Canadian wireless customers learned how much it will cost to use the upcoming iPhone 3G as Rogers Wireless unveiled a variety of voice and data pricing plans.

The plans range from $60 to $115, will require a three-year contract, and Rogers did not say how much the handset will cost when it arrives July 11.

Rogers Communications in Canada has announced iPhone 3G voice and data packages for its customers. The plans start at CAD$60/month for 150 weekday minutes, unlimited evenings and weekends, 400 MB of data, visual voice mail and 75 text messages.

From there, plans extend to CAD$75/month for 300 minutes, 750 MB of data, and 100 text messages. The highest level plan for $115 includes 800 minutes, 2 GB of data and 300 text messages.

It's official: Owning an iPhone isn't going to be cheap in Canada.

Rogers Communications Inc. yesterday unveiled the monthly plans that will accompany Apple Inc.'s second-generation iPhone when it goes on sale July 11 for $199 or $299 with a three-year contract.

The cheapest monthly plan from Rogers is $60 for 400 megabytes of data, 150 weekday minutes and unlimited evenings and weekends. There are also $75, $100 and $115 monthly plans that offer more talk time and 750 megabytes, 1 gigabyte and 2 gigabytes of data respectively. All include unlimited access to Rogers and Fido Wi-Fi hot spots.

Whoever leaked the supposed memo with Rogers' pricing for the Canadian iPhone played a cruel joke on their fellow Canucks: instead of the much-hoped-for $30 unlimited data plan - like AT&T users in the U.S. have - we get a series of plans that start at twice that amount, and the cheapest plan comes with a pathetic 400 megabytes of data and a paltry 75 text messages. If you want 200 text messages (which many U.S. plans come with) and a gigabyte of data per month, you have to spend a whopping $100 — oh yeah, and that's without the ridiculous "system access fee" that gets tacked on, and call display is extra too.

Rogers Communications Inc, owner of Canada's biggest wireless carrier, announced pricing plans on Friday for Apple Inc's 3G iPhone, prompting an outcry about prices from angry customers.

The sleek, multimedia device will hit Canadian stores on July 11. But soon after Rogers unveiled its plans, a protest website began collecting signatures and comments that its creators plan to send to the company on the day of the launch.

"This plan is a joke compared to other countries," wrote one complainer, while another wrote: "What a rip off!!!"

Rogers/Fido just announced their iPhone rate plans today, and our Canadian neighbors to the north are sorta freaking out about them. Just take a look at Digg.

Canadian cell provider Rogers Wireless and its sub-brand Fido today listed their iPhone 3G plans, revealing the strategy for carrying the device in the country. All plans will need both voice and data and have finite data limits; unlike previous rumors, there will be no option for unlimited access with either service, though all will include Visual Voicemail as well as unlimited weekend and evening calling; incoming SMS messages are also unlimited, as is access to Rogers- and Fido-owned Wi-Fi hotspots.

Rogers Wireless is justified in its limited data plans as many other iPhone-carrying nations are doing the same or are more restrictive, a company spokeswoman tells Electronista. The Canadian company argues that a "majority" of international iPhone carriers have capped data and believes its plan to be better than these, citing as example Orange France plans that include a 500MB 'reasonable use' limit versus the 2GB maximum on Rogers' best iPhone plan. The company also tries to justify the caps by claiming that unlimited use would require customers pay for more than they need.

"Unlimited plans could end up costing customers more for what they don't use," the spokeswoman argues. "Our iPhone plans more than accommodate the vast majority of customers."

China Mobile said Friday the main obstacle keeping iPhone out of the world's largest mobile phone market had been cleared now that Apple has dropped its revenue-sharing demands.

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said this week he would like to see the device introduced in China later this year, and a senior China mobile executive confirmed the two companies were back in talks.

"We've broken through the biggest obstacle and we are negotiating at the working level," Gao Songge, deputy director of China Mobile's general department, told AFP.

Remember the fuss stirred up last month when an Intel exec talked about a future iPhone that would be powered by one of Intel's Atom chips? (See Anatomy of a Rumor: The Atom-powered Newton iPhone.)

What gave the rumor legs - and generated more than a dozen headlines on Techmeme - was the kind of iPhone that the Atom was alleged to be powering: a mini-tablet device like the ill-fated Apple Newton.

Well, the story is back, but this time in a form that makes more sense — and may shed light on what that Intel exec was really talking about in May.

A short while ago, I discovered that Wii Fit could be used to track my progress as I walked on a treadmill. Wii Fit has a game where you jog in place in front of your TV to travel through a virtual landscape. Instead of bouncing up and down on the floor, I put my wiimote in my pocket, hopped on the treadmill and had a much better virtual exercise experience. And of course this got me thinking: if the wii can track movement, why can't the iPhone do the same?

At about this same time, we got a reader question over at TUAW about the Nike+ sports kit -- whether the iPhone would be able to replace the sports kit. All in all, I was at a very iPhone-accelerometer place in my thinking. So I decided to mess around with the accelerometer and with walking and to see if I could figure out some of the math for myself. (I later found and posted about this Google Code project but what you see here was developed independently.)

In April, as rumors began to swirl about a new iPhone, 1.3 million people conducted nearly 7 million online searches for information about the iPhone or iPhone-related terms, according to a new study by comScore Marketer, a Web traffic measurement service.

That works out to about 5.3 iPhone searches per person.

To get a sense of whether that's a teensy bit obsessive, I talked with Andrew Lipsman, senior analyst at comScore. He ran a few more terms for me to see how Apple's iPhone stacked up in April against other pop culture standard-bearers.

What emerged is that the iPhone searchers are a small passionate group who may be in need of an intervention, or a new iPhone.

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