Apple adds 'S' to iPhone 3G Apple unveiled its updated iPhone today, and the only real surprise was its name: the iPhone 3G S. Well, that and a new Voice Control application, plus the fact that the rest of the world will get the new iPhone 3.0's internet tethering and MMS capabilities before US iPhone users. AT&T won't offer MMS until "later this summer …
I've been tethering with AT&T for 5 years now. Each time, the software to tether was included with my phone. First it was with a Nokia, no problem at all. Then with an Ericsson, no problem at all. Right now I have a Blackberry Bold and a non-tethering data plan and yet I can still tether with no issue at all. I have even been able to tether while roaming.
The problem isn't AT&T's network, but people not willing to try. Tethering isn't exactly plug and chug. And that is probably the problem. Just don't tell AT&T you are doing it.
I might have missed it elsewhere, but no word on updates to the Touch? Considering it is basically an iPhone without the phone, I would think it was to be expected. Otherwise, pay $400 for the 32GB Touch when the 32GB iPhone, with better hardware and more features, is available? Sure, you escape the phone expenses with the Touch, but still...
Or are they letting the Touch die, to encourage people to buy the iPhone instead?
O2, unfortunately, will only allow you to upgrade if you buy out the remainder of your contract.
If you bought an iPhone on day 1 in the UK, then upgraded to a 3G, you're going to be waiting until January 2010 before you can get the same benefits as a newcomer.
On top of that, the additional tethering charges (nope, it's not part of your unlimited data) are rather horrific.
Thanks for rewarding us early adopters. We really appreciate it.
yawn..... If it doesn't run Google's Android, I DON'T WANT IT!
Sure is fun watching all those iTards lining up to get their shiny "new" iPhones. I'm sure St. Jobs could create an equally large media circus if they enabled the iPhone to send pictures with text.
Wait. Uhh... never mind.
I'll stick with OS's and companies that listen to their customers.
Its good... But it wont set the world on fire... Its very much at the lower end of what the rumours were suggesting... But I'm still buying one, I've lived with the 2G for too long.
I though the name was very reminicent of the Apple II GS. Graphics and Sound (or Granny Smith).
Good article on latest Apple June 8th WWDCO9 update from Moscone West in California . .
. . . Even with so many bit distracting typos(!) ;-)
I am a fan of iPhone and MacBook. A self confessed diehard fan of el reg.
Its a pity Apple have given up 'live' quicktime streaming of the keynote events - it used to be a lot of fun, and I guess given increasing popularity and rapid take up of iPhone and the halo uplift effect with number of Mac users its understandable. Good that el reg comes to our rescue!
I've felt recently that Apple's many other phone competitors have been pulling ahead on hardware specifications.
For me this is a most welcome update that meets or exceeds my modest expectations and evens up the hardware specs. field with the other handsets.
Apple's WWD09 update iPhone launch appears close to generally accepted industry expectations.
The $99 -- will it be £99 in the UK? (Sigh) new price point, and thereby cutting price of existing 8Gb iPhone in half, is welcome price reduction at the low end and should greatly enhance the market reach.
iPhone call plans liek the 18 and 24 month you get typically with O2 in the UK are at the expensive premium end of the scale for what you get in my experience, and overseas calls and roams are very expensive in practice a kind of 'O2 and Apple premium tax'?
I hate dialling to or from abroad on iPhone with O2 it just always feels a bit of a 'rip-off' compared with other networks and phones I've experienced. Even though the service and coverage is reasonably good. Data works pretty well when travelling. Internet tethering most welcome.
The iPhone 3GS update looks interesting, same format, bit better battery life welcome, X2 speed increase, better camera, video, voice control and recording, graphics, MMS, tapfocus, compass and 16Gb or 32Gb option, and many other incremental improvements -- everything we wanted and more!
Stereo Bluetooth?? ! It all looks to be reasonable in initial acquisition cost - although again, call plans are typically premium end expensive with O2 unfortunately. The typical overall contract costs when released plus the acquisition cost are likely to again be a bit at the premium end of the scale and again in some way may be to subsidise the iPhone and or O2 and Apple profits !
