Following Apple’s opening up of pre-ordering for the unlocked iPhone 4S yesterday, Optus has disclosed its contract pricing ahead of the October 14 launch. How does it stack up?
Optus is offering the iPhone 4S on its $49, $59, $79 and $99 monthly plans, all of which require either a 12 or 24-month contract. The 12-month contracts, per usual practice, have higher handset charges. To avoid them altogether, you’ll need to sign up to the $79 plan over 24 months for the 16GB model or 32GB model (which means getting the former seems pointless),or the $99 plan over 24 months for the 64GB model.
As ever, a spreadsheet seems the best way to outline the range of costs (you can click on the arrows to sort a column or filter out options you don’t want):
Optus says it will hand over pre-ordered stock to customers from 8am on October 14, which incidentally demonstrates that Apple won’t be repeating its iPad 2 plot of not selling new gear until late in the afternoon. You can also have the phone sent to you, though in that case you may have to wait up to a week for delivery.
If you don’t want to sign up for a contract, Apple is selling direct from its site, at $799 for the 16GB model, $899 for 32GB or $999 for 64GB. Apple is now quoting “1-2 weeks delivery” from October 14 (which means, in practical terms, that if you absolutely must have an iPhone 4S on launch day, you’ll be queuing at a store somewhere unless you got in early and scored one of the site orders promising delivery around that date).
We won’t be able to make comparisons until both Vodafone and Telstra release plan pricing. Despite Telstra having been the first to update its registration site, no word from that camp yet. It was the first carrier to do so with the iPhone 4 but the last with earlier releases, so it’s hard to predict when it will release its pricing — but when it does, we’ll be covering it. Ditto for Vodafone, which will need to turn out some good pricing to deal with lingering consumer concerns over its network. Update: Vodafone also put out its pricing later the same night.
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