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In a shocking announcement, Tesco Mobile has said it will be offering the iPhone in its stores and via Tesco Direct ’shortly’.

This surprise move, from the fastest growing UK mobile operator, will see it selling the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in time for christmas 2009.

The superstore-come-phone provider is renowned in the UK for offering great deals that are very hard to beat and this announcement is likely to spark the iPhone price war consumers have been waiting for, and which didn’t come when Orange began offering the iPhone earlier this month with almost an exact pricing structure as O2.

Tesco will offer both contract and pay-as-you-go iPhones, although it is still in discussions with Apple over pricing.

The move comes as a big blow to Vodafone, who won’t get in on the action until early 2010, and Orange, who hoped to take up to 50% of the iPhone market away from O2; as consumers now will probably delay their iPhone purchase until next month to see what kind of deals can be had from Tesco Mobile.

O2 are the silent winners in all this, with a 50% stake in Tesco Mobile, they will retain their position has top earners from the iPhone in the UK, and are able to focus more of their efforts on marketing the Palm Pre – which it still has exclusivity on.

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With just a few hours to go before the release of Apple’s iPhone on Orange to UK customers, more than 250,000 people have pre-registered their interest in upgrading their current Orange contracts.

Unfortunately for all iPhone users and hopeful iPhone owners, the addition of  a new player in the market, ending O2’s exclusive deal to offer the device in the UK, has not sparked the price war we may have hoped for.

Orange’s 32GB iPhone 3GS handset will cost £96.50 on their £44.04 per month tariff with a two-year contract. Compare this with O2’s deal where the same handset costs £96.89 on a £44.05 per month tariff with a two-year contract and the Orange Apple is less appealing than was anticipated.

Orange have, however, given their customers a cheaper entry level option, offering the Orange iPhone 3G (the older model iPhone) for free on a two-year, £29.36 per month contract. The same handset on O2’s cheapest tariff will set you back £34.26 per month. It means that users signing up with Orange will save £117.60 over the life of the two year contract and really represents the best available iPhone deal.

All Orange iPhone contracts come with an ‘unlimited’ data use policy, designed to allow users to take full advantage of the high speed internet browser on the phone. The 750mb ‘fair usage’ cap very firmly contradicts this policy, but according to Orange, most users are unlikely ever to reach the cap….(!)

With O2 users complaining about the regular data outages and network downtime on their iPhones, it is anticipated that this offer from Orange may tempt a large number of O2 customers on to Orange.

An Orange spokesperson says it it confident in its stock levels and that there won’t be a supply issue when the iPhone becomes available on Tues 10th November.

With Vodafone entering the iPhone market from next year, we may have to wait until then to see any possibility of a price war to drive down the price of a half decent iPhone 3GS contract.

Orange will be selling the iPhone in a number of stores, including Carphone Warehouse, Orange shops, and Phones4U. Carphone Warehouse said that by the end of the year, they expect to have sold more than one million iPhones since the device first went on sale in the UK in November 2007.

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If you can’t afford the larger capacity iPhone 3G S but don’t want to be stuck with the older, slower iPhone 3G this is good news for you – apparently a 8GB iPhone 3G S will be released soon as a replacement for the 8GB iPhone 3G.

According to this report the 8GB iPhone 3G S is being used to replace the 8GB iPhone 3G at a store in Canada, as these leaked screenshots appear to show:

It looks as though Apple will be doing a straight replacement as stocks run out. No official word from Apple yet though, so watch this space for news on dates and more importantly, prices.

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It is now possible to unlock any iPhone, yes – the iPhone 3G S unlock tool is now available. Actually, there are two.

There was no fuss, no official announcement, no press release, but the DevTeam’s iPhone 3G S unlock was sneakily released in the recent redsn0w 0.8.

After making the announcement that there would be no 3G S unlock until at least iPhone OS 3.1, this release came unexpectedly, but perhaps not surprisingly. after all, the DevTeam had been beaten to it, and provoked, by the earlier release of purplera1n – the first iPhone 3G S unlock tool made widely available.

GeoHot, the creator of purplera1n, taunted the DevTeam by saying “Normally I don’t make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn’t how the game is played. We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the “last” hole in the iPhone. What last hole…this isn’t golf. I’ll find a new one next week.”

Great to have some competition – it drives technological advances.

It actually reminds me of the old DarkAlex/M33 competitiveness for PSP downgrading – but they turned out to be one and the same…

If you are considering unlocking your iPhone, get a free iPhone first in case you brick it.

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The UK’s Telegraph ran an article recently with a headline stating “Overheating iPhone 3GS: Apple blames the weather”… that could be a tad misleading. The Telegraph cites an Apple knowledge base article, last updated June 25, 2009, that warns about leaving the iPhone 3GS in hot places or using it under hot conditions, and shows a screenshot of the iPhone’s temperate warning screen,

The problem is, as longtime TiPb readers know, it’s the same knowledge base article that’s been up since the introduction of the iPhone 3G in 2008, the update merely adding in the newly launched iPhone 3GS.

So, while the iPhone 3GS may indeed have overheating problems — though we’re not experiencing any yet — saying Apple blames the issue on heating is, as mentioned, a tad misleading.

In any event, we’re more interested in whether or not our readers are experiencing iPhone 3GS overheating issues, and if so, what are you doing on the device when you experience them, and are you running a jailbroken device?

[via Engadget]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Regarding iPhone 3GS, Overheating, and “the Weather”

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