Upgraders – you can still get a 16GB 3G iPhone on Friday
If you currently have an iPhone with O2 and want a 16GB 3G iPhone on Friday, you’ll have been frustrated to find out that O2 are already out of stock for online orders.
Fear not, I thought, I’ll just pop along to my nearest O2 store and pick one up. I’ll phone them up in advance though, to confirm that I’ll be able to get one.
You can tell what’s coming.
One phone call later…
The store manager tells me that he can’t sell me (an existing customer) a new 3G iPhone on upgrade even if he could, because his system won’t allow it. What?!
Another phone call later…
iPhone Customer Service tells me, after contacting upper management, “No, that’s not the case”. I can get one in-store on Friday. Store managers may be confused because their systems won’t let them upgrade existing customers yet – but they will do as of Friday morning.
So if you do want a 3G 16Gb version, I’d phone ahead and ensure that your local O2 store knows that they will be able to upgrade you.
Oh, and the CS rep also told me that store opening is not 7.02am but 8.02 am. Loyal reader, have a lie in 
Existing O2 customers can now order iPhone 3G
I received a text from O2 this morning to say that existing customers can now order their 3G iPhone.
iPhone 3G is here
The iPhone you’ve been waiting to early upgrade to. Order from 8am today.
As an iPhone fan, we are offering you a special, early upgrade to iPhone 3G.
This offer is only available at o2.co.uk/iPhone until 11th October 2008. Terms apply.
You can’t upgrade from your iPhone, so you’ll need to go onto your Mac or PC and onto o2.co.uk/iPhone from 8am today. You will also need to have your account number to hand that you can find on top of your online bill.
Demand is expected to be very high, so to be fair to all customers, orders will be placed on a first come first served basis.
Initial successful orders will be delivered on 11th July by courier and will require a signature as proof of receipt.
*Subject to availability. Connection subject to status, new 18month minimum term contract, credit check & direct debit.
I’d love to order my new iPhone, but unfortunately as of 10am today, the upgrade link isn’t working 
And the sales option via the iPhone customer service line (2302) goes to a null tone, but you can’t upgrade by phone anyway.
Only on O2…
UPDATE: You can try an alternate upgrade link – http://upgrades.o2.co.uk/failover/index.html – but so far it’s only produced errors for me.
UPDATE 2: The site is now back online.
UPDATE 3: No it isn’t.
WWDC and iPhone 3G Release
There’s no question that Apple’s launch of the iPhone last year changed the handset market and raised the bar for mobile technology and interaction.
The big news Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco was of course CEO Steve Jobs’ announcement of a 3G version of the iPhone.
So, the speculation of many bloggers and news channels has been replaced by the hard facts of the iPhone release. US and UK customers will be able to get the new phone from July 11th. Callender Creates provide the need to know facts from the WWDC.
The rise of the iPhone and the demise of the ‘smart’ phone
I love the statistics behind an industry, watching trends, and so on. And yesterday saw AppleInsider publish a table from Gartner’s new stats on worldwide smartphone sales in Q1, 2008. It’s only a summary of the top 5 manufacturers, but it makes interesting reading. Nokia are top, of course, with their Symbian-based S60 smartphones selling 14.6 million units in Q1, with a fast-moving RIM in second place on 4.3 million units. And, the point of Apple Insider’s article, Apple are a relatively new entry at number 3, having overtaken all other established smartphone makers to achieve worldwide sales of 1.7 million in the quarter. So that’s HTC, Sharp, Sony Ericsson and Motorola all beaten comfortably by the new contender from Cupertino.
What’s especially notable from the statistics is that Nokia and Apple don’t market their ‘smartphones’ as such. (more…)
Obligatory 3G iPhone speculation (software)
Not long to go now – at 6pm UK time on Monday the new iPhone(s) will be revealed. I’ve already wondered about the hardware, but what lies ahead for the new software? Much functionality will be added through third party applications, but what can only Apple add, in the core of OS X iPhone?
What do we already know?
Leaks of the development builds have already shown that OS X iPhone 2.0 will include:
- Exchange support (inc. ActiveSync & remote wipe)
- geo-tagging of photos
- email mass delete
- full-screen Safari (effectively a widget platform)
- Bonjour (zero-configuration networking)
- playing of embedded YouTube video in web pages
- saving web images to the phone
…and probably some more bits that I’ve missed. This is all great. From a consumer perspective, there are a few important items that I would also like to see Apple nail in the new firmware.
Obligatory 3G iPhone speculation (hardware)
The lack of any iPhones for sale by Apple or its carrier partners, along with the daily torrent of press releases and rumours, all point to a new iPhone being announced at Steve’s Job’s keynote speech at WWDC on June 9th. Apple was panned by many for releasing a device whose hardware didn’t match up compared to other top-flight smartphones, and are sure to address some of these deficiencies. So what sort of phone are we likely to see there?
Without a doubt, 3G
With every other manufacturer having 3G phones on the market in June 2007, I never bought Job’s statement that it was “battery life” keeping 3G out of the first iPhone. This lack of connectivity speed is sure to be rectified. But, carrier annoucements indicate that Apple are moving from exclusive agreements, and vastly increasing the number of markets they will be selling into (including Japan and South Korea).
So they’re going for a worldwide release, but will they support more than just UMTS and HSDPA/HSUPA? Or Will Apple release multiple, localised versions of the iPhone? Maybe, but this doesn’t seem to me to fit with Apple’s way of doing things. Yet the alternative is to either only support certain types of 3G, or try and squeeze more radio hardware into the iPhone’s already large form factor. My guess is that – in keeping with Apple’s design philosophy – less is more, and that only UMTS/HSPA will be supported.
Carnival of the Mobilists #125
It’s my first crack at hosting the Carnival of the Mobilists, so if you’re new around here, hello! There are just a few posts for the Carnival this week, but often, less is more. So for your reading pleasure I present:
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First up: James at mjelly asks “Is wholesale mobile data about to take off?”. Essentially, can the content provider pay the carriers for the data consumed by the end user? Coming soon after Vodafone’s annoucement of 500MB of free data for every contract customer, James nicely thinks around removing the barrier of cost, and whether carriers’ backend systems can even cope.
Embracing Coverflow
I’m reading MEX’s Manifesto at the moment, and I’d like to bring two of the agenda issues together and consider what Coverflow-style visual browsing could add.
First– “Content itself will be the interface of the future”. It talks of “…stripping away the confusion and clutter of traditional interface items…”.
Second – “Intelligent contact lists are the future centres of the user interface”.
It seems strange that mobile manufacturers are so eager to try out new hardware designs, but that software interfaces see so little innovation. The styling may change but essentially we’re still left with lists detailing your texts, email, music, contacts, etc. Notable exceptions are the ever-changing S60 multimedia interface and Coverflow on the iPhone.
Innovation in interface design should consider what users do with their device, in terms of the contexts in which they use them. I believe that the strong visual clues as allowed by Coverflow browsing could be extended to scenarios other than choosing music by album covers.
Let’s get specific
It was sad to see the plugged pulled on Mowser, which was aimed at bringing the full web to mobile devices with less-capable browsers. I thought it was a great idea and well-executed, from someone who really gets mobile.
It did have problems to overcome though. For starters, many people don’t know that they can browse the full web (via Mowser or elsewhere) on their phone. And, if they do browse the web on their handheld, it’s probably using the amazing Opera Mini, which is an incredible (and low bandwidth) way to make the web usable on almost any phone.
But behind this is the gradual trend for mobile devices to sport very capable browsers. Symbian and the iPhone OS have great browsers built in, and can handle most web pages. So is there still a space for services that re-purpose content for mobile?