At the beginning of the week Apple did as most people expected and announced the 3G version of it's popular iPhone. For me, this was a piece of mixed news. In my previous iPhone article, i listed the problems with the first generation iPhone, the biggest in my eyes being it's lack of hi-speed data access. Since writing this article, a few more issues have come to my attention, issues that I learned about from talking with iPhone owners. Again, these are things like the inability to use your iPhone as a modem over Bluetooth.
With the 3G iPhone expected to hit stores on the 11th of July, again through O2 in the UK, I'm eager to see what has been fixed. For starters, they have made some progress on the hi-speed access of the phone including HSDPA. Unfortunately this is limited to 1.8 mbps. It's worth noting that T-Mobile here in the UK are currently trailing their 7.2 mbps network. Apple have done it again, offering a speed that is, at the very least, half of what most devices give. In Apple's defense, this is most likely due to AT&T in the US having the worst 3G coverage map I've ever seen.
The inclusion of GPS is a welcome addition. I've actually grown quite fond of that feature on my N95 since I discovered it works from the top of double decker busses. Makes it very easy to figure out what stop you should be getting off on. Only potential drawback here is the that unlike the N95 the iPhone probably requires an internet connection all the time. Nokia released an app which will download the maps on your PC and then transfer them into the N95 so it doesn't need internet access. This was useful for me in the US as using the GPS didn't require me to pay international data roaming fees.
The only other thing that caught my attention was this new Mobile Me package. Mobile Me is Apple's total sync technology. Calendar, contacts, email etc are all managed via the cloud. Changes are "pushed" to the necessary devices which is cool and they support both Mac and Windows (only outlook thought!!!) so this services is really interesting to me as I thing that total sync like this is a Holy Grail in this day and age and something that just has never, in my opinion, been done right.
But as always, there is something missing from Mobile Me and that's proper email support. Apple are going to continue to support their .mac addresses whilst introducing a new .me address. They may even offer a Blackberry like service, where they poll your existing email account every five minutes for me emails, but in my experience, this is horrible! They need to do something like Apple or Microsoft and offer users the ability to allow Mobile Me to work like their own email domain account. If they can do that, they are onto a stronger offering. Google and Microsoft offer this mail-for-domains service for free, so surely Apple, who are charging for Mobile Me, can see fit to include this service. If they did, I would sign up, despite the fact I don't even own an iPhone at this point ;)
And that brings me to the last part - ownership. I'm currently a t-mobile subscriber and I'm 2/3 the way through an 18 month contract with them for my N95. When I moved to the UK this time last year, T-Mobile were the only network that would give me a contract and for that I'm very grateful to them. I've found them to be an excellent network and I'm very happy. When O2 released the first iPhone last year, it was on a contract basis only, but this time around it seems they'll be offering it on pay-as-you-go. This means that I can purchase one and have it unlocked. I'm not sure what the pricing will be yet, but internet rumors are putting it at around 270-300 pounds. This will be announced closer to the release date.