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White iPhone 4 Coming Today

Posted by samzenpus on from the black-tulip dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Initially, the white iPhone 4 will be available in 28 countries including the US, UK, Australia, China, Japan, and Italy. It will be available for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model with a new two year agreement through the Apple Store, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores (as rumored earlier) and select Apple Authorized Resellers."

22 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Price? by oji-sama · · Score: 4, Informative

    It will be available for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model and $299 (US) for the 32GB model with a new two year agreement

    That's a crazy way to state the price. Or are the prices for the agreements always the same, whatever phone you choose

    --
    It is what it is.
    1. Re:Price? by Cimexus · · Score: 5, Informative

      Agreed - can't stand the crazy way the Apple US store quotes its prices. The phone does NOT cost $199/$299. It costs significantly more than that, an amount which you pay off over the next 2 years by virtue of the binding service contract you sign with the service provider. That monthly ongoing cost is not just the cost of the plan alone - it also includes a repayment for the handset, though the exact breakdown isn't revealed.

      So really for a better idea of the cost of the actual phone itself, it would be better to look at the cost Apple are quoting in countries outside the US where you buy the phone outright, unlocked, and off-contract. For example:

      Australia (http://store.apple.com/au/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone?mco=MTAyNTQzMjI)

      16GB: $859
      32GB: $999

      Canada (http://store.apple.com/ca/browse/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone?mco=MTAyNTQzMjI)

      16GB: $659
      32GB: $779

      (And wow ... never knew how much we got ripped off in Australia - the AUD is worth the same or slightly more than the CAD, but our prices are ~$200 more than in Canada. Argh!)

    2. Re:Price? by awyeah · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It costs significantly more than that, an amount which you pay off over the next 2 years by virtue of the binding service contract you sign with the service provider.

      That isn't just Apple, it's every phone. Even the cheap or free flip phones cost significantly more than what you pay for them.

      In the US, our carriers do subsidies, and you commit to a contract term in return for that subsidy. It's always worked that way (at least as long as I've owned a cell phone, since about 1998)

      You're always free to pay the full price for the phone and not lock into a contract. The only difference is that with other brands of phone, the carrier will usually unlock it for you after a period of time, but that won't happen with Apple.

      I think the full prices for the iPhone are $599 and $699, if memory serves me.

      - Dave

      --
      Why, no, I haven't meta-moderated lately. Thanks for asking!
    3. Re:Price? by cculianu · · Score: 2

      You're always free to pay the full price for the phone and not lock into a contract.

      No, you aren't. You can't even GET an unlocked iPhone for full price in the USA. It's a shame, really. You can go to France or Canada though, and get one. Land of the free!

    4. Re:Price? by langelgjm · · Score: 2

      In the US, our carriers do subsidies, and you commit to a contract term in return for that subsidy. It's always worked that way (at least as long as I've owned a cell phone, since about 1998). You're always free to pay the full price for the phone and not lock into a contract.

      Here's what I don't understand. Let's say you do pay full price for a phone... why is your monthly rate the same as someone who buys a subsidized phone?

      --
      "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
    5. Re:Price? by Dragonslicer · · Score: 2

      Here's what I don't understand. Let's say you do pay full price for a phone... why is your monthly rate the same as someone who buys a subsidized phone?

      T-Mobile is cheaper if you don't get a subsidized phone. Too bad that probably won't survive the AT&T purchase.

    6. Re:Price? by Altus · · Score: 2

      when I bought one at the apple store they asked me if I would be signing up with AT&T (this was pre-verizon). I didnt actually ask to see if I could just buy it full price but they certainly implied it. They also told me what the real cost was (you have to pay sales tax on the actual price, not the subsidized price).

      Have you actually tried to buy a phone without a contract?

      --

      "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

  2. DRM LOCKED and BLOCKED by cculianu · · Score: 2, Informative

    $199 sounds like a great price but you get locked in to AT&T. I travel a lot and AT&T's international roaming fees are highway robbery. I'm in Romania right now and when I can be spending something like 5 Euros for 3000 minutes on a pre-paid card on Vodafone, why would I pay AT&T $0.29/minute or whatever they want to charge me for the privilege of being an American in Europe?

    It's too bad you can't legally obtain an unlocked iPhone in the USA. You have to go to CANADA to do that. Land of the free indeed.

