3G iPhone NOT Released at 2008 WWDC, but Coming Very Soon

As expected, Apple has announced the arrival of the second generation 3G iPhone. The announcement occured just moments ago at this years WWDC (world wide developers conference) at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. Steve Jobs announced the next generation Apple iPhone and all its glory to a crowd of anxious observers who had many a set of cross fingers anticipating the announcement.

iphone 2.0 road sign

However, despite the formal announcement and the presentation of a ton of new information about the new 3G iPhone, it won't be available immediately as many had predicted. Instead, the 3G iPhone will be released worldwide on

July 11 -- along with the official launch of the iPhone 2.0 software.

Apple will roll out the iPhone in 70 countries (compared to the six it is available in now) over the next few months.

The new iPhone is going to be cheaper -- a lot cheaper. The 8GB model will sell for $199 and the 16 GB model will sell for $299.

Here are a few highlights of the new, 3G iPhone:

  • 3G support, do everything faster (~2.8 times faster)
  • real GPS
  • improved audio
  • smaller, thinner than the first iPhone
  • shiny plastic rear cover, available in black
  • flush headphone jack

For full specs on the iPhone 2, you can visit our FAQ for more information.

The new iPhone will be, as one would expect, running the new iPhone 2.0 software which includes a great number of new features -- many of which Steve Jobs showed off today at the WWDC. These new features include contact search, parental controls, ability to save images in email, bulk deletion and moving of emails, an improved calculator, and more. The iPhone 2.0 software will be available in early July. It will be a free upgrade for all iPhone owners and will come at a cost of $9.95 for iPod touch owners.

Apple also presented their mobileme service, which they described as "Exchange for the rest of us". However, to us, MobileMe looks like a much more impressive version of Exchange. It offers full synchronization (both up and down) between a user's iPhone, desktop PCs, notebook PCs, and online account @me.com. And Apple isn't just talking about calendars, email and address books. Cool stuff like photo albums are synced too.

As mentioned, you will be able to get your hands on the new iPhone by ordering it online from Apple or AT&T or you can visit an Apple or AT&T retail store. Expect a lot of customer purchasing pressure, similar to the first iPhone. Hopefully Apple will provide the high supply availability that it provided the first time around to avoid turning iPhone 2 hopefuls away.

Keeping checking back for more news and features on the iPhone 2 as well as all the latest from Apple. We'll be expanding our coverage throughout the week.

Comments

This phone sounds cool, capable of things many other phones in its class could already do, and the price sounds good. Now that I've said all of the good stuff I think it's kind of shitty that Apple just didn't wait to release the original phone with these capabilities. Now original iPhone buyers not only got screwed by the original price drop on the old phone, but only a year later they get totally screwed again. Sure they get a free 2.0 update, they still paid a lot more for a less capable phone. Still it's not like anyone made them not do their research, and Apple stuff is often more about image than anything else. Still they seemed to release a lot of things ahead of time this past year. New iMacs that froze out of the box until a firmware update was released (maybe they should have just tested them more and released them with the new firmware), the original iPhone is on revision 4 of its software (not all of the updates just added cool features in fact some screwed people who wanted to modify their phones treating people that purchased iPhones like criminals for trying to modify them, they should have known better and obeyed their AT&T and Apple overlords even though they legally purchased the phones), and of course Leopard (which is sort of as stable as Tiger now that it's on it's 3rd revision, funny I thought Unix OS upgrades were supposed to make your system faster). The focus seems to be image and not quality. Maybe this new iPhone will finally have both, but original owners must be pretty annoyed by now. Oh well, some rabid Apple supported will probably defend the company for reasons they don't understand right after I post this. Just please let's all take a step back and keep in mind that historically Apple's secretiveness sometimes leads to oppressiveness, especially of its employees, before we all run out and get new phones. No phone is cooler than your rights or the rights of others even if Lord Jobs tells you it is. Also, they already screwed a lot of original owners that are reading this. One way to make a corporation listen is to stop spending your money with them. Oh by the way did anyone else notice that the original iPhone SIM card says 3G on it in most cases. Kind of makes you think that maybe they were working on the 3G thing for quite some time. Maybe the original phone could have been 3G. Maybe they didn't need to screw everyone by not allowing multiple carriers to sell contracts to the phone. Apple is Evil, even if they do make some pretty stuff.

Just a reply from an AT&T Data Representative to the last little piece- did you notice that EVERY AT&T SIM card has a 3G logo... don't believe me? Check a friend's AT&T Blackberry (which, no matter the model, is still only EDGE capable until the Blackberry Bold is released). And trust me, no matter what phone from any manufacturer, if it's the first model of its kind, there's a better one coming and it won't be long until its here.