3G iPhone $199 coming July 11

[N.Y. Johnny]

:downspin:

http://gizmodo.com/5014675/the-3g-iphone-is-official--july-11th-starting-at-199



Its the 2nd version of the phone everyone loves or hates.

[DarkReign]

How could you not like the iPhone unless youre a fanboy?

Im sure there are equivalents that people like "more", but how could you "hate" it?

[balli]

Im sure there are equivalents that people like "more", but how could you "hate" it?

No memory and like all Apple shit it has invasive proprietary software. Sure Google Maps is a cool feature and it's OS is nifty, but the very fact that it's made by Apple and will attempt to destroy your Windows apps/music library makes it utterly worthless in my eyes.

[Burn531]

Also from Gizmodo:

Key Features:
Charcoal Back
Solid Metal Buttons
Same 3.5" Display
Camera
Flush Headphone Jack
Dramatically Improved Audio

3G Advantage
Showing a EDGE vs 3G comparison loading a webpage, 3G took 21 seconds. EDGE...waiting...waiting...uhh...59 seconds! Same phone, same location. 2.8X faster - and they claim loads webpages faster than Nokia N95 (33 seconds) or Treo 750 (34 seconds).

Battery Life
8-10 hours of talk time
5 hours 3G talk time
5-6 hours of browing
24 hours of audio battery

And GPS!

And it's coming to 70 countries over the "next several months."

More Affordable
$199 for 8GB

$299 for 16GB (which also comes in white)

Coming July 11th
-----------------------------------
I'm getting the Black 16GB.

[Burn531]

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/06/3giphoneofficialpic08.jpg http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/06/3giphoneofficialpic05.jpg



http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/06/3giphoneofficialpic09.jpg http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/06/3giphoneofficialpic10.jpg

[remingtonbo2001]

Nice.

[angel_luv]

That is an impressive and slightly extravagant gadget.

:lol Remember back when people used to just talk on their phones?

[Dex]

Whatev. I'm posting this on my iPod touch in full web and it ain't costin me a dime

:smokin

[VinnyTestesVerde]

apple is the devil. i'm so tempted by this thing. i may pull the trigger on this, but i really want to see what additional contract requirements/bundles are required...could still be damn expensive...

[Heath Ledger]

those prices are with a 2 year agree.ent

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

I wish AT&T didn't have the exclusive. I'd re-up my contract with Sprint in a second to get an iPhone.

Being a news geek, I'm really digging that AP application.

[DarkReign]

No memory and like all Apple shit it has invasive proprietary software. Sure Google Maps is a cool feature and it's OS is nifty, but the very fact that it's made by Apple and will attempt to destroy your Windows apps/music library makes it utterly worthless in my eyes.

Hmmm, in my experience it has done none of the above. Memory? Do you mean RAM or storage? Entire music library on my wife's.

Destroy M$ music libraries? Not even remotely true. I have both libraries in tact and running as well.

I just dont see what you mean, then again I may not be interpreting you correctly either.

[King]

There really aren't enough new features on it to make me upgrade to it.

3G? Great - now it loads pages 50% as fast as a computer as opposed to 70% as fast.

Flush audio jack? I have the $8 adapter, and it works great.

Better audio? I don't use those speakers as a player.

GPS? The one in my car works better.

I love my iPhone - but there aren't enough new features on this one to justify the money to 'upgrade.' Especially because the SDK and updates are going to make the v1 just as good.

[exstatic]

How could you not like the iPhone unless youre a fanboy?

Im sure there are equivalents that people like "more", but how could you "hate" it?

I'd hate it if I bought one of the originals that have the shitty slower network for $600. Yeah, I'm sure of that.

[balli]

Hmmm, in my experience it has done none of the above. Memory? Do you mean RAM or storage? Entire music library on my wife's.

Destroy M$ music libraries? Not even remotely true. I have both libraries in tact and running as well.