Hopefully iPhone 3.0 software will be fine. Specifications look interesting.
Does anyone else share the frustration that the call button is just a bit too near the other numeric keys and its too easy to hit by accident in mid dial? GGRRrr!
It my personal iPhone bugbear and that its too easy to accidently trip mute and/or loudspeaker in use. Hopefully voice activation will be easy to use and accurate(!) ? Maybe this will help.
Enough of the existing 2G and 3G iPhone benefits work overall well enough and are smoothly integrated and the phone has always been reasonably well integrated with mobile me, google, mail and other external apps and wifi and networks. So I hope the new model will also be smooth.
Its been a great personal cloud appliance for me I have to admit.
The iApps store has revolutionised the iPhone in neatly extending its practical use and it helped make mine very much more useful and adaptable, some of the games are great fun and serious apps are also a real pleasure.
Its astonishing to see the iPhone and iTouch evolution in such a relatively short timescale of around just a couple of years and with over 40million sold. Apple appear to enjoy a real winner with existing IPhone and the new iPhone 3GS at least at launch and on paper looks to help Apple continue to raise the bar in the smart phone category.
It doesn't seem that long ago talk of any Apple phone seemed far fetched and here we are on major third update. Where on earth does it all go from her I wonder?
Tempted and will try and wait a quarter or so to update to 3GS as I did with 3G upgrade.
Maybe will wait longer. These are tough times and I should be a bit careful.
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Nice update to Mac Book Pro and Mac Air - incremental perhaps rather than revolutionary.
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Mac OS v10.6 'Snow Leopard' looks a well considered and likely to be faster and looks slicker interface nice to see a lowish proposed upgrade price in these tough times.
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Safari 4.0 even in Beta and now I've tried 4.0 for real appears to be 'brighter' and maybe just a little bit faster (?) is a pleasure on Mac platforms.
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Pity no multitouch tablet annoucement, the rumoured 9.7" or 10" job or similar 'netbook' or mini 'Kindle style' Macnetbook would've been interesting, but no matter my wallet is a bit safer now!
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That Steve Jobs did not appear is understandable and I'm sure we all wish him much better health. That things continue so strong for Apple is a tribute to both him and the Apple teams.
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Well Done Apple. All in all and given no major hiccups in the roll-out and there are always minor bugbears, it appears to be a fair if not good update day for Apple's existing and potential customers and for Apple themselves.
I applaud Apples move towards better green credentials after the criticisms in this direction over recent years. Shows they are putting a real focus and effort on this and its moving in the right direction.
Roll-on Mac World 2010 - wonder whats in store for then! Meanwhile will enjoy some of the latest as it all comes online, even if its just the software updates.
Big Ask for Apple Please: Hopefully in future Apple can make things run a bit cooler and consider cooling slot positions on Macs a bit better - the Macs just feel to run so very hot!
It's still cheaper than what we pay here in Australia.
The current 8G iPhone 3G was released at $US199 (~$AU250, £124), but at launch here in Australia it cost > $AU1,000. The cheapest you can get it now is $AU799 (~$US630 / £394).
I expect the new 3GS 16Gb will be priced >$AU1000 (~ $US790, £490) when it launches too.
Of course they screw us for all high end phones here in Australia, not just the iPhone.
Nothing is more interesting and stimulating than reading the pithy humour and subtle wit of the iPhone/Apple detractors. Oh, "iTard", how droll and original - you must be the life and soul of the party sir!
Do you guys realise that when people like something, they're not actually criticising you? You don't have to take it personally.
Anti-fanbois are just as bad as the fanbois: You're just the other side of the same coin. Grow up and get a life.
At last, the 3G comes down to a reasonable price. I will admit that the tap-to-focus feature is interesting, as is the "better" camera (for some definition of better). However, the compass feature is bollocks. Who needs it? Geocachers? They want GPS. City dwellers? They don't know which direction the sun rises and careth not. Now if I were herding cattle, driving them to market across the wide empty expanses of Devonshire, I might need it.
Otherwise, I'll take the 3G at the good price.
Please someone, I really don't get this.
