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Is England in Europe? Mind it's the 52nd state of the USA.

"... widely slammed for it's performance as a phone"

Some writers have a gift for using incendiary words to attract attention to their work. Time to toss Kewney on the stack of hacks with the others.

"the iPhone which has been widely slammed for its poor performance as a phone"

Oh really? Don't suppose he could give us several examples to support "widely slammed", could he? Must be talking about all those Microsoft bloggers.

What exactly is this Eurotard smokin'? And how do I get some?

To all the whiners who want the 3G iPhone for the US- remember how you were bitching about the fact that AT&T;is not available everywhere, or has spotty coverage?

Factor in 3G, and you can slash that coverage by a factor of 10!

Apple was not about to ship a phone that only city folk could use. That would be absurd. And it wouldn't make them any $$.

Kewney used to be quite a decent pundit but in recent times he's turned into a bit of a hack. His IT Week columns are rubbish.

3G is not a nice-to-have for the European market. 3G has practically universal coverage now and even the free phone you get on a Euro 10 a month plan supports 3G.

Pure, unadulterated FUD. What better way try to suck some air out of the iPhone's initial sales than to serve up an unconfirmed report that a "better" iPhone will be announced just after launch weekend, one that offers a feature that the first iPhone has been 'widely slammed' for not including.

Be it by M$, Nokia or Verizon, this guy's bought and paid for.

OK I'm back from jury duty. What's been goning on?

3G coverage in Europe is like EDGE coverage in the States: it's almost everywhere.

The problem with 3G in Europe is not the coverage, rather the sh*tty plans. Here's to hoping that Apple is able to convince Vodafone or whichever carrier picks up the iPhone to have plans that are as simple as the AT&T;iPhone plans.

So some nub from the London evening Standard writes an article saying it MIGHT be Vodaphone and the press make a mountain out of a totally unconfirmed 'maybe'.

Sorry - but this isnt news until it's officially announced from Apple and whatever partner (to be decided) announce it.

I just hope this idiot from the paper hasnt potentially fscked up the deal with vodaphone (IF there is a deal in the first place of course!).

Vodafone does not have EDGE.

So one of the two:

1- 3G iPhone for Europe
2- Vodafone won't be the carrier

Regarding the '3G' iPhone to be released in Europe - Apple will not announce anything yet its far too soon!.

Also I have official confirmation from an Apple employee in London that the iphone is going to be released on 18th October in Europe.

Don't expect any announcements from Apple and their european carrier partner for quite afew months.

Isn't Vodaphone in bed with Microsoft anyway?

They run that shit windows mobile on their phones they sell.

3G sucks anyway - I dont know anyone who uses it to be honest, and its bloody expensive on top of the monthly carrier fee.

This iPhone feeding frenzy has gotten way out of hand.

How can an unreleased product be "widely slammed"?

I'll accept Jobs' and the AT&T;guy's explanation for going with EDGE over 3G. Coverage and battery life.

People forget that all of Europe will fit neatly in the Northeast US, so 3 or 4 cell towers should cover it completely, no problem. Deploying 3, 4 or 5G is a snap compared to covering, say California or Texas or Alaska.
(for the challenged, that was sarcasm)

I saw a bunch of losers waiting in line at the SoHo Apple Store in NYC yesterday. One guy I overheard negotiating for $500 for his spot in line.

Just wait for people to start bitching about the damn thing.
You KNOW it'll happen! Oh shit, it's started already.

In no case was it widely slammed as a PHONE. EDGE has little to do with the phone part; it was the Internet part. He would've been closer to the truth if he said "as an Internet device" instead of "as a phone."

People love slipping in negative comments when it comes to Apple. I can't wait until these retards and their ignorant biases move on to their convalescent homes and the younger Apple using writers become more prevalent in the tech writing mix.

"Shipment date is still unknown, but 'on course' for the year-end date predicted last October by Apple CEO Steve Jobs" Kewney reports.