I just dont see what you mean, then again I may not be interpreting you correctly either.
I should have said storage, not memory, my bad. If Apple works for you cool, I don't mean to hate, but here's my deal-

My music library is 100+ Gig's and for the same price as an iphone I prefer to keep it on a USB device with no software, a full web browser, enough storage to hold it all plus movies and wirelessly stream video onto my TV, etc from my network hard-drive.
http://www.archos.com/products/gen_5/archos_605wifi/index.html?country=global&lang=en

As far as itunes goes- First, it shouldn't be necessary to begin with, so I hate it on general priciple. Secondly, in my limited experience it has tried to think for me and thus it royally fucked up a music library I had spent hours upon hours editing.

This dude sums up a fairly similar problem pretty well-


I keep all my music on a network drive; that way, all the computers in the house can see it. I am smart. I know what I want. All the computers have the network drive mapped as their Y: drive, so, all the iTunes installations have their “Music Folder” location set to Y:\iTunes. And, iTunes keeps, in its library file (one on each computer) a full path for each song in the library: ex.

Y:\iTunes\Sugar\Copper Blue\02 A Good Idea.mp3
Simple enough so far.

But, when I start my laptop, which connects to the network with WiFi, it sometimes takes a little time to make a network connection. And if iTunes starts (or is already running, like when the laptop wakes from Stand-By) and can’t find the songs, it automatically changes the music folder location to the local “My Music” folder (a folder Windows creates but which I never use) on the local drive. Of course the song files aren’t there, but iTunes goes ahead and changes its library files so that all the paths for all the files to point to the My Music folder - even though the files aren’t there! iTunes thinks I'm dumb. It decides for me. So, then all the files paths in the iTunes library file end up looking like:

C:\Users\Cleek\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Sugar\Copper Blue\02 A Good Idea.mp3
Again, it does this without asking me, and it does this even though that file doesn’t exist - it doesn’t even check to see if the files exist. iTunes is actually dumb. I know what it's doing and I know it's wrong. It just silently (and instantly) changes the paths in the library files; and then when I try to play a song, it complains that it can’t find the file.

The fix is to wait for the network to connect, then change the iTunes music folder back to what it should be. But that causes iTunes to scan the entire library (10000+ songs) and match the songs in the library file to the actual song files - a process which locks me out of iTunes for close to an hour (depending how slow the WiFi is feeling that day).

This path change even happens on my desktop machines, which are hard-wired to the network, from time to time, if the network is particularly busy; and it happens every time i do an iTunes upgrade. Apple is fucking with me.

[Leetonidas]

I would love to have one of these, they look so fucking badass.

But I think I'm gonna just get an iPod Touch because I just wanna use Safari.

[Leetonidas]

ballijuana, how much does that thing cost? I've always wanted to get one.

[balli]

For the 160 Gig it's $399.00 plus another $100 for the docking station that allows TV hookups. I'm not sure about the prices on the other ones, but there's an 80, 30 and 4 Gig with an SD slot too. I'd guess that they get cheaper and cheaper as you go down in capacity. It's the best electronic device I've ever owned.

[VinnyTestesVerde]

There really aren't enough new features on it to make me upgrade to it.

3G? Great - now it loads pages 50% as fast as a computer as opposed to 70% as fast.

Flush audio jack? I have the $8 adapter, and it works great.

Better audio? I don't use those speakers as a player.

GPS? The one in my car works better.

I love my iPhone - but there aren't enough new features on this one to justify the money to 'upgrade.' Especially because the SDK and updates are going to make the v1 just as good.

totally. if i got one of the first gen models i definitely wouldn't upgrade. i'm interested in the new capabilities and the price cut. although i'm also ridiculously afraid that in one year the ridiculously cool iphone 3 will be released. apple's bad about that.

[tlongII]

Technology is converging so that TV, phone, computer, internet, music will all be supplied by the same device. This is a step in that direction, but it's not to the point where I want it yet though.

