Video calls on iPhone?

Over the past few days, the news circulating here in the UK has again been rumor-spinning around the awaited iPhone 4G. O2, (the once exclusive holder of iPhones in Britain), posted details of video call pricing on its website, stating they would cost the same as a voice call outside of the tariff’s allowance.

I have to admit that once I saw this, being a vaguely intelligent person, I wasn’t convinced and presumed it was just an error. I seemed to be the only one, however, and many websites were claiming it was proof that the upcoming touchscreen mobile from Apple would have a front-facing camera. In the back of my mind though, I was sure I could remember phones in the past capable of video calls without a front-facing camera; they would just use the rear camera instead. Nokia 6630 for instance, had video calling, but no specific camera for video calling. That is going back a bit now, but I’m struggling to think now, would Apple risk spending extra on adding an additional camera that not many people would use, putting the handset price up and lose sales?

O2, reasonably snappish, got a spokesperson to make this statement: “The iPhone section of our website states video calling is charged at the same price as voice calls. We can confirm that this was listed in error. We will be amending our website shortly to clarify this.”

So there you have it: We’re still as clueless as before. Do you think there’s anything in this story? Undoubtedly someone high up at O2 will already know what the plan is for the next iPhone, hence their recent tariff changes. (They dropped a lot of their price plans and added extra unlimited texts to others.) They must be trying to shift the last few thousand handsets. Makes me wonder though, maybe it wasn’t an “accident” or could have been a glitch in the Matrix or something?

via T3