Teathering, something I could do with my 2110i in 1995 and with just about every phone since, either via cable, bluetooth or WiFi. Why would I want to pay extra for this? How can they enforce this, or are most people too lazy to swap the SIM to another phone/dongle?
Surely most people just have a seperate dongle or built in HSDPA these days anyway, which would still be much cheaper than O2's £ 15/pm.
3.2 MP camera. So, entry level. Even basic phones like the £ 99 cheapo LGs are 5MP now. I'd expect HD video and editing from a company associated with the media industry like Apple. So not a phone for photos or media creation. I wont mention video calls as nobody uses them.
7.2 Mbps HSDPA, seems ubiquitous these days. I thought that 21 Mbps was where most networks are heading (with 42 Mbps in the next couple of years). Can it support this and HSUPA etc as not a lot of use for teathering (on an 18 month contract) without.
3G, Video and MMS.. umm, welcome to 2003 Apple.
Also, why is everyone quoting the price as sold with an exceptionally long contract (24/18 months). By that reasoning competitors should be quoted with a negative cost due to cashbacks, free games consoles etc. What's the real cost SIM free (if/when available)? I'm still struggling to understand why people would pay over £ 1000 extra over 24 months, rather than just buy a phone outright and go SIM only - or is this still a part of the "credit culture"? :-)
And finally, it's exclusive in the UK to O2, the company with the poorest 3G coverage of the 5 networks (and the only one with no usable 3G anywhere I might need it).
I'm serious, I don't get it. I have an E71 for email and a 2 year old N95 and would love to find something nice to replace them. At the moment this looks like an N97. At a cost of less than £500 SIM free this would save me around £ 1000 over the iPhone+contract over 18 months, yet it appears a much more capable phone. I mean, the iPhone doesn't even have an FM transmitter, something even the N85 has? On a "music phone"? WTF?
Paris, 'cos have you seen the cost of using any phone with data there!
Unfortunately when you go through life comparing things on cost you won't get it. For example why by a Bmw, a Vauxhall also drives and costs less.
Looking at it from that angle you will never get it unfortunately. Just use one for a while and you will figure it out :-) same with osx really. It is those little things and how it all integrates seamlessly that make a big difference.
Looking forward to that one, the current one needed a bit more oomph and tethering will save a lot of ppl having to jailbreak their phones :D
What strikes me is how many ppl rise on every iphone article ... most of them don't have one, but somehow ... they have to say something about it, why bother ? if you don't like the product, nobody forces you to buy it, do they ?
Anyway, I'd like to know why they bothered with mms , surely email is a better protocol to adopt, across al IP capable devices.
Sir Alan Sugar didn't get it either... why pay £13 for a box of chocolates when you can get one for £5 - the £5 chocolates win. Wait - the £5 chocolates taste horrible ! Who cares, they are both edible and offer the same number of calories.... I wonder why Sir Alan doesn't drive around in a Skoda.
Do you wear a Seconda watch, get your clothes from Primark etc.... after all, the products do the same thing and are much cheaper ? Nothing wrong with that of course, it's just that people do pay for "labels" and quality even if it doesn't make economic sense.
I don't own one single Apple product but I can see why others do. I'm considering getting a 3GS once O2 publish their business tariffs.
I was comparing what appears a better product for a lower cost. I've used both previous models of iPhone and found nothing on them to convince me that they're more use (to me) than a £15 Nokia.
The interface is very pretty, but it's all form over function. I'd willingly pay 10 times the price for a well engineered BMW (or Lexus, Jag etc) than a Vauxhall with a pretty paint job.
Unfortunatly, to my eyes, the iPhone is the Vauxhall with cosmetic gloss, but at 10 time the price of the more useful (and to me usable) phone.
BTW I've also used OSX, Windows and may other OSs. I settled on Linux (Ubuntu and CentOS). Cost was not a consideration as it's not normally when I choose a phone.
That's why I don't get it. Of course if a phone is only for show and you never need to send txts to more than one person, take decent pictures or listen to music, then it makes perfect sense.
Paris, 'cos I had the wrong icon last time!
