The new iPhone 3GS was announced yesterday at WWDC. The main changes are in the hardware. The differences are now:
32GB Option
3 Megapixel camera with autofocus
Video Recording capabilities with upload to Youtube function
Voice Control
Compass
The other new features coming to the iPhone such as:
Cut, Copy & Paste (about time!)
MMS and contact send/receive via SMS
Bluetooth transfer and A2DP support
Data tethering to your laptop (USB or Bluetooth)
Spotlight Search
Landscape keyboard across all apps
Voice Memos
will be available on the current iPhone 3G, the iPhone 2G and included oin the new 3GS. A free software upgrade to Version 3.0 of the firmware will be ready for download to the public June the 17th.
For the die-hard Apple fanboys, a Quicktime stream of the keynote speech given by Phil Schiller is now online.
Now that I am using wordpress 2.7, I thought it would be good to test the iPhone app for wordpress. This is written on the app itself. I would say that although useful it seems to be more favorable to blog from a computer. The iPhone is suited to short spurts of typing, more on the realms of SMS or twitter.
The capability of quickly adding photos and the tag/category functionality seems full featured, as shown by a photo of my dinner I made from Cook with Jamie.
The app did crash when I tried to load this post from a local draft – it looks like the iPhone app needs a bit more work.
As I posted late last night – Vodafone had not announced their pricing. They did – then retracted it. This is a major factor for an IT and tech geek who currently uses Vodafone. I’m now seriously thinking of taking my business to Telstra (I use them for Cable and Internet already – so…?!). I have partially ruled Optus out due to their lack of non-metro coverage and decisions to expand their 3G using 900Mhz technologies.
I tried to pre-register with Telstra. They still have sent me as much as Vodafone. Nothing. So I decide that pre-registering is a waste of time. Off to the stores I went:
A Melbourne CBD Vodafone store – “Sorry we don’t have any information yet”
A Melbourne CBD Optus Store – “I can’t find the flyers so I don’t know the data rates, but I think you get the 16GB for $2 a month on the $80 cap”
Telstra’s T-Life Melbourne store – “There is no info in store, come back Friday”
The Telstra bloke actually spent most of the subsequent three or so minutes expanding on my coverage comment. He mentioned “3.5G” at least 5 times, even when I said that the iPhone is a 3G device; not specifically catered to the NextG higher speeds (14Mbps).
So it is left up to me to ignore all the bally-hoo and just make a decision.
As Koops tells me: “Just buy one from elsewhere and use your computer data card to tether it via wifi”. Maybe that will be the way I go too. It’s either going to be a Friday morning purchase, or stick with my old nokia for another couple of months.
Bottom line, Vodafone has may have (see late minute official pricing) lost a customer – They missed the opportunity to NOT think of this as just another phone.
