The Desire is comparable to the Nexus One, which is manufactured by HTC and sold by Google. There are still no plans to launch the Nexus One in SA, but the Desire is a practically identical phone with the same 3.7″ AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 5 megapixel camera and, most importantly, Android 2.1 operating system that you’ll find on the Nexus One.

The only real difference between the two is that the Nexus One is a quad-band device that supports WCDMA and associated American network frequencies, while the Desire is a dual-band GSM (with HSDPA) handset. The Desire also beats the Nexus One for battery life, apparently.

The Legend is a smaller smartphone with a slower processor (600MHz compared to 1GHz on the Desire). It also runs Android 2.1 and HTC’s Sense user interface.

It is uncertain at this stage what the new HTC devices will cost in South Africa or which networks will carry them – but since Vodafone carries both the Desire and Legend in the UK I think it’s safe to say that Vodacom will have both available on contract.

HTC faces legal charges from rival Apple who has accused the former of patent-infringement. Analysts have predicted that HTC will have to place new products on the back-burner until the dispute is settled. The Desire and Legend are firm competitors for Apple’s iPhone, which continues to dominate the touchscreen smartphone market.

The following is copied and pasted from an email I received from Vodacom Corporate Affairs:

“Vodacom will launch iPhone 3G S, the fastest most powerful iPhone yet, in South Africa in July 2009. For more information on iPhone 3G S please visit www.apple.com/iphone”

At this stage no further details as to pricing, or availability of tethering, are available. But as soon as I hear anything, so will you.

Apple has indicated that it has 22 partner networks worldwide that will provide tethering (the ability to use your phone’s Internet connection on your computer) from the get-go. AT&T is not one of them, but there is no reason to believe that Vodacom will not allow it, as the company does not provide unlimited data packages for iPhone and allows tethering on its network for other devices. It is a near certainty, in my opinion, that Vodacom, or its holding company Vodafone, is one of Apple’s partners for tethering.

The iPhone 3G S extends the storage capacity of the iPhone range to 32GB, adds a compass, vastly improved 3 megapixel camera with video and other new features. All the details of the device are available here.

The truth is that Vodacom seemingly has no idea when the iPhone will be available locally. Sources within the company have speculated that it may even be as late as October.

You can, however, pre-order the iPhone on the Vodacom website. Vodacom has even embedded an iPhone advertisement into its site’s header that links to the order page.

Vodacom is obviously taking the lead from Vodafone in terms of local availability. Vodafone, in turn, will undoubtedly have trouble keeping up with the demand for the iPhone across multiple regions and will have to juggle stock availability and release dates to ensure that it doesn’t sit with disgruntled customers across the globe.

That said, Vodacom must have some indication, albeit vague, of when the phone will arrive if it has made pre-orders available. If you ask Vodacom, however, they will merely tell you that they can’t say anything at this stage. Which is understandable, since the decision relies on extenuating factors beyond Vodacom’s control.

So unfortunately we have no real indication of local availability or pricing at this stage, except that Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that the eight gigabyte version of the phone will not be available anywhere in the world for more than $199 on contract. The price announcement by Jobs was a clever marketing ploy, but really means very little to potential buyers as your contract instalments could be anything, as could the retail out-of-contract price, should that even become an option in South Africa.

My friend Ben Kelly at Finweek has speculated that the local iPhone contract will be similar to the modelling of the Blackberry contracts available from Vodacom, but this is just educated guess-work.

Anyone who claims to know when the iPhone will arrive in South Africa and what it will cost at this stage is either lying or works very high up the ladder at Vodacom or Vodafone. Then again, I doubt that even executives at either company could provide definitive answers at this stage. July seems optimistic, but not impossible. Sometime around September may be more likely.

Yesterday I reported that the iPhone will be arriving in South Africa on July 20, based on information Stuff editor Toby Shapshak posted to his blog on The Times website. This information was wrong, however, as the official South African iPhone site announces that the phone will arrive on July 11.

Last night Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the 3G iPhone release as well as the iPhone 2.0 operating system update with new features and access to third party applications.

“Just one year after launching the iPhone, we’re launching the new iPhone 3G that is twice as fast at half the price,” said Jobs. “ iPhone 3G supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync right out of the box, runs the incredible third party apps created with the iPhone SDK, and will be available in more than 70 countries around the world this year.”

And on that list of countries is South Africa, where the iPhone will be available on the Vodacom network via a ten-country deal signed with shareholder Vodafone. No further details of the local release of the device have been announced.

