AT&T on Tuesday announced pricing plans for the hotly anticipated Apple iPhone, which will go on sale Friday, June 29.
All plans include unlimited e-mail and mobile Web surfing and 200 text messages a month. For $60 a month, users get 450 minutes of talk time. For $80 a month, they get 900 minutes of talk time. And for $100 a month, they can talk for 1,350 minutes.
All iPhone plans include Visual Voicemail, which allows consumers to see a listing of their voicemails, decide which messages to listen to, then go directly to those messages without listening to previous messages. Just like email, Visual Voicemail on iPhone enables users to immediately and randomly access the messages that interest them most.
Subscribers will have to sign a two-year contract with AT&T to get the iPhone, and there will be a one-time activation fee of $36.
The companies also said that users will be able to activate their iPhone using Apple's iTunes software on a Mac or PC. Once the device is activated, users can synch it just like they do an iPod to access music, videos and other files on their computer.
The iPhone goes on sale at 6 p.m. local time in Apple and AT&T retail locations throughout the country. The phone comes in two versions: the 4 gigabyte version will sell for $499 and the 8GB version will cost $599.
Waiting for iPhone v2
Although iPhone is shaping up as this year's must-have gadget, but several perceived shortcomings are pushing some potential buyers to wait for an updated version.
Worries over the high cost, slow network speed, and battery life are deterring some customers from ponying up a minimum of $499 for the iPhone, despite the buzz across the gadget-crazed landscape of tech retail.
iPhone also does not work on AT&T's fastest network, which runs on so-called 3-G technology. That, some said, will make Web-browsing slower than phones running on other networks.
Another area of concern is whether the iPhone's on-screen keyboard will be as easy to use as Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs claims.