iPhone 3G?

I’d bet good money that they ship a new iPhone. If nothing else, they’ll add new colors or something.

If Apple don’t release the 3G phone, who cares ? From an Australian viewpoint it’s going to be a complete disaster unless telcos offer a good flat-rate unlimited data plan.

Data for cellphones in this country is so damn expensive most people rarely if ever use 3G features. For example, one of our telcos (Vodafone) sells a data plan for $19.95 a month with a whole 5Mb of data – and charges around $0.49c/kilobyte over that… That’s $4900 a Gigabyte !!!

Who the hell can afford that ?

Admittedly that’s at the extreme end of the spectrum, but my own telco (Telstra) is almost as bad, and there are NO CAPS on broadband usage – so those less careful can get some really REALLY nasty bills.

jon

Jon: actually if they did delay a 3G iPhone, it’d really help me out because I wouldn’t have any competition for AT&T’s 3G network and it’d remain fast so I could do more live Qik videos. I really expect a 3G iPhone to greatly reduce the quality of that network. Luckily here in America we don’t have such nasty restrictions, otherwise my bill would really be huge (I have done about 100 hours of videos now on Qik with my cell phone at 300 kbps of 3G that’d add up quickly).

I posed this same question in my blog this past week, it also got picked up by SeekingAplha.com, this past Friday. The reaction I got was surprising, in that I was labeled by some to be irresponsible to event put forth such a notion, a basher. When that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I think Apple would be better not to diminish the message that WWDC should be all about, and that’s a 3 prong strategy for the future direction of Mac OS X; iPhone, Macs, and the enterprise. The intro of the iPhone will dilute the overall message.

If this report is correct then I would love to know what is in those boxes that Apple is supposedly shipping around the US ATM.

If not new iPhones, then what is an “electric computer”?

Down here is South Africa the networks do provide “unlimited” internet for the Blackberry, but I would wonder if they would let a 3G and bandwidth hungry phone like the iPhone the same courtesy.

A