T-Mobile to get iPhone 3GS in place of iPhone 4 later this year?

By Ryan Fleming September 8, 2010

We all know that the tech rumor mill is one of the most well-oiled of all the rumor mills, and when you throw Apple into the mix, simple comments can take on a life of their own. An aside between two people can end up on the front page news, and while the rumor itself might last just long enough for another rumor to replace it, every now and then, the truth manages to squeeze through the stories. Whether or not this is one of those case remains to be seen, but it does have a certain logic to it.

We’ve been hearing rumors that the iPhone might soon be heading to T-Mobile. If you have been following the iPhone, odds are you are slightly desensitized to “the iPhone is going to ____” stories (looking at you Verizon). Apple will take the iPhone to multiple carriers eventually — it needs to in order to expand — but the contract with AT&T that once seemed like a wildly one-sided affair in favor of Apple, is now looking more like pair of handcuffs keeping the iPhone with AT&T, thanks to some hefty penalties for Apple if they break the contract before it expires in 2012. If the recent tweet by Wired editor, Chris Anderson, is correct, then maybe Apple has found a loophole.

“A T-Mobile manager casually mentioned to me that they’re going to get the iPhone 3GS (but not 4, oddly) later this year. Common knowledge?” Anderson tweeted.

Now again, this could be a rumor passed on from the T-Mobile manager, the guy may simply have gotten his facts wrong, or something else entirely. And if it turns out to be true, there could be reasons for the 3GS debuting on T-Mobile that we don’t yet know, but it all has a certain logic to it. If it is true, we should expect to hear more about this soon in order to get T-Mobile ready for the holidays.

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