I had reserved online with Orange a couple of weekends ago. Got the various notification mails from them, though the last one was without the telephone number, it just said I'd receive a mail on the 9th with a link to "My Account".
Well, no email yet, but I looked at my account at about 7:00, lo and behold, iPhones in my offers! But the prices were weird.
There was the table of the options that we've seen before with the same prices, but then to select the phone I was just presented with
CHF 500.- (subscription extended by 12 month)
CHF 600.- (subscription extended by 24 month)
CHF 700.- (subscription extended by 12 month)
CHF 200.- (subscription extended by 24 month)
CHF 300.- (subscription extended by 12 month)
CHF 400.- (subscription extended by 24 month)
No indication of which plan is which!
I called them up, but the guy didn't have a clue what was going on. I looked again just now and the offers have been removed.
Ooh, the price they gave for an iPhone (can't remember if it was the 8 or 16GB model) without a plan was 1000CHF.
Suppose I'll wait for the notification email... drat, thought I'd get in early and snap one up.
Apple: the GPS receiver's antenna is too small to replicate turn-by-turn navigation of a full unit.
I doubt the GPS antenna in my N95 is any bigger, but I can run several Sat-Nav apps without a problem. The only issue is the time to lock which can take upto 2-3 mins, but once it has a fix it holds onto it.
It means don't expect it to replace Tomtom. The limit of the GPS is "you are here, you want to go here, here is the route". It won't tell you to turn left at the next Starbucks.
Although it would be nice to ditch the GPS for the car when walking I think that what the iPhone offers is useful enough. At least they are honest about it, the Nokia N95 was a big disappointment to many because it didn't deliver on the GPS front.
I wouldn't write off the iPhone GPS just yet, even if the big boys stay clear I am sure the hacking community will come up with some sort of port of an existing application. My only real concerned that Apple have crippled the GPS hardware, so as peachy mentioned it just gives you an on-demand fix of your location, but is unable to sample the GPS stream in real time which would make turn-by-turn sat nav impossible.
AFAIK, there even is some restriction in the SDK for 3rd party developers to write turn by turn navigation software. So the rumors are now that Apple put that in because they want to offer this service.
I've put Sygic's McGuider on mine and it works perfectly with the internal GPS, plus its a lot less clunky than Route66.
And more recently the Symbian community have come up with a hack that allows you to use TomTom6 with the Nokia's internal GPS. Prior to that your only option was a bluetooth GPS receiver.