iPhone in Ireland? At a Price…
I’ve just had a 3 month holiday from the Moan while my wife and I adjusted to life with our new son, Cole. Thankfully, he’s been a brilliant little guy, and I guess while life may never be the same again, it has now returned to some form of normality, which means, hopefully, more regular entries.
And boy, what an eventful few months it’s been, from Microsoft/Yahoo takeover talk, to plummeting Apple share prices despite a bumper 2007, to Mac insistence on tearing open the bleeding edge to a gaping wound with the release of their audacious (and overpriced) Air. But my first proper Moan is about something closer to home.
So finally, after 8 months of waiting, the iPhone has officially arrived at our shores, and you can get the 16Gb version for only €499! Wait a minute… That’s almost €70 more than it is in the UK, and almost €170 more than it is in the US! And that, my friends, is just where the rip-off starts. The iPhone in Ireland will cost you, minimum, a whopping €939 to run for the first year, and that’s if you barely use the thing to make calls or text anyone.
The problem of course is, those of you (us) who would like an iPhone don’t have a choice about where to buy it. O2 have the iPhone in Ireland, and that’s the end of it. No competition.
Of course, the same is true of O2 in the UK, and AT&T in the US. So why the price differential? The answer is, it’s bleedin’ Ireland! Rip off republic and all that.
So what can we do about it? Well, you have four basic choices.
1 – Buy an iPhone in the US (or wherever) and “jailbreak” it, so you can use it on a network over here. The disadvantages to this are many and varied, from lack of real support for many of the features, to potentially locking yourself out of upgrading it, to voiding your warranty, to maybe even killing your phone altogether (iBrick, anyone?). Still if you are interested in this route, you can do a search for jailbreaking your iPhone on Google. Good luck.
2 – Buy an iPhone on the UK O2 network and roam over here. This is probably a stupid thing to do and you’ll have a UK number. There may be some tariffs with favourable roaming in Ireland though, so it might work for some people who spend time in the UK.
3 – Buy the thing in Ireland now and be an idiot. For a phone with no 3G (and no syncing of your iCal to-do list – duh!), on a network that charges though the nose without supporting visual voicemail, this is plain madness right now. But O2 seem to think that at least some of their customers are stupid enough to do it.
4 – Wait for the inevitable price fall and buy an iPod Touch (in the US) to tide you over in the meantime. Added advantages include the possible release of a 3G version in Autumn. This is what I’ve done, and I must say, the iPod Touch ROCKS! OK, so no camera, no speaker, and no phone, but right now, it’s a good compromise.
Maybe I’ll get up the courage to jailbreak the iPhone, but without 3G, I don’t see the point, when I can get all the extra features I need over my current phone with the iPod Touch without the headache of wondering if the next sync will “brick” my phone.