Its only taken Apple 3 years to include MMS, Voice Dialling, Video Recording and a 3 MP Camera! Yes radical features that no one else has thought of. Im sure Nokia and SE are kicking themselves. Still no idea if you can send files via Bluetooth. Might be bearing it in mind for next year?
A bunch of features we've seen before. Even the touch focus thing on some Symbian phones. It *still* doesn't have cut and paste. What happened to the Nano rumours? Are they waiting for Steve Jobs to come back before showing something special.
All this does is annoy existing owners because they've now got the old one and are locked into 18 month contracts without providing anything special enough for those people who've already decided against an iPhone to change their minds.
For those wondering about costs
18month contract pm/purchase
16gb £29.38/£184.98 £34.26/£184.98 £44.05/87.11 £73.41/Free
32gb £29.38/£274.23 £34.26/£274.23 £44.05/175.19 £73.41/96.89
24month contract pm/purchase
16gb £34.26/£87.11 £44.05/Free £73.41/Free
32gb £34.26/175.19 £44.05/96.89 £73.41/Free
So basically it is more expensive than last time round, and o2 want you fro 24 months, and they won't let you upgrade.
@Jonathan Cohen an lg (or any other phone for that matter) could have 3mp or 300mp, it will still take s*** photos compared to a proper camera with proper glass elements or s*** video compared to a decent camcorder, if you want hd video for non youtube purposes, buy a decent camcorder. Infact there is an argument for syaing that mobiles with silly pixel counts like 8mp or higher just take noisier crapper photos.
I've been considering purchasing an iPhone for a while now and have waiting for the new one. I've just done some calculations.
Currently I am on o2 Simplicity paying £20 per month on a 30-day rolling contract. This includes more texts and minutes than I use and unlimited Internet. I will have to buy a new phone in the next 24 months which will probably set me back £100 second hand. Therefore:
£20.00 x 24 = £480 + £100.00 = £580 / 24 = £24.00 per month
Looking at the various new iPhone tariffs the cheapest is as follows:
£34.26 x 24 = £822.24 +£ 87.11 = £909.35 / 24 = £37.89 per month
Therefore the new iPhone 16GB is going to cost me roughly £13.89 per month extra than I would have paid anyway. (The 32GB will cost about £4 per month more but I don't really need the extra). Will I go for it? Definitely!
or the £17.5632GB for Is it worth it?
Damn you O2.
I bought a 16GB iPhone 3G just after launch for £159. Cost now for a 16GB iPhone 3GS has gone *up* to £184.98. If you want the 32GB version you've got to fork out a whopping £274.93. I'm not sure what the 8GB model cost before, but it's £96.89 now, far more than the $99 it costs in the US. Also I'm sure the cheapest tariff used to be £25, and that's been raised to nearly £30.
Tethering also seems very expensive to me, and more costly for consumer customers than business customers.
Additionally, when the iPhone 3G came out O2 let original iPhone customers upgrade straight away. Seems that this time round you have to wait until your contract is up, or buy out your contract.
That's not just lousy, that's very lousy. We're being gouged. :-(
Well I upgraded from the original iPhone to the 3G this time last year thanks to O2's offer of being able to replace the original 18 month contract with a fresh one (which from what I can gather was purely down to the fact the original iPhone wasn't subsidised). I was on (and remained with) the £35 18 month package which offered the iPhone 3G for either £99 (8GB) or £159 (16GB) - which was roughly equivalent to the $199 and $299 price points for the US (with a bit of variation due to taxes and subsidies I imagine).
This time around the 3GS is being offered in the US for $199 and $299 again, this time for 16GB and 32GB models respectively, while the 8GB 3G has dropped to $99. Here in the UK, ignoring the temporary VAT decrease for a moment, the £35 18 month contract will now get you the 3G 8GB for £99 (no reduction), the 3GS 16GB for £189, or the 3GS 32GB for £280!!
