Apple's iPhone will go on sale in Britain for a rather pricey £269, it was announced yesterday. But the expense won't end there - customers will have to sign a contract costing up to £55 a month with the O₂ mobile phone network, for a minimum of 18 months. This means the gadget could set you back a total of £1,259 before you've paid for calls and other services not covered by the plan.

I've never seen such skewed reporting in my life.

• Firstly why are we suddenly reporting phones as costing the sum of their contract? Phones have always had contracts, but we've never commented on the cost of a life time contract before.
• Most new 'hot' desirable phones are expensive and the price drops a while later. Granted the iPhone wont drop (much) in price, but it's not like every phone on the planet is always free on release date
• Your contract is always going to cost 12-18 times the monthly cost before you've paid for calls and other services not covered. This has nothing to do with the iPhone.
• They don't mention that the iPhone covers free internet both through mobile and WiFi, something no other network offers
• They also don't really point you that you're paying for an phone and getting a free iPod. Or paying for an iPod and getting a free phone
• Also why do the calculation with the most expensive package, aside from attention grabbing headlines

The other paper I read (City AM) got worse, saying O₂ did the deal because "Mac nerds will buy anything Apple puts out" which if you have looked at the sales in the states in clearly not true. And then goes onto quote research that says 80% of O₂'s high value customers want one and 40% of high value customers say they will move networks to get one.

I don't know how many Macheads there are out there that will buy anything apple, but it sure isn't the majority of the high value customers.

The iPhone is no more or less expensive than anything else out there really, why they need to write articles as if mobiles had suddenly been sold really cheap before I don't know.

Well I do know, but still the crappy reporting is annoying.