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G1 is free on £40/month from T-Mobile

25,000 people have registered their interest for the G1 on T-Mobile UK’s site.

I guess that means I won’t be in with much of a chance to win one. But this does point to a lot of interest from the UK mobile community.

It most certainly won’t get the iPhone-style fan-fare — and if T-Mobile’s chaps are sensible, they will heavily test their online ordering systems to cope with demand and avoid screwing up like o2 and Carphone Warehouse did.

If I was T-Mobile UK PR and feeling a little bit spindoctorish, I’d send 2x G1 devices to every T-Mobile UK store and dribble the devices out to market over a few weeks to really annoy the geeks and ‘build demand’.

The one thing the iPhone 3G screw-up did was create an unnatural amount of demand from people ‘wanting one’ and not being able to satisfy the craving.

So, £40 a month and you’re good — the handset is free. At that monthly price, you’ve a choice of Combi 35 (800 minutes and unlimited texts) or Flext 40 (up to 1,250 minutes, 2,500 texts or any combination of the two).

Unlimited data comes thrown in on both price plans.

I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of pre-loaded applications the device comes with — and how the Android Market shapes up.

The critical stats:

* Available in two colours – black and white
* GPS and compass
* Rich HTML email client which seamlessly synchs email with POP3 or IMAP services
* 3.5G (HSDPA/HSUPA) and Wi-Fi connectivity
* 3 Mega pixel camera
* MP3 music player
* Pre-installed 2 GB Micro SD memory card (device supports up to an 8 GB card)
* Bluetooth-enabled
* Up to 130 hours standby and up to 5 hours talk time
* Dimensions: 117.7 x 55.7 x 26.5 mm
* Weight: 158g

Yes… I think I might get one.

9 COMMENTS

  1. 25,000 isn’t such a great figure when O2 were reporting 200,00 iPhone pre-registrations after the Steve Jobs iPhone 3G keynote.

    There’s also an issue with the price. At the moment the T-mobile website lists Combi 35 and Flext 40 @ 31.50, so do you pay the extra 8.50 a month just because you have a G1?, over a two year contract that means you’re looking at paying 204 quid for the ‘phone.

    The other problem they face is a “what if” one… What if people don’t like it?, if you dribble it out and it’s not taken up you just end up with a pool of unsold ‘phones, because it’s geekier and bulkier than the N96, it’s easily beaten by the camera and audio features in most phones in the same price bracket (no headphone socket.. I ask you), and it’s not corporate enough to match the Blackberry or Windows Mobile devices, so what if it’s squarely aimed at a market that ends up not being big enough to support it?

    Am I getting one… not in the first batch… maybe I’ll wait for the G1 2.0 :).

  2. This is all great … but have a couple of questions

    1. Can you get the phone on any other tariff? I don't need lots of mins and texts are irrelevant if I can email/twitter

    2. Are these going to be available in the “usual outlets” or is this a TMob store only deal?

  3. stores will have a life REAL WORKING G1 by end of next week if anyone wants to pop along to your local store to have a look.

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