While the US gets the 16GB 3GS for what the 8GB 3G cost last year, we get stuffed with it costing even more than last year's 16GB model! And the 32GB model is right up with what the original unsubsidised iPhone cost! What gives? I was under the impression that memory was dirt cheap at the moment, so why on earth is a) the memory jump commanding such a huge premium, and b) the UK prices so insane compared to the US ones? I don't buy that it is just down to the weaker pound as up until yesterday the iPhone 3G was still priced at a sensible level compared to the US. Furthermore the difference in £:$ from summer last year (~2) to now (~1.6) would put the prices closer to £120 for the 16GB 3GS and £190 for the 32GB 3GS.
It's like Apple & O2 haven't noticed there is a recession going on and thinks people have money to burn. They clearly aren't interested in having people upgrade from the iPhone 3G to the 3GS as they are insisting on having people pay up the remainder of their contract before being able to upgrade (and if those people do wait until January 2010 and beyond they will probably be just as likely to either wait till the next iPhone comes out in June/July next year and not bother with the 3GS at all, or just ditch O2 and go somewhere else). At these prices I'm pretty sure they won't exactly be inundated with new customers either. I imagine the only ones they may get will be owners of the original iPhone who for whatever reason didn't upgrade to the 3G last year, assuming they aren't completely put off by the price.
I for one will be sticking with the free 3.0 OS upgrade and then thinking very seriously come January whether I want to stick with O2 or not. It's even making me think of moving away from the iPhone next time I get a new phone too if Apple & O2 continue to think they can get away with trying to rip us off like this...
He wasn't just comparing on cost, he was comparing on capabilities with reference to cost. You smug goit.
So that's 4 (4?) revisions of the iPhone, and it still can't do as much as the phone I bought that came out before it. Like Jon, I would love to upgrade my massive brick mini-laptop phone thingy, but there's just nothing out there that compares with it for sheer capability.
I love the iPhone, have done since day one. I'm not a "fanboi" but i'm a big mac user and been an Apple stalwart for years now. The only thing that has stopped me getting an iPhone has been the o2 exclusivity. I'm a T-Mobile man as they give me the best 3G signal in my area, plus i'm on a brilliant deal with them.
Its a shame, because the network in this case is the deal breaker for me. I'm more than happy to pay the money for the phone, i just cant use o2.
However, the Apple website shows that they have dropped the price of a PAYG iPhone 3G to £342 from £394, so I'm hoping that when the 3GS itself comes out, the 3G drops in price again. If thats the case then i'll be getting one and putting a Turbo-SIM in it. A mate of mine has been using his with a turbo sim for ages and it works perfectly, even on services like the app store.
That solution also lets me keep my number and my current contract benefits.
You would have thought, in the interests of making money all ways, Apple would release the phone to all networks, create revenue streams from all angles.
I'm no Apple fanboi but have you really used both previous versions of the iPhone? I mean more than a casual glance in the O2 shop on a rainy saturday morning?
"if a phone is only for show and you never need to send txts to more than one person"
I regularly send emails to all 3 of my kids (and the wife's 2 kids) at the same time, quite simple really, look up a contact to add and then click the little + icon and look up another contact, click the little + icon and look up another contact................
"take decent pictures"
I have this quite clever device for that, its called a "Camera", its called the iPhone, not the iCamera and as such doesnt really need a top of the range camera built in. By the way, I have taken several "snaps" on the iPhone when I didnt have my camera to hand and they are perfectly acceptable quality for what I want (namley showing the subject of the photo I just took the photo of the photo I just took of them on the tiny little screen)
"listen to music"
I repeat, have you actually used the iPhone. OK the built in "speaker" is a joke and they really shouldnt have bothered but put in a decent pair of headphones and I have all my music at my fingertips
OK, this 3Gs is what the original iPhone should have been but we all know Apple are the masters of selling nice shiny underspecced, overpriced tat (thats why I never had any apple kit before my iPhone)
No, I wont be upgrading, I'll just get the software update. I do have to agree with some of the detractors, there are a LOT of features missing from the iPhone that have been in other phones for a long, long time. There are probably a lot better, cheaper phones out there. I also agree with some of the fanbois, if you have never really used the thing then dont slag it off because of some stuff you read somewhere about how bad it is. The major drawback is the O2 tie in, if it wasnt for the fact my employer is on O2 then I certainly would never have got my iPhone!
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