Ok, so we were only off by 9 days. But to those who have been waiting patiently for this device since its launch into the USA market one year ago every day counts

Vodacom has confirmed that the iPhone will arrive in South Africa on July 20 2008 as part of the ten-country deal that Vodafone has signed with Apple to bring the Jesus phone (so titled as a result of its committed following) to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and other territories.

Australia will be first to benefit from the Vodafone deal, receiving the iPhone on June 29. Vodafone is a majority shareholder in South Africa’s Vodacom.

Today also marks a much anticipated announcement by Apple CEO Steve Jobs of the next-generation iPhone which he is set to unveil at the annual Apple Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). It is expected that the new iPhone will come in a variety of colours and with 3G connectivity, integrated GPS and other new features. South Africa will undoubtedly receive this version of the device.

We discussed the arrival of the iPhone in South Africa as well as other expected announcements from WWDC in episode 15 of ZA Tech Show, a podcast I host.

This morning Vodafone confirmed that it had signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to ten territories, including South Africa.

The other countries where the iPhone will be made available by Vodafone are Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand and Turkey.

Vodafone is not able to confirm release dates yet, but it seems likely that this date will be around quarter four of 2008, which means our first iPhone shipment will be of the 3G-enabled model.

Rumours circulating on the web now suggest that Vodafone is on the verge of confirming a deal with Apple that will see the iPhone being released in India later this year; around September. Vodafone’s CEO Arun Sarin has also repeatedly said that Vodafone would be trying to make the iPhone available to its subscribers. Unfortunately for Vodafone the battle in Europe was lost. But in other Vodafone territories there is still hope and the fact that India shares a lot with South Africa in terms of Apple, such as the lack of an iTunes Music Store and other services, means that we could well see the successful roll-out of iPhone in that country preceding a South African release. Vodafone is the majority shareholder in Vodacom, who would be the local carrier, unless MTN pulls something out of the hat.

In fact, I would imagine that we would see a simultaneous release to India, should the latter really be set to receive the device.

My only concern is that Vodafone as a network is not the kind of partner Apple necessarily wants; roaming between Vodafone in other territories is simply too easy and will compound the regional locking problems that Apple suffers at the moment. Hopefully Apple will come to its senses and realise that there is no real way to control the device’s proliferation. There will always be a way to hack the iPhone and the obvious solution to me would be to look at releasing the device worldwide in quarter three of this year, putting it in retail alongside the iPod. This wouldn’t prevent standard network agreements from taking place either. Apple’s problem is that they are raking in revenue from partner-networks and also have a proprietary voice mail system that must be integrated into host networks. Not that you need it…

Another stumbling block is Google Maps which has very poor support of South African roads. Apple do not believe in rolling out product with limited functionality and would undoubtedly see the lack of maps, which the iPhone uses for navigation, triangulation and location functionality, as a problem. Fortunately a little bird has told me that Google in South Africa are working on their local Maps representation.

So hold fingers with me and lets hope that by the time the 3G iPhone is announced later this year we will have some indication of plans to make the Jesus phone legitimately available in South Africa.

But it became known this week that Apple has concluded agreements with three separate network operators in Europe – and Vodafone isn’t one of them. T-Mobile is reported have been assigned as operator for Germany, with O2 taking the UK contract and Orange for France.

Had Vodafone been selected as European operator, it would have brought the iPhone closer to South Africa via local provider Vodacom, which is part-owned by Vodafone.

In its own capacity, Apple has no interest in a local release of the iPhone. South Africa has no iTunes Music Store – and the iPhone is activated via a store account. The Apple presence in South Africa is meagre and the company shows little to no interest in expending its local business, rather trusting a distribution partner to cover the region in the form of Apple IMC.

Vodafone, on the other hand, might have filled the gap by extending its iPhone operator status to accommodate the South African territory.

But there may still be one small glimmer of hope; Orange is a network operating in multiple European regions, including the UK. However, Apple chose to go with O2 in the UK, leaving France to Orange. Perhaps it’s possible that Vodafone may be selected for another territory – like Italy? It’s not likely – in fact, it’s incredibly unlikely seen as Apple’s prerequisite for iPhone operators is that they hand ten percent of profits generated by the iPhone back to Apple. It is unlikely that Vodafone would agree to that.

The option of buying an iPhone in Europe and bringing it back to South Africa is also not viable. The iPhone must be included with an operator contract and locks up if the device is detected on international roaming status for longer than two months. While it is possible to find ways around this, they are not exactly feasible.

The iPhone will be available in Europe by the end of the year. Sorry kids, but it doesn’t seem likely we’ll ever see it in South Africa. Perhaps in a future generation of the device, but not any time soon.