Optus iPhone 3G pricing leak - plus Vodafone and Optus only offering GPRS for rural iPhone 3Gs?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 11 June 2008 17:00

Your IT - Mobility

Questions to Telstra in my previous article over whether or not they’ll still announce their own iSurprise elicited the cryptic response that: "Telstra is the market leader in mobiles and we aim to stay that way - so while not commenting on the iPhone or our plans specifically - watch this space!".

This drew a comment from iTWire reader “Mattster” that he “went into my local Telstra store today and asked for an iPhone. The girl claimed they were waiting on a 'much better' phone from Samsung...”

Now, an effectively anonymous comment from an iTWire reader is hardly 100% proof that Telstra will instead choose to heavily market one of the many well known iPhone-esque clones that Samsung has developed, a number of which could easily, at first glance, be mistaken for the iPhone.

But it could well be the path Telstra chooses if its iPhone ambitions get caught up in past knitting escapades, which could very well be the real reason why there has been no Telstra iPhone announcement as yet.

I’m sure Steven P. Jobs has a very long memory. Heck, my jabs at Apple are probably in some secret file somewhere too, but if Telstra isn’t going to sell the iPhone, it will need something.

That something is going to be an iPhone clone of some kind. Samsung has the most iPhone-esque clones on the planet, looking incredibly similar, but coming with all the iPhone 3G lacks – 5 megapixel cameras, FM radios, Bluetooth A2DP support, touch screens with, from memory, haptic feedback, removable batteries and more.

Of course what Samsung doesn’t have is the iPhone multi-touch interface, which definitely is gold... and what sets the iPhone apart from everyone else, even though impressive contenders have appeared such as the HTC Touch Diamond.

Telstra also already sells the i-mate Ultimate 9502, a 3.5G HSDPA 7.2Mbps and HSUPA 1.9Mbps class smartphone with Windows Mobile 6, GPS, music player, large 640x480 resolution screen, slide out keyboard, video out, 3.2 megapixel camera and plenty more.

Telstra has and will have plenty of big anti-iPhone guns to fire at its competitors, but I’ll bet that Telstra still wants to have the iPhone 3G wrapped up in its knitting, too.

So... Telstra and the iSurprise. And Three Mobile too. Both of these companies will make their move by July 11. If not, then it might be some time before the iPhone ever graces their product catalogues, with as many anti-iPhone products on sale as they can muster!