Nothing to do with Three at all except they definitely won’t have it at launch…. 
The usual websites [1, 2, 3] are buzzing about an apparently-leaked T-mobile ad showing the specs, tariffs and launch date for the iPhone in Germany. The key bits to get people buzzing are 16GB memory, inclusion of HSDPA, €499 and a 12th November release date, but I’m calling BS…
To my mind it looks too good to be true – with the exception of the 2 megapixel camera it has all the things the fan-boys (OK and me) want to hear. Also:
- The name’s wrong – they call it an ‘iPod’.
- There’s a bit too much information on there… would the ad really list the speed of HSDPA?
- The Apple branding doesn’t look right – AT&T use the little logo alongside the name (
). Also, the ‘Revolutionary Phone, Widescreen iPod, Internet In Your Pocket’ text is absent and Apple are pretty consistent in their branding. - 16GB and HSDPA in the same form factor as the existing product? It feels like a big jump…
- There’s no ‘3G’ indicator around the signal strength.
- Having told the US they didn’t ‘need’ 3G speeds it’s a bit soon to be saying that Europeans do (even if the decision was driven by what could be achieved technically, not consumer’s needs). Anyway there’s an early adopter market in Europe ready to buy into the existing product without all the engineering cost of a new platform just yet, before an upgrade next year to 3G speeds – the desire for better performance may even drive people to upgrade.
- The reports of 02’s upgrades to their infrastructure to support EDGE seem much more reliable and there’s no other reason to upgrade the network unless they have the iPhone (which it looks increasingly like they do) and it still runs on EDGE.
I’ve been saying for a while that I think we’ll get the same iPhone as the US and I’m sticking with that. A memory increase may be on the cards, but it will be introduced into all markets so that will still count as ‘the same’ Having said that the date on this ad seems realistic and the price seems about right too (about £340 if it was 16GB) as the $399 pricing of the current 8GB iPhone and the 16GB Touch translates to £269 in the UK with the VAT.
