The exclusive iPhone carrier in the UK, O2, “had just over 8,000 iPhone activations at the close of business on Friday… which is several times higher than the company had originally projected for opening day. It had expected more like 3,000 activations,” Jacqui Cheng reports for Ars Technica citing an inside source.

MacDailyNews Note: iPhone went on sale on Friday at 6:02pm in the UK.

Cheng reports, “Our O2 mole revealed a few other details, too, such as the length of O2′s exclusive contract with Apple. Like Apple’s contract with AT&T, the contract with O2 is for five years—looks like few of us will be free of Apple’s carrier of choice until 2012.”

“Apple has also told the company that a 3G iPhone won’t be expected until ‘very late next year,’ with Apple citing issues with power management and the size of the chipset as limitations,” Cheng reports.

Full article here.

MacDailyNews Note: 3G chipsets… are real power hogs. Most phones now have battery lives of 2 to 3 hours and that’s due to these very power-hungry 3G chipsets… [iPhone] has 8 hours of talktime life. That’s really important when you start to use the Internet and want to use the phone to listen to music. We’ve got to see the battery lives for 3G get back up into the 5+ hour range. Hopefully we’ll see that late next year. – Apple CEO Steve Jobs, September 18, 2007

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Battery life tests show why Apple skipped 3G on iPhone – July 16, 2007