Last night having just finsished listening (via twit live) to the Keynote at the Apple WWDC I was excited about the new iPhone 3Gs and started planning my upgrade from my existing iPhone 3G.  All I needed to know was the costs and the date the new phone would be available in the UK.  Both these pieces came to me along with huge dissapointment this morning. You see I have 8 months remaining on my current O2 iPhone contract.  The deal from O2 is that if I want to upgrade to the new model I would need to end my existing contract at 8x£35 (£280) I will then need to purchase the new phone at £185/£88 and sign up for a new contract (18 or 24 months) at £35 per month.  Not much of an incentive for existing and loyal customers.  

But what is really annoying to me is that by not providing any reasonable upgrade path, in my case O2 are potentially loosing money.  Let me explain.  If I was to upgrade to the new iPhone I would most likely be expected to pay a fee for the new phone, let's say the £185/£88 and also take out a new 18/24 month contract. However I would then immediatley donate my current iPhone 3G to my dear wife and take out an additional 18/24 month contract so that she can use the old phone.  However based on the current upgrade options (or should I say lack of?) I am not likely to upgrade, and may also consider jailbreaking my current phone in 8 months time and saying goodbye to O2 . Instead O2 could have had £185/£88 from me, another 18/24 months of £35 and a second (totally new customer) 18/24 month contract of £30/35 per month without even having to issue a new phone to my wife, the new customer. I may even have handed back my T-Mobile mobile broadband and moved to O2 for and extra £15 per month to use the 'thether' function on the new iPhone.If you have any thoughts/feeings regarding upgrading please let me know.

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Tags: iPhone, apple, iPhone 3Gs, o2

I can’t believe I forgot to mention in my last post that my new site theme is actually aware of what device is being used to view the site and if it happens to be an iPhone then the users gets delivered an iPhone specific version of the site. I know sites do look great using the mobile version of safari but I’m hoping my new site will improve performance when being visited using the iPhone and also make the site much easier to read and navigate on the smaller screen.

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Tags: iPhone, site update, news