It’s OK people, put down the pitchforks and dowse the torches I’ve finally gotten around to documenting my reactions to good-old-Steve’s announcement on Monday for the 3G iPhone (Apple’s worst kept secret ever). This is how it’s going to work; I’m going to run through the bigger features of the phone and basically pick at stupid tiny mistakes just like every other blogger out there in teh internets using my trademarked sarcasm tone. You know you love it ;)

3G over EDGE
In Apple’s haste to launch the iPhone last year they pretty much forgot the rest of the world and built the phone using around it’s US-centric core market (as usual, but fair enough) meaning that if you were to use the thing in any other country you had data speeds of a mule. Granted the phone wasn’t actually supposed to be available outside the US (for the most part) but besides 3G being better and faster it actually opens up the Asia-Pacific market as well as more of Europe. Personally they should’ve had this in the first place if you ask me.

The App Store
For those of you who’ve unlocked your iPhone already you’ve probably got a great app on it called “Installer”. Well Apple have basically ripped it off and chucked in some DRM and a costing structure to provide a more “approved” style of application deployment. It will be interesting to see just how many people still unlock their phones now that this has come about (other than to use it on other networks) and just what will happen to the booming developer market utilising Installer. I’m sad to say it but I think it will disappear pretty quickly, but who knows hey?

Exchange (ActiveSync) Support
This is a biggie and RIM (the Blackberry dudes) will be shitting themselves now. It was bad enough that the iPhone last year encroached on their market share without having Exchange integration where as now they’re looking at a massive dip should everything actually work the way it’s supposed to. If I had shares in the poor Canadian lads I’d be jumping ship rather quickly, it’s not like they didn’t see it coming, we all knew Apple licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft some time ago which explains their soon to be released touch screen based Blackberry Thunder. Good luck RIM, you’ll need it!

MobileMe
“Exchange for the little people” as I like to call it. Forget that crap .Mac that Apple has been blatantly screwing people over with for years, this might actually be worth the US$99/year! MobileMe essentially syncs address book, calendar and email between your phone, web and computer. Better yet it’s fully supported over Mac’s & PC’s which shoves another hot poker in RIM’s ass. On top of that they’re bumping up their only DAV storage (iDisk) to 20GB and then you have the other stuff in there still like web hosting still, but no one really cares. Oh and what’s with “MobileMe”, the marketing guys take a few months off when you came up with that one?

GPS
Now this is what I really wanted. I have no use for GPS really but I’m a sucker for the technology, it just makes me all warm & tingly! Whilst Apple’s implementation of GPS in the new iPhone is basically locating you on Google Maps and geotagging photos wait until 3rd party guys really get things going. True there’s yet another social network that already have an app out (loopt) but give me car navigation, star maps and all that junk. I can’t wait!!

Black & White
Apple has a long history with white products, the iPod was one of the main reasons that Apple are still around today and they owe the colour a lot of praise for that; however, in recent times the colour white has been used more as a marker to separate consumer based products from professional. With that in mind I think it’s a pretty smart move for Apple to offer the choice. You’re student will generally like to stand out with the latest fashion of white while your law firm exec is most likely going to take the more perceivably accepted black approach. Also they’re only offering the white on the more expensive version, again another trademark (and clever) Apple move.

What’s missing
1. A 2nd video camera, for those six people out there that actually enjoy using video chat on your 3G phone you can’t do it. Personally I could care less but I’m sure you’ll hear lots of bitching about it.
2. There needs to be more memory! Yes it’s bumped up to 16GB, yes you get better battery life, and yes the thing’s supposedly cheaper but 16GB? Come on!! Minimum, MINIMUM 32GB please!
3. MMS or “Picture Messaging”. So the American’s might not use it much, the rest of the world does. I guess we’ll just have to resort to 3rd party apps again that have crippled functionality when it comes to that department for the time being.

Well I think that just about covers it all. I know there’s things like battery life I didn’t talk about much but I’m fine with the current life and it’s boring, so there. You’d have to be from another planet to not understand that I’m getting one the day they’re available on July 11th I mean come on people, it’s the iPhone 3G!!!