As expected, the 3G iPhone 2.0 has been released today, 9th June 2008 at the World Wide Developer Conference Keynote in San Francisco.
Apple users world-wide have been watching the event using live chats, or will watch the event soon. Apple will publish a video with a record of the entire WWDC Keynote tonight.
The new iPhone includes 3G network support, enterprise support, third party application support, more countries & it’s more affordable! Apple has learned a lot with the first iPhone. They have used their experiences to create the iPhone 3G. It’s thinner, has a black plastic back, solid metal buttons, same gorgeous display, camera, flush headphone jack, and dramatically improved audio!
The iPhone 2.0 Software will contain several new features. It has contact search with live-searching and full iWork document support. It also comes with complete support for Office Documents, such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It containts bulk delete & move for messages and has the ability to save images.
A new calculator with scientific mode when you rotate the iPhone has been added, as well as parental controls and tremendous language support.
iPhone improvements
3G means faster data downloads, which is excellent for applications such as Safari and Mail. Comparing download speeds between 3G and EDGE proves that 3G is a great enhancement. 3G finished the test in 21 seconds. EDGE finished in 59 seconds, hence it is 2.8x faster. When compared to other 3G phones such as the Nokia N95 or Treo 750, the 3G iPhone is 36% faster and better looking. An email attachment download took 5 seconds to download on 3G and 18 seconds on EDGE - 3 seconds on WiFi.
3G also has excellent battery life on the iPhone. 300 hours of standby, 2G talk-time now has 10 hours, 5 hours of 3G talk-time (most phones only have 3 hour 3G talk time), 5 to 6 hours of high-speed browsing, 7 hours of video, 24 hours of audio!
GPS has been included in the iPhone 2.0. The iPhone can use data from cell towers, WiFi networks and now GPS. With GPS it can do tracking. A pulsating dot is moving across the Google map as a car drives down Lombard street.
Enterprise support is fully built-in.
Mobile Me
It works like ActiveSync. Push email, contacts, and calendars. Everything is up-to-date, wherever you are.
Everything stays in sync between iPhone, Mac, and PC. Data gets synched automatically both ways. It works over the air. Changes are displayed immediately. It has support for Mail.app, iCal, and Address Book on Mac, and Outlook on Windows.
Mobile Me includes incredible Web 2.0 applications to provide a desktop-like experience on the web to work with all of the data. The address will be me.com.
A 60-day free trial will be available along with the iPhone 2.0 software in early July. MobileMe replaces .mac - The current subscribers will automatically be upgraded. The price is $99 annually.
You can watch the guided tour here.
New native Applications
The new Mail app allows panes to be resized, multiple messages to be selected like a real application, and to quick reply in-line.
Contacts
The new Contacts app incorporates lists, live search, and Google map integration.
Calendar
The calendar includes the typical day, week, and month views. Color coding and drag & drop events is supported as well.
Gallery
Allows the user to drag & drop as well as live thumbnail scaling like in iPhoto.
iDisk
Allows files to be sent to people right through the app. It includes over-the-air functionality with MobileMe. Pushed emails appear immediately on the iPhone as well as the web interface. Contacts which have been created via the iPhone will show up on the web interface. It has great support for meetings. A meeting can be added through the web-based calendar and appears immediately on the iPhone. Within seconds of making an adjustment to the calendar entry through the web interface, the update appears on the phone.
Price
Now on to the affordability. The first iPhone started at $599 for the 8GB version. The current price is $399.
The iPhone 3G 8GB will sell for only $199. The 16GB model will sell for $299 . A white version of this size will be available too!
It will be available July 11th in 22 countries. The rollout will occur in countries such as in China, Japan, Australia, etc., 70 countries total, in the next few months.
The price for the new firmware is free in early July for all iPhone owners and costs $9.95 for iPod Touch owners.