UK 3G iPhone 'end of June, but not from us.' sniffs Voda

No excuses whatsoever for plundering David Manners' blog once more, Last week, he trapped an Italian telco exec in the Dubai desert, buried him up to his neck in the sand and extracted news about the 3G iPhone. (Actually, I suspect the Margarita Torture was employed.)

This week, he's been even more subtle. By dint of asking in UK high street phone shops, he's got O2 to confirm it's coming and they're selling it but not when, and Vodafone to say that it's going to be available at the end of June - but not from them.

""Although Vodafone is also selling the 3G iPhone in Italy, in competition with TIM, the Vodafone guy confirmed that Vodafone would not be handling the 3G iPhone in Germany, France and the UK.

The Vodafione was pretty sniffy about the 3G iPhone: “Our customers expect to get a handset free with a contract, we don’t expect to have to hand over a portion of the call charges and we can’t be sure about the quality of their 3G. Over there they’re behind the European manufacturers in 3G technology.”"

With the Apple WorldWide Developers Conference kicking off on June 9th in San Francisco, this could be the best documented secret Apple launch in history.