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WWDC '08 Sees Slimmer, Improved, 3G iPhone
Many of us have been watching Apple's WWDC 2008 keynote unfold live. There are many exciting tidbits, but most of all is the announcement of the 3G iPhone. Featuring an even thinner profile, black plastic back, metal buttons, flush headphone jack, improved audio, GPS support, and improved battery life, this is bound to make quite a few people stand up and take notice. Update 18:54 GMT by SM: Best of all it looks like they really took the price point to heart, 8GB iPhones are now $199 and a 16GB model will be available for $299, coming to an Apple store riot near you on July 11,2008.
3G 8 GB iPhone at $199!!!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
$199/8GB, $299/16GB. Available 7/11 in 22 countries.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
All of the featrure you mentioned will be available in "early July" to the original iPhone users when the 2.0 version of the firmware is released. Only hardware upgrades like GPS and 3G won't be.
Oddly enough, one program, "Loopt" is available on both providers, but I cannot find it in any of the App listings on Vz's website.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
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To be fair, he did say right at the beginning that there'd be a presentation offering a glimpse of OS 10.6 'Snow Leopard' after lunch and that this morning's keynote was just about the iPhone.
From the apple site: "# Requires new 2-year AT&T rate plan, sold separately." In other words, there's no such thing as a $199 iPhone. Plans start at $59.99, so you're looking at a minimum outlay of $1638.76 plus tax over two years.
Not if you don't ignore the several thousand dollar 2-year contract.
Several? Lets say you get a normalish plan and with taxes ends up costing you $100/month. So over the course of 2 years you spend $2400. This plan would include something like 900 minutes, unlimited nights/weekends, unlimited data, and 1500 texts. The Sprint everything plan is $99/month and that's before taxes (although it does include unlimited minutes). Can you show me any other cell phone with unlimited data that's cheaper than I've listed here?
Yes, there is no front facing video-camera. One of the key points of 3G is that there is native video conferencing support in the networks.
Further, can you ge an unlocked version (even if subsidised with a contract would be great), I refuse to pay anything for a phone if I cannot switch SIM card in it. I live in the UK, have my parents in Sweden and my girlfriends family is in Belgium and I am going to the Netherlands a lot for work.
So, tell me, even though the EU have done a lot of work in capping the roaming fees, they are still way to high, and especially for data transfers, why would I get an iPhone. I would really want one, but without front facing camera and reasonable options to ge an unlocked phone (I dont mind signing a contract in my country of residence), why the heck would I get one.
Frankly, I will not get the iPhone until those items are fixed on the todo list.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
The iPhone 3G is NOT slimmer - not if you look at the depth. In fact it is a couple of mm's thicker than the predecessor The 3G tech spec page says Height: 4.5 inches (115.5 mm) Width: 2.4 inches (62.1 mm) Depth: 0.48 inch (12.3 mm) Weight: 4.7 ounces (133 grams Old tech spec: Height: 4.5 inches (115 mm) Width: 2.4 inches (61 mm) Depth: 0.46 inch (11.6 mm) Weight: 4.8 ounces (135 grams)
Jeeze, which side of the bed did you get up on today?
The keynote did have a discussion of a standalone IM client, not based on SMS. It won't run as a background process, but rather rely on a new push service that Apple (and carriers I guess) are adding with the 2.0 firmware rollout. The push service is intended to be used for lots of things, not just IM-ing, and will be available through an API to all 3rd-party devs.
First-gen iPhones can already do some locating-aware stuff off of the location of cell towers. It ain't great - accuracy is to within a hundred feet at best in my experience, but it is good enough for some location-aware applications. It can already be used to tell you the nearest restaurants, etc., just not give you realtime directions, geotagging, etc. Why do you suddenly expect that the rollout of a next-gen iPhone would suddenly mean an upgrade in the hardware of your current iPhone? New hardware with new capabilities is the march of technology.
Improvements to the software will come out on a continuing basis. In addition to getting 3rd party apps (which as you say can fill in a lot of missing capabilities), firmware 2.0 on first-gen iPhones will give support for a lot of enterprise stuff (I don't know if that applies to you), support for iWork and MS Office file formats, push-everything, and access to MobileMe (all your stuff is in the cloud, and accessible from anywhere, and pushed to all your devices).
Apple doesn't have anything to do with that. AT&T has always allowed customers to upgrade their phones at any time, usually restarting the 2-year contract. However, if you are buying or bringing in unsubsidized hardware, it has been my experience that the contract does not get restarted (and obviously, if you just move your SIM card into a different handset that you've acquired through a third party, there's no change in your contract).
The only way Apple might be involved is in verifying your existing iPhone account at purchase before handing you the box. This seems likely, given the price and the fact that they're obligated to honor their exclusivity agreement (and AT&T, for all its other missteps and poor decisions, has been doing a decent job with providing iPhone customers with service and value-added perks [including rapid expansion of their previously pathetic 3G network]).
No, EV-DO is a flavor of Qualcomm's CDMA2000, not GSM. That article is simple talking about Verizon upgrading their EV-DO network to the newer and faster Rev A version.
What is happening though is Verizon will be switching to a GSM technology called LTE for their 4G network. So maybe with the next iteration of the iPhone will be available on Verizon. But until then, I'll stick with my HTC 6800 and a network that actually has 3G coverage.Well, it's true that AT&T will have nationwide 3G coverage, for certain definitions of "nationwide" which exclude several entire states, and major portions of the country. Although their map shows presence in every state, this is a mirage. There are quite a few states where AT&T doesn't offer service at all. If you happen to be an AT&T customer from somewhere else, you get 3G coverage from a parter, but you can't get a local phone number on an iPhone (or any other AT&T phone) in those locations.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
W-CDMA, despite name similarities, has nothing to do with CDMA-2000 which is a standard developed by Qualcomm mainly used in the US market.
According to the Apple iPhone 3G Tech Specs Page, the box includes a "SIM Ejector Tool" and the diagram at the top of the page shows a SIM Card Tray at the top of the unit.
There is hope yet.
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
EV-DO is a 3G flavor of CDMA, so no luck there.
As for Verizon "opening up" their network, that's a funny variety of newspeak. It is still more closed than any GSM carrier. Verizon's variety of "open" means that they are publishing specs and setting up a certification lab so that 3rd party manufacturers can make devices compatible with their network. You can't use any old CDMA phone and use it on Verizon, it has to be Verizon certified.
Compare to GSM, where you can take any unlocked phone, put in a sim-card from any GSM carrier you like and off you go. There is no need for the phone to be $cell_carrier_x certified, it is sufficient that the phone complies with the GSM spec.
The CDMA family is:
CDMA (2G) - CDMA2000 (2.5G) - EV-DO (3G) - UMB (4G)
The GSM family is:
GSM (2G) - EDGE/GPRS (2.5G) - UMTS (3G) - HSDPA/HSUPA (3.5G) - LTE (4G)
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
The WWDC 2008 Keynote Video is up now. Enjoy.