    1. Re:DRM LOCKED and BLOCKED by cculianu · · Score: 4, Informative

      No, you can't. As of the time of this posting no unlocks exist for newer iPhone 4 models. No holes have been found to do the unlocks on anything other than 01.59.00 baseband. It is unknown whether they will ever be found and any unlock will ever again be available.

  3. Really? by Slash.Poop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is this what /. has come to? A story about a different color being available for an Apple product?

    --
    I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
  4. Frontpage of /.? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A nearly one year old device gets a new plastic shell?

    1. Re:Frontpage of /.? by jonr · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That sums it up nicely. A phone gets a new plastic shell. Now excuse me while I check the prices on Samsung Galaxy S II dual core phone...

    2. Re:Frontpage of /.? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Like it or not, it's news. The white iPhone 4 has been an ongoing problem for Apple, and it's been delayed and pushed back because of manufacturing and design problems pretty much since release. It's the phone equivalent of vaporware actually getting released.

  5. Re:White by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

    Maybe they can get Sony's advertising guys to do promotion for the new model...

  6. Why? by p0p0 · · Score: 2

    Why is this even a news story? I understand Apple products tend to get a lot of attention when being released, but come on. This is a colour alteration, not a brand new phone. We don't see every Android phone get an article, and those are at least different from each other. Is page views really all Slashdot cares about?

  7. It says a lot about their target audience by MikeRT · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That they'd pay full price for a phone that is about to be upgraded just because it comes in a color they like.

    Think about that. The color of the phone is so important that they will pay full retail, plus a two year contract, for a phone that is about to be "obsolete" just because it's white instead of black.

  8. Amazing by Posting=!Working · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's incredible that in only one year that technology has advanced so far that they're able to now produce these with plastic of a different color. Some futurists claim that in another 5 years, we might posses the technology to produce iPhone 4's in any color, but I'm think that's far too optimistic.

    This story is the opposite of "news for nerds, stuff that matters."

    --
    This sentence no verb.
  9. The most amazing thing about white iPhone by Sloppy · · Score: 2

    The most amazing thing about the white iPhone is that it's news.

    Over-hyped stories aren't a new phenomenon, but this one surely has to have set some coverage-to-banality world records, in a way that even Justin Bieber's talent agent wouldn't be able to remotely imagine while getting loaded up on MDMA and writing a marketing-fantasy-novel.

    samzenpus, I don't know who you are. For all I know, you're the name of a script that compares keywords in article submissions to Twitter trends. But on the off chance that you're a human, maybe you could tell us why you thought the color of some plastic (not even an article about a technically-challenging(?) manufacturing process, but just the fact that it's for sale) was post-worthy. Really, this isn't rhetorical: why did you post it instead of laughing it off?

    I'm not putting down the white iPhone. I can understand why some people might want it; but what's interesting about it?

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
    1. Re:The most amazing thing about white iPhone by jo_ham · · Score: 2

      It's interesting because it was announced at the launch of the iPhone 4 and then delayed due to technical problems with the white glass and Apple took an *enormous* amount of flak for it.

      If they hadn't mentioned it as a colour option at the launch and merely worked on it quietly and released it when it was ready this wouldn't be news. They can't really win - there were several trolls moaning about 'still no white iphone, lolz' and now that it is ready and announced they can swap instantly to "how is this news! slashdot is being paid by apple and is nothing but an iFanboi!' (conveniently ignoring the past two weeks' worth of apple-bashing troll articles about the 'tracking' issue).

      Blizzard learned this lesson well in the past, which is why it is very careful about what it "promises" in publicly visible comments, and the reason their PR disclaimer very carefully defines what specific words mean.

  10. Re:White by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can we just throw the fucking thing into Mount Doom, now, please?

  11. Its glass not plastic by perpenso · · Score: 2

    That sums it up nicely. A phone gets a new plastic shell.

    I think its glass not plastic. If it were simply plastic there would not have been such a delay.

  12. A different color paint ... by perpenso · · Score: 2

    nono, your misinformed! They now paint the glass with a different color paint!

    Apparently Apple originally thought it was as simple as you seem to believe, that is why they originally thought the black and white versions would be available at the same time. Strangely, material science is not that simple and ambient light and UV penetrated the paint sufficiently to interfere with the camera and other components. It seems it took a while to find a proper non-toxic formulation of paint and to test it. Imagine that.