVO and iPhone 4 are both great phones, the specs though clearly show EVO as being the current leader in the smartphone market, but specs aren’t the whole answer, the experience on Android is just better. Anyone trying to defend an EVO though is foolish, as every month or two there will be a new Android smart phone out that topples the previous leader.
If you like iPhone, use it. If you are locked into to Apple because you spent tons on music, movies, books and apps, stick with it. Is your phone your only digital camera and video recorder, do you not have photo and video editing software on your computer, do you care? Then use the iPhone. They are really different phones and it all comes down to what your preference is, and how you use your device. but I think its the Apple fanboys that are clearly trying to defend their decisions here.
It will be a year before you see a new iPhone or a new OS update with added features, meanwhile Android will have 20 new devices and at least 2 os updates. They iPhone will always be playing catchup.
This morning, my colleague Jason Kincaid wrote a very good and very level-headed post about the new iPhone (and the new iOS 4 software) from the perspective of an Android user. I’m going to come at it from the other angle.
Recently, I’ve written my takes on both the Nexus One and the EVO 4G from the perspective of an iPhone lover. Obviously, I don’t have an iPhone 4 yet, and so this isn’t a full review, but after the keynote yesterday we did get some hands-on time with the new device. So I figured I’d write down my initial reaction after playing with the new hardware for about 20 minutes or so. Before I go any further, I’ll save you the suspense: it’s awesome.
The Build
The biggest thing that stands out in my mind one day later is that immediately after I put down the iPhone 4 and went back to my iPhone 3GS, the latter felt kind of like a toy in comparison. Now, I’ve always been a fan of the design of the first iPhone over the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 3GS — that is, I liked the aluminum flat back of the first one more than the plastic backs of the second two. The iPhone 4 is a return to form — literally — but it’s even better now, as the aluminum has been replaced by glass (in either black or white).
As Jason noted, the device feels rock solid in your hand. It is without a doubt the most impressive piece of mobile hardware I’ve ever held. There’s nothing on the device that feels janky. Aside from the backside upgrade, all the external buttons on the device are now improved as well. The iPhone 4 is pretty much identical in weight to the iPhone 3GS, but it’s significantly thinner. This may be a bit hard to notice in your hand as the iPhone 3G/3Gs has the curved back (so you mostly handle the thinner edges), but I have no doubt it will be noticeable in your pocket.
The Screen
When the iPhone 3GS first launched, I wasn’t sure that the boost in speed would be enough to make an upgrade worth it. I was wrong. Once I had an iPhone 3GS and went back to using an iPhone 3G, the latter almost seemed unusable to me. Thanks to the screen on the iPhone 4, this seems likely to be the case as well.
As Steve Jobs joked in the keynote, “once you go Retina Display, you can’t go back.” After just 20 minutes of using it, I’m hooked. As Daring Fireball’s John Gruber noted yesterday, it’s not just that the iPhone 4 has four times the pixels of the earlier iPhones, it’s that much of the distance between the glass you touch and the pixels have been removed as well. It’s subtle things like this — things that most people will never even realize they’re noticing (but they are) — that make Apple, Apple.
With the iPhone 3GS (or any of the other iPhones), if you bring the device close enough to your face, you can see the pixels. With the iPhone 4, you can’t. It’s really not like looking at a computer screen at all. It’s like looking at a picture — or when something on the screen is moving, film.
The Speed
In terms of speed, it’s hard to know what is the new iOS 4 and what is the new hardware, but the device does seem to run a little bit smoother. It’s not noticeably faster in the way that the iPhone 3GS was noticeably faster than the iPhone 3G, but I would attribute this to the fact that there are already rarely any lags in the iPhone 3GS with iPhone OS 3. I suspect some new games that come out may push the new A4 chip though.
The Camera
As has already been noted, FaceTime is brilliant in that it requires absolutely no set-up to work. Yes, it sucks that it’s WiFi-only, but that will change with time. It also would have been brilliant for Apple to get this working with iChat on Macs (as others have also noted), but since it’s supposedly going to be published as an open protocol, that will probably come too.
I can see the new front-facing camera doing wonders for startups like DailyBooth — and yes, maybe even ChatRoutlette.
