This week in Shanghaiist
The words "unconfirmed", "anonymous" and "sketchy" all come to mind whenever we talk about the arrival of the iPhone to China, but this latest story actually originates from Foxconn, the contract manufacturer for Apple's game-changing phone. JLM Pacific Epoch reports that an unnamed source within the company has leaked that they have already commenced mass production of wifi-less versions of the iPhone for release in this country.
Rumors of the iPhone's imminent arrival have been circulating since early last year. This latest rumor seems to lean towards the phone being released by China Unicom and retaining it's W-CDMA chip, good news for those who use the phone overseas.
Unicom have also announced that regardless of how much you want to pay for 3G in China, the maximum monthly fee for your data connection will be RMB500 and a maximum of 15Gig.
This is so you don't have to mortgage your family members if you accidentally leave your connection open. This is not that far removed from what you'd pay China Mobile for GPRS who, for example, charges RMB100 for a 2Gig package.
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China Unicom's 3G Internet speed seems to be not too bad: I got a China Unicom 3G USB stick the other day, mainly as a backup Internet connection. Seems to sometimes outperform the China Telecom DSL connection I normally use.
See my article about Using 3G as a backup Internet connection in Shanghai for details.
Hope the results won't get worse after they started selling the iPhone ;-)
So, will iPod Touch have its wifi removed as well?
Like it or not, a lot of people buy the iPhone because it's a status symbol. Who is going to get 'face' for having a crippled local product? Unless it has a big discount, nobody. They'll just continue to purchase imported 'real' iPhones from HK.
The iPod Touch - which has been available for sale for over 2 years here - isn't a phone and therefore not subject to the silly regulation of wi-fi.