Predicted last October? Can someone explain please!

What better way try to suck some air out of the iPhone's initial sales than to serve up an unconfirmed report

Trying to suck the air out of a hurricane may be outright hazardous, and is pointless to boot...!

Although I do understand the detractors up to a point - the level of hype may still be justified, but it's almost scary.

This report is just plain silly. What does Carphone Warehouse got to do with it? Its an independent (AFAIK) retailer in UK who sell mobiles from all the networks, and service wise are rather crappy. Vodaphone has its own retail stores, a la AT&T;, so if they were the "chosen one" , they already have enough stores!

Hmm... wonder if someone will ever offer iPhone on a cashback plan like the many offered by dozens of independent mobile phone retailers? Nahhh...

Looks like someones interested in taking some pre-weekend profit...

And CarphoneWarehouse ISN'T a MVNO anyway so WTF!!! This is pure cr*p!!!

Steve Jobs said yesterday in three separate interviews that there were several reasons they didn't choose 3g... Battery life, the physical size of 3g chips and insonsistent coverage..

If those factors are true, there is no way in hell they will be announcing a 3g phone for Europe 2 days later.

MDN:</i> The network speed has been mentioned as a disappointment (especially when compared to iPhone's on-board Wi-Fi performance, which blows away 3G, of course) in some initial hands-on reviews, of which there have been just four so far.</i>

All four called it disappointing, and Pogue has repeatedly referred to it with words like "awful" and "horrible." Since there are only four reviews, all by huge Apple boosters, I'll go ahead and accept the "widely panned" characterization.

(whoops.. that first </i> should be <i>. Gotta proofread!

I was widely slammed.

Once.

And Vodafone don't have a relationship with Carphone Warehouse (in the UK) anyway - they sell only through their own stores and Phones 4 You as far as I remember.

However CW have had a relationship with Apple UK forever, going back to the Newton and some arrangement with Orange and more recently with iPod.

A tie-up with all three may be a fair idea though: Vodafone control a huge portion of the market throughout Europe and have their own network of stores, T-Mobile (apart from being a network operator) also happens to be a major Wi-Fi hotspot operator and Carphone Warehouse - with around 2,000 stores in 10 countries - would act a a pervasive distribution for T-Mobile and pervasive support considering Apple has less than twenty stores across the continent.

I'd question the timing, but then I'm not Steve Jobs (fake or otherwise).

I think its quite funny, all this hype, when no one in the real world has had a chance to use the Iphone yet.
The 3g issue is worth looking at for Europe, i use it and going back to a slightly enhanced version of 2.5g GPRS
is not the way forward.
The wi-fi is great but i don't have time to look for a hotspot when i am in the sticks.
Maybe by the second generation iphone they will find a way of using a 3g chip.

@ Mr Reee
"People forget that all of Europe will fit neatly in the Northeast US, so 3 or 4 cell towers should cover it completely, no problem. Deploying 3, 4 or 5G is a snap compared to covering, say California or Texas or Alaska."

This is not true: Wikipedia informs that both Europe and the United States have an area of about 10million square kilometers, and Europe has more than twice as many inhabitants.

In fact the United Kingdom alone is about the size of California but has about three times the population.

Add to this that the landmasses of Europe are more spread out than the United States and it becomes apparent that adding 3, 4 or 5G is by no means a "snap".

RS is correct, and the reasons USA does not have a modern mobile phone system are not to do with Mr Reeee's stupid ideas.

The story on the grapevine -- in the City this week -- is that Vodafone definately has the iPhone contract in UK which implies 3G version of the iPhone.

@Yet another Mac user

The term is "out in the styx"

There cannot be an exclusive carrier for Europe. Apple would get fined worse than microsoft for anti competition practices. That means iphone will have to work with all networks.

kris,

"Predicted last October? Can someone explain please!"

Right you are sir. This is yet another example of an error in this article. The iPhone was never heard of publicly until MWSF in January of 2007.

--mAc