[N.Y. Johnny]

http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/06/att-announces-voice-and-data-p.html


From AT&T:

* With a two-year contract, the price of an 8GB iPhone 3G will be $199; the 16GB model will be priced at $299.

* Unlimited iPhone 3G data plans for consumers will be available for $30 a month, in addition to voice plans starting at $39.99 a month.

* Unlimited 3G data plans for business users will be available for $45 a month, in addition to a voice plan.

UPDATE: And you will be required to activate your phone at the store. From AT&T spokeswoman Sarah Andreani:

When customers purchase their new 3G iPhone, customers will activate the device in the retail store. This is the traditional wireless activation model that our customers are very familiar with. In-store activation should take just a few minutes and customers will be able to leave with their iPhone up and running. This will be especially helpful if any questions or issues arise during activation.

UPDATE: And the only place you'll be able to buy the phone is in a physical AT&T or Apple store. The 3G iPhone will not be sold on either att.com or apple.com.





There's the deal breaker for me. I am absolutely not going to pay more for the data plan than it is now. AT&T's network doesn't justify that ammount in my opinion. I have no problem paying the $20 a month now for text and data, but 10 more is a no go. I know it may not be much but I am not too thrilled with AT&T's pathetic 3G deployment or lack of.

[leemajors]

No memory and like all Apple shit it has invasive proprietary software. Sure Google Maps is a cool feature and it's OS is nifty, but the very fact that it's made by Apple and will attempt to destroy your Windows apps/music library makes it utterly worthless in my eyes.

just how does it attempt to destroy anything? you point itunes towards your music folder(s) and it loads them. My 80GB of Music has never been affected by iTunes. Rip using third party apps, or just add the folders as you download them into iTunes and it works just fine. The unicode conversion can cause some problems, but editing the tags like you normally would using tag&rename or something similar fixes that easily. I used to hate on iTunes, but it does a pretty good job and i had no problems with it after a while. However, it's much better on Macs since it is native. I still use winamp to play music on my pc, but i have no problem using iTunes to create playlists on my iPod and iPhone and sync them.

[leemajors]

For the 160 Gig it's $399.00 plus another $100 for the docking station that allows TV hookups. I'm not sure about the prices on the other ones, but there's an 80, 30 and 4 Gig with an SD slot too. I'd guess that they get cheaper and cheaper as you go down in capacity. It's the best electronic device I've ever owned.

the component cable is around $70-80, and it's well worth it - you can output at 480i depending on the quality of the video. I watched Life on Mars on my HDTV, having converted AVI rips to h264. It looked pretty damn good.

[balli]

just how does it attempt to destroy anything? you point itunes towards your music folder(s) and it loads them. My 80GB of Music has never been affected by iTunes.

I don't know how or why, but itunes automatically split up all my music and album covers and dumped the mp3s into it's their own new folder using ID3 tags that I hadn't edited, thereby rendering the editing and organizing that I had spent hours and hours doing, obsolete.

It didn't seem to respect that I had my music set up where and the way I wanted it and expected me to use itunes itself as my default gateway into my music collection. It really sucks because I put it on my computer for about 5 minutes to help a friends ipod. I'm sure there is a way to get itunes to not do that, but fuck it, itunes shouldn't even exist in the first place.

And I know you like it and all things Apple, that's cool, whatever works right? But it just isn't ever going to be my personal cup of tea.

[Dex]

I should have said storage, not memory, my bad. If Apple works for you cool, I don't mean to hate, but here's my deal-

My music library is 100+ Gig's and for the same price as an iphone I prefer to keep it on a USB device with no software, a full web browser, enough storage to hold it all plus movies and wirelessly stream video onto my TV, etc from my network hard-drive.
http://www.archos.com/products/gen_5/archos_605wifi/index.html?country=global&lang=en

As far as itunes goes- First, it shouldn't be necessary to begin with, so I hate it on general priciple. Secondly, in my limited experience it has tried to think for me and thus it royally fucked up a music library I had spent hours upon hours editing.