The key feature of the camera though has to be the ability to shoot HD (720p) video. There’s some debate out there as to whether this will or won’t kill the Flip cam. My reaction is that while the iPhone 4 alone may not, I can’t see how all of these new smartphones gaining this feature (the EVO 4G can do it as well) won’t.
The Android Question
I know that it’s shocking to some of you that I would love this device. Most interesting may be my thoughts on what this means or doesn’t mean for Google’s Android platform.
As you’ve undoubtedly read a lot in recent weeks, Google is making fast gains in terms of the Android software. I was beyond impressed at Google I/O with everything that was shown off. With Android 2.2 (which I have running on the Nexus One), most system speed issues seem to have been resolved. That said, in my view, there is still no Android device that is better than the iPhone 3GS. And so obviously, the iPhone 4 just widens the gap.
The fact of the matter is that while the software may be getting there from a practical perspective, it still lacks the polish of the iPhone OS (now iOS). A number of people (on both the iPhone and Android sides) I’ve spoken with recently agree, but point to Google’s recent hiring of Palm’s design guru Matias Duarte as a sign that this may change. I hope so.
Overall app quality on Android also still lags behind the iPhone. And the fact that you have to use third-party task killing applications to get devices like the EVO 4G to run the way it should, is completely unacceptable from a users’ perspective.
With the iPhone 4, Apple has refined the hell out of their winning combination of hardware plus software. It’s hard to imagine it getting much better in this form factor — and that’s why I think we may see some radically different things next year for iPhone 5 (well, aside from a Verizon version).
The Mac vs. PC debate has often found people using a car analogy to explain things. I keep coming back to that when thinking about iPhone vs. Android. For a long time, iPhone felt like a Lexus while Android was more like a Kia. With recent upgrades, Android has transformed into more of a Honda. But with iPhone 4, the iPhone is now an Aston Martin (it was James Bond, remember).
But the crazy thing is that the iPhone is an Aston Martin with a Honda-price. Meanwhile, Android remains a Honda at a Honda-price — it’s a good deal, but it’s not an iPhone-deal.
In fact, it’s such a good deal that I continue to say that the only thing really holding back the iPhone (in the U.S.) is its carrier, AT&T. Even if you have no problems with AT&T, you have to acknowledge that they’re becoming the big barrier to the iPhone’s potential growth. There are simply always going to be million of users not on AT&T. In fact, there will always been more users not on AT&T than are on it. So Apple needs to move beyond it to keep expanding.
And if they’re the Aston Martin being sold at Honda-prices, when they’re sold at other dealerships (other carriers), they’ll dominate, right? Well it’s not that simple.
The Honda-like price is only thanks to the sweet deal Apple gets from AT&T. Without the deal, Apple would undoubtedly sell the iPhone for more money (to keep up their margins), and it would be a less attractive purchase for people. It’s the same reason why everyone doesn’t buy an Aston Martin (or a Lexus, to be more practical). Would some people still opt for the Honda if it was more customizable? Sure, some would. But most would opt for the nicer machine, all things being equal.
But all things aren’t equal because the iPhone is tied only to AT&T. And all things are unlikely to ever be equal because prices might have to go up if the sweet AT&T exclusive subsidy goes away. But seeing the success Apple has had being at the luxury end of the PC market, I’m not sure how much they’ll ultimately care. But the fact that they seem to now (as evidenced by pointing out their market share vs. Android in keynotes) is interesting.
As Jason noted in his piece (and I have in the past), the fact of the matter remains that a strong rivalry between iPhone and Android is a good thing for us all. Android continues to improve at a healthy pace and they have some features (like Google Voice integration) that it seems unlikely now that Apple will ever get. Meanwhile, Apple continues to improve their hardware/software combination at a rate that it’s not clear that Google (and their OEM partners) will be able to match.
It’s two different approaches. And that makes sense since the two have different motives. At the end of the day, Android exists so that Google can get more people searching — and keep them searching as mobile devices overtake computers. The iPhone exists to be one of the mobile devices that overtakes computers so that Apple can keep selling high-margin machines.
In my view, for most consumers, the iPhone remains the winning argument in the space right now. And the iPhone 4 just extends that.
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