iPhone 2.0 — Specs, Price, more

The rumors are going wild, and I can understand. The latest is coming from Cult of Mac and I’d like to add a few points.

The iPhone sells here in Germany for 99 EURs. Yes. 99 EURs. It’s the small version and only with the big contract (89 EURs a month, 2 years fixed) but that’s the price. The new phone will surely have 3G, which means UMTS and as it is a new phone it will have HSDPA, which is like improved UMTS. There are already rumors of speeds of 40 mbits/s and this is actually nothing tooo special either. It’s called HSDP+ and the standard just gets to that speed. Of course there are not many if any phone out yet with that chip, but more importantly, there is no single network I know of that supports those speeds yet. I seriously doubt that AT&T will have a full HSDP+ upgrade, but we will see what happens there.

GPS is probably just something you put in there because you can, batteries always get better so that should have better performance too. With memory becoming cheaper that will increase too. Ok, understood.

Now to the price. I doubt the price will change but a large problem is that in the US you can just buy the iPhone and then still “need” a contract with AT&T. Giving a big subsidy here is something that will most likely get AT&T a lot bigger of a share of the full iPhones out there because not so many will be jail-braked. Here in Germany we already have subsidies and it might be that they are pushing those higher, meaning that also the big iPhone will get some subsidies. Currently only the small one has them, probably because it doesn’t sell so well. With the new one coming out, and contracts being around 90 EURs a month, I see no problem with T-Mobile giving a 300–500 EUR extra. Might be that the 200 pounds/eurs/dollars is for a small version though. The networks know the value of an iPhone user now, so they will do their best to get them.

So all the rumors seem likely I have to say. I just wish they fully open it up and let you use the phone in any network.