After all the huge debate with the iPhone, the price tags, the modifications and everything, people in UK and Spin will be able to get this mobile phone/media player free when they sign up for 18 month plans that come with a $88 monthly cost. All is done through O2 and Telefonica and we are basically talking about a plan that is a whole lot better than AT&Ts $1,975 per 24 months plan. Let us see why!

The O2 plan sums up to a total cost of $1,591. For this you will get every single month 1,200 voice call minutes, 500 SMS messages, data transfer that is unlimited in Wi-Fi and 3G and roaming rates that are reduced. The iPhone 3G AT&T plan offers each month 450 minutes, unlimited transfer in 3G and 200 messages. As far as I see it we are talking about something that is clearly better, not to mention the fact that after 18 months with O2 or Telefonica you are free to do whatever you want, which is less time than AT&T.

The LG Dare got its head in the market as the guys at Engadget put their hands on one of them quite recently. As far as information is offered, Verizon and LG are doing quite a good job with this mobile phone. A 3.2 mega pixel camera, built in flash, 3.5 mm headphone jack, add on memory if needed, good hardware and a lot more are presented. Now I do not know if the LG Dare can be considered better than the iPhone, only time will tell but I must say that the iPhone is not high on my list of mobile phones I would like to own. On the other hand, now we are talking about the LG Dare and it does look quite interesting.

Read the rest of the Hands on Report HERE.

Japanese cell phones are highly complicated and they have a lot of features, we all know this. The problem is that it is estimated that people actually only use a maximum of 10 percent of the functions of mobile phones in Japan, according to Nobi Hayashi. He actually gave an example in the Panasonic P905i, which comes with 3-inh TV, GPS, 3G, motion controlled Wii Style games and the hard truth is that all these are not that perfect as motion controls are slow and the TV cuts out. We have a lot of complicated menus that do hide the cool functions in deep sub-menus. With this in mind the iPhone should be quite good as it is easy to use and has enough features.

Talking strictly about the iPhone Hayashi said: “It may sell modestly as a smart phone or as an upgraded iPod, but it’s not quite cutting it as a competitor in our mobile-based culture.” This basically means that the iPhone would need more features in order to be suitable in the Japanese smart phone market. A recent poll also showed that half of the people in the poll would want to buy an iPhone but only a fifth actually knew what it was. The only thing that is good at the moment for the iPhone in the Japanese market is the Apple brand, which is well known and might sell alone a lot of the units that will be sold. An increase in features would be good and might pull off a huge surprise in the country but still, the current line of features of the iPhone is considered not enough for the Japanese mobile market, even if the leaders have too many features. Quite strange, no?