iPhone 3G available in Australia, Italy, New Zealand and Portugal on July 11iPhone 3G available in Australia, Italy, New Zealand and Portugal on July 11

Posted July 8th, 2008 in Hardware & Gadgets

iphone 3g

Vodafone and Apple announced yesterday that the iPhone 3G will be released on July 11th 2008 in Australia, Italy, New Zealand and Portugal. Vodafone New Zealand confirmed yesterday the iPhone 3G would be priced from $199 on a 24-month contract in NZ.

You can read the full press release on the Vodafone New Zealand website and the iPhone 3G features on the Apple website.

At $199 I would be really interested in getting one of these for myself because they appear to be pretty cool phones and this is excellent value (note: see my updates below regarding pricing). However, from all my reading of the technical specs and looking at pictures of the phone etc it would appear that the iPhone 3G does not support video calling.

Only about three months ago we bought my wife a cheap new phone and we made sure it was video calling capable so we could make video calls between my phone (currently a clunky iMate JasJar) and hers. When one of us is away we can then talk and see our little boy, who is currently 3 1/2 years old. So any replacement phone I buy for mine really needs to have video calling too which makes the iPhone 3G not a good option for me. What a shame.

Update 12:50pm - I've had another look at the Vodafone NZ website now that they've released their pricing plans, and although it is possible to buy an iPhone 3G for $199, it's the 8GB model (there's a 16GB model too) and you have to go on a plan that costs $250 per month to do so... The cheapest plan is $80 per month and then the phone will cost $549.00. So even if it did have video calling I wouldn't be buying one :)

Update 6:30pm - Vodafone weren't so clever with their pre-announcement yesterday of the iPhone priced from $199 with no further details, and then announcement the somewhat expensive plans today. Read more at Chris Keall's blog at PC World, Mauricio Freitas' blog,  the NZ Herald, and the NZ Herald comments.

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