iPhone 3G coming on July 11

Apple has unveiled the iPhone 3G, which I had been call­ing iPhone 2.0.

• The new iPhone will sup­port 3G data con­nec­tions, which should pro­vide faster ser­vice when users can­not access a WiFi net­work. Om Malik thinks that some car­ri­ers, includ­ing AT&T, may not be ready, which I find hard to believe.
• 11 July 2008 is the first day of sale in the US and sev­eral other coun­tries, with avail­abil­ity in 70 coun­tries by 2009.
• The new iPhone is slightly thin­ner, so it should fit inside cur­rent cases and accessories.
• The back of the phone is black plas­tic. Bye-bye, alu­minum metal back.
• The head­phone jack is no longer recessed, so almost any stan­dard head­phone should work.
• The US price has been low­ered to $199 for 8GB, $299 for 16GB of RAM. There must be some fac­to­ries in China that are hum­ming with activ­ity this summer.
• The new iPhone firmware sup­ports Chi­nese char­ac­ter recog­ni­tion.
• The new iPhone will have true GPS features.
• Enter­prises will be apple to autho­rize iPhones and to write enter­prise appli­ca­tions that are restricted to com­pany phones.
• The iPhone 3G will work with Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007 servers.
• The .mac email and file shar­ing ser­vice has been renamed to MobileMe, and given bet­ter com­pat­i­bil­ity with Win­dows machines
• Steve Jobs claims the iPhone 3G will have decent bat­tery life, with 300 hours of standby time, 10 hours of 2G voice, 5 hours of 3G voice, and about 6 hours of web browsing.

Engad­get has a live tran­script of the announce­ment. I enjoyed read­ing BoingBoing’s satir­i­cal ver­sion, writ­ten as a Greek drama.

Om Malik has a recap that focuses on the enter­tain­ment and social net­work­ing apps and sites for the new iPhone.

Related pages and posts on billso.com

• iPhone
• 21 May 2008: iPhone 2.0 firmware sup­ports Chi­nese char­ac­ter recognition
• 29 April 2008: New iPhone will be sub­si­dized, faster and thinner
• 19 April 2008: Sales­force for Google Apps
• 25 Feb­ru­ary 2008: Smug­gling iPhones back into China
• 20 Novem­ber 2007: An iPhone for China?
• 14 Novem­ber 2007: No iPhone for you, China
• 30 Octo­ber 2007: Apple work­ing with Salesforce.com on iPhone CRM integration
• 4 Sep­tem­ber 2007: Gart­ner: Expect an enter­prise iPhone

3G coming on July 11">

Tagged as: 3g, Apple, enterprise, GPS, iPhone, iPod, Microsoft, mobile