This dude sums up a fairly similar problem pretty well-

I keep all my music on a network drive; that way, all the computers in the house can see it. I am smart. I know what I want. All the computers have the network drive mapped as their Y: drive, so, all the iTunes installations have their “Music Folder” location set to Y:\iTunes. And, iTunes keeps, in its library file (one on each computer) a full path for each song in the library: ex.

Y:\iTunes\Sugar\Copper Blue\02 A Good Idea.mp3
Simple enough so far.

But, when I start my laptop, which connects to the network with WiFi, it sometimes takes a little time to make a network connection. And if iTunes starts (or is already running, like when the laptop wakes from Stand-By) and can’t find the songs, it automatically changes the music folder location to the local “My Music” folder (a folder Windows creates but which I never use) on the local drive. Of course the song files aren’t there, but iTunes goes ahead and changes its library files so that all the paths for all the files to point to the My Music folder - even though the files aren’t there! iTunes thinks I'm dumb. It decides for me. So, then all the files paths in the iTunes library file end up looking like:

C:\Users\Cleek\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Sugar\Copper Blue\02 A Good Idea.mp3
Again, it does this without asking me, and it does this even though that file doesn’t exist - it doesn’t even check to see if the files exist. iTunes is actually dumb. I know what it's doing and I know it's wrong. It just silently (and instantly) changes the paths in the library files; and then when I try to play a song, it complains that it can’t find the file.

The fix is to wait for the network to connect, then change the iTunes music folder back to what it should be. But that causes iTunes to scan the entire library (10000+ songs) and match the songs in the library file to the actual song files - a process which locks me out of iTunes for close to an hour (depending how slow the WiFi is feeling that day).

This path change even happens on my desktop machines, which are hard-wired to the network, from time to time, if the network is particularly busy; and it happens every time i do an iTunes upgrade. Apple is fucking with me.

I take that back. Looks like if you try to play a song while iTunes doesn't recognize the network device / external drive, it does indeed reset the iTunes Music folder to the default location. Which of course, if you then tell it to scan for music again, it's just gonna go through all that rig-a-marole.

You might find iTunes works a little more like the way you expect it to if you go into Preferences > Advanced > Importing, and uncheck the box that says Keep iTunes Music folder organized, as well as the Copy files to iTunes Music Folder. Then it will probably more like WMP, as you would expect it to, where you completely control the management of your music.

Or you could just keep using Windows Media Player ;)

[leemajors]

I don't know how or why, but itunes automatically split up all my music and album covers and dumped the mp3s into it's their own new folder using ID3 tags that I hadn't edited, thereby rendering the editing and organizing that I had spent hours and hours doing, obsolete.

It didn't seem to respect that I had my music set up where and the way I wanted it and expected me to use itunes itself as my default gateway into my music collection. It really sucks because I put it on my computer for about 5 minutes to help a friends ipod. I'm sure there is a way to get itunes to not do that, but fuck it, itunes shouldn't even exist in the first place.

And I know you like it and all things Apple, that's cool, whatever works right? But it just isn't ever going to be my personal cup of tea.

i actually prefer PCs myself, i have been building them for the last 13 years. if i had a load of cash, i'd get a Mac Pro in a heartbeat though and run windows and MacOS on it. I've just been working there the last three years. Using MacOS every day changed my opinion of it. The only time i had iTunes "mess" with my music is when i used it to import cds into my library - it does have its own way of arranging stuff i don't like.

[DarkReign]

I should have said storage, not memory, my bad. If Apple works for you cool, I don't mean to hate, but here's my deal-

My music library is 100+ Gig's and for the same price as an iphone I prefer to keep it on a USB device with no software, a full web browser, enough storage to hold it all plus movies and wirelessly stream video onto my TV, etc from my network hard-drive.
http://www.archos.com/products/gen_5/archos_605wifi/index.html?country=global&lang=en

As far as itunes goes- First, it shouldn't be necessary to begin with, so I hate it on general priciple. Secondly, in my limited experience it has tried to think for me and thus it royally fucked up a music library I had spent hours upon hours editing.

This dude sums up a fairly similar problem pretty well-

Ahhhh, now I understand. Yeah, I do know what you mean by iTunes "thinkg for you" by re-editing the song info and collectively organizing similar but different random tracks. I turned that shit off on the first day.

Proprietary software is nothing new and will only get more popular in time. I'll save my pitchforks and torches of protest when they start charging for said software, is all.

[Jimcs50]

:bang


I got 3 of them in March for $499 each when our contract was up....now you can get a 16 Gig for $299 each that is even faster.

[leemajors]

:bang


I got 3 of them in March for $499 each when our contract was up....now you can get a 16 Gig for $299 each that is even faster.

the 3G data plan is $30/mo, and I don't think AT&T's 3G networks is anywhere close to the coverage of edge. I initially wanted to upgrade, but i'm willing to wait for 32GB at the least.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

:bang


I got 3 of them in March for $499 each when our contract was up....now you can get a 16 Gig for $299 each that is even faster.

Hmmm, that stimulus check really would have helped.

[N.Y. Johnny]

the 3G data plan is $30/mo, and I don't think AT&T's 3G networks is anywhere close to the coverage of edge. I initially wanted to upgrade, but i'm willing to wait for 32GB at the least.




x1

I agree with you too. I have no problem paying 30 bucks a month for data. I do it on a blackberry plan I have on Verizon easily. Verizon and Sprint for that matter blanket Texas pretty good. I have EVDO 3G speeds everywhere I go.

The original iPhone has a $20 data plan with EDGE. It works almost everywhere in Texas that I've been around here, even in the Hill Country so its useful and I have no problem with it.

I will not be told by AT&T to pay $30 SPECIFICALLY for 3G a 10 buck bump up FROM 20 only to not have 3G available where I go. Its pathetic, I drive past the Dominion and I'm just on EDGE after that. AT&T's 3G is mainly all along I-35 some places in San Antonio and In Austin. Outside of SA and Austin you're hit or miss or out of luck. The network is really pathetic, thats why I won't use a PDA on AT&T. Sprint and Verizon have the better data network coverage down here and I have no problem paying them because I can actually use them. Its not like once I leave San Antonio I'm stuck on 1xrtt speeds.

[Jimcs50]

Hmmm, that stimulus check really would have helped.


You got that right, Johnny.

Seriously, I always buy shit right before they either come up with an improved one or the price goes way down....my timing sucks.


:p:

[CubanMustGo]

Everyone who has ever been an Apple fan should know Apple's rule 1:

Early adopters of cool new Apple technology pay through the nose for the privilege.

[Dex]

Everyone who has ever been an Apple fan should know Apple's rule 1:

Early adopters of cool new Apple technology pay through the nose for the privilege.

True.

Although I would venture to say that the same goes for any new technology and hardware. Apple has just been making some significant changes and pioneering new technologies over the past few years that are, obviously, going to come with their own new set of problems to solve, i.e. Intel compatibility, OS X 10.5 (which, I'm sorry to tell you Windows users, is what Vista is trying to be), iPhone, 802.11n wireless spec, Time Capsule / Time Machine backups, AppleTV, etc...

The general rule with technology is that it pretty much only gets better, faster, and cheaper with time. There will virtually always be something new out that is better than what you're currently running.

[Avitus1]

I am getting this... I've already decided and I cant wait...

[Brutalis]

I could careless what these phones do now days. As long as I can text, I am happy with it.

Seriously people waste their money on such needless gadgets these days. You do not need all that crap come on nowwwww

[Heath Ledger]

I won a 16 gig itouch at a web seminar todsy screw the ipgone