The iPhone unveiling
June 9th, 2008 by Sandee OshiroBetween dressing, exercising and eating breakfast, I was hitting the refresh button every few minutes on Engadget this morning just to get the earliest information about the new iPhone.
Even more frantically, Scott Morifuji, our Webmaster, was checking MacRumors, which he says was faster and more literate in putting out the details flowing from Steve Jobs’ speech at the WWDC developers conference in San Francisco.
I can’t explain the obsession we have with this phone, other than it possesses a coolness factor that its competitors can’t touch.
The good news is that the new iPhone will be $200 cheaper than the first version, with a faster Internet connection and built-in GPS. An 8-gig version will cost $199 and a 16-gig will be priced at $299.
The bad news is it won’t go on sale until July 11.
I like that the iPhone is taking on Blackberry and Palm in the business market. Few things would make me happier than to get my business mail on an iPhone. My Blackberry and I have a hate-hate relationship. We’ve never truly bonded.
Lots of folks liked the games that were demo’d, but the application that blew me away was the promise of Associated Press news feeds based on my location coupled with AP’s open invitation to everyone on the planet to send in their videos and pictures. Can you imagine what we might see from a worldwide army of citizen journalists?
Gives me goose bumps thinking about it.
So what do you think? Is this more hype from Cupertino or are we looking at the future of mobile phones?
June 9th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I’ll be trading my 1st gen in for an updated model on July 11th! Scott says he’ll be in line too, but he’s not totally sold yet… especially since they’re charging for the new “mobile me” features… but you know he can’t resist being the first to have the latest and greatest.
I think the new black shell looks sweet!
Time for an upgrade, Sandee!
June 10th, 2008 at 6:42 am
The price drop of $200 is disguised in the fact that the unlimited data plan is bumped up $10 / month or $240 for the 2 year contract for consumers and $15 / month or $360 for enterprise users . All in all, I am pretty jazzed about it. I will definitely switch from my blackberry to the iPhone because the exchange server support.
June 10th, 2008 at 10:04 am
All these new features, AND a price drop? And it is a price drop for Apple; they’re not getting any of the AT&T $$ as they did the first go-round.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
On 7/11, I’ll be looking it pick up a 1st gen iPhone for cheap so I can unlock and use it with T-mo.
June 12th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
A bonus when I bought the first gen iPhone was the shift in my voice/data plan from $80 (40 for voice, 40 for smartphone data) to $60 (40 voice, 20 data). Then I recently bumped it up to $70 so I could have unlimited text messaging. I really doubt the $70 plan for the 3G iPhone will include unlimited text (or any text from what I’ve been hearing) so my monthly’s looking to get back to $80.
While the 3G iPhone is wonderful, and the data plan bumpage is no shocker to anyone in the know, I’m seriously considering waiting to see what Android installed phones are capable of. Even the HTC Touch Diamond is looking really sexy.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
The iPhone is an amazing time-saver and efficiency tool. It is easy to use 80% of its features within minutes of browsing through the visual interface. It checks mail, manages to do’s and calendar, syncs seamlessly with your desktop calendar (and your contacts, email, calendar, photos, music, etc).
The visual voice mail that lets you see a list of al the voice mail you have received and only listen tot he ones you want, when you want? Amazing. And the default is to keep all messages, so no more worrying that you just hit the wrong number on your keypard and deleted an important message. Want to return the call? Just click “Call back.” It could not be simpler!
Smart business will want their employees to use one, especially for the less-techy employees. They will actually use it.
Smart webmasters will make their sites iPhone-friendly.
Smart users will realize that it is more brainy than cool to have an iPhone.