Do you know what I hate about expensive mobile phones? Not the price itself, but the fact they are pretty cheap to manufacture, and if you want to use them without subscribing to a service plan, you have to sell your soul to get'em. For example, look at the iPhone 3G - in Romania, if you want to get one and use it with a prepaid card, you have to pay almost $800 for the 16GB model! Anyway, this is not about Romania, because potential iPhone 3G clients in UK will finally get the device without being forced into a long term relationship with any carrier, so let's see...

...how expensive could be the pleasure of using the iPhone 3G with O2's pay-as-you-go service in Britain, shall we? According to official sources, the pricing of the unsubsidized phones will be £350 ($631), for the 8GB iPhone 3G, and £400 ($721) for the 16GB version. For these amounts, you can get the iPhone and simply forget about the regular monthly subscription, but the more you put into the account each month, the better it gets.

Here you have the details - if you pay between £10 and £14 ($18 to $25) each month, the bonus is 500 minutes of call time to any UK <-336x280 Large Rectangle - right->home phone or O2 cellphone, paying between £15 and £29 will add 1,000 minutes under the same terms, while £30 or more gives you unlimited calls, but I guess for this amount you can get a very good subscription, and a much cheaper iPhone...only that you'll have to pay at least the subscription fee each month.

While prepaid phones will become available on the 16th of September from O2 and Apple retail stores, as well as Carphone Warehouse, the contract plans are also going to become more interesting, going as far as giving the iPhone for free with some premium subscription plans, and only £99 ($178) for the 8GB iPhone, with a minimum value of £30 per month for your plan.

Now, that you know all these, I guess you can take a better decision. After all, it's not about the iPhone 3G itself, but about the long term price you'll have to pay, and pay-as-you-go could bring it closer to a lot of people. Am I right, or not? Feel free to share your opinions with the rest of us, I am dying to hear them!

While HDTV is nothing out of ordinary in most Western countries, there's something really funny about the HD madness in the emerging economies, especially in the former Eastern Bloc. Do you really want to know what I am talking about? OK, you asked for it...a wide range of consumers are buying HDTV equipment, only to use it for receiving non-HD content! Not quite smart, but at least they can be proud they have a HDTV, while the neighbor next door doesn't! Anyway, that doesn't touch me, because I have no TV at all, and I feel great without one, so let's leave these behind and move on to the best HDTV you can get for your iPod, shall we?

The story goes like this - the new suite of electronics coming from Philips, introduced at the IFA 2008 consumer show had a very interesting headliner, simply known as "the Essence." What about it?

No, it's not a perfume bottle, and it doesn't even get near that! Unfortunately, there's no official product page yet, but since this has gone public already, here you have the technical specifications: <-180x150 Small Rectangle - right->less than 1.5 inches thick, 120Hz refresh, and a 42 inch LCD screen, coming with a lightning fast response time of 2 milliseconds. Included with the Essence is a self-leveling mounting kit, allowing the tuner, speakers, video and power connections to be separated into a hub for making the slim size mentioned above a reality.

The interesting part for iPod users is that the Essence can use the iPod dock that comes with the CinemaOne home theater system as an auxiliary source(and an alternative to the dock mentioned earlier), together with the USB port and 3.5mm stereo jac, and while it doesn't come with a Blu-ray drive, the CinemaOne is able to upscale standard DVDs to HD resolution.

At last, it is worth being mentioned that the list of supported media formats includes DiVX, MPEG, WMV, PCM, WMA and, of course, the ubiquitous MP3 files. Unfortunately, no official pricing info is available for now, but it seems both devices should be present on the European market in early 2009.

Those of you who already became regular readers(if you're not one of them, you can simply subscribe to our news by email to get'em all) of BindApple surely know my affinity for China. On the other hand, I also should add that, while I admire China for showing the entire world that Communism does work, I wouldn't live there. Why? For the same reason - China also managed to show an entire planet that, despite all its promises, Communism is still Communism... but at least they'll soon be the first Communist country with the iPhone officially available, as far as I can tell, and that's something really big!

Why am I saying this? Just think about the idea - one of the new symbols of the Western world, the iPhone, and one of the leading companies of this world, inside a Communist stronghold like China! Well, maybe "Communist stronghold" is not quite rigt, since most of the gadgets around are manufactured there, but still...

Making a longer story short, here's the deal - China Mobile seems to be ready to subsidized the iphone, according to the JLM Pacific Epoch!<-250x250 Square - right-> To spare you one click, here's what the article says: "China Mobile (NYSE: CHL, 941.HK) and Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) have decided to rely upon handset subsidies to bring Apple's iPhone to China, reports China Communications quoting an insider close to China Mobile. The would-be mobile partners are nearing the end of talks that aim to avoid passing on the relatively high price of iPhones to Chinese consumers by having Mobile subsidize the phones, said the insider. The new plan is intended to replace revenue sharing models that left earlier talks at a stalemate. China Mobile president Wang Jianzhou initially revealed iPhone negotiations in November, 2007."

Unfortunately, "an insider close to China Mobile" doesn't sound really official, but we should rely on this, because it's all we got, at least for now. Until this moment, Apple tried to bring the iPhone to China more than just once, but previous talks failed, when reaching the "revenue sharing" part.

All in all, it seems things are getting closer to the conclusion now, and Chinese people may be able to get the real iPhone 3G by this year's end, but...how many of them will have enough money to afford the phone and the service plans coming with it, and how many of those don't have a Chinese clone already, or a jailbroken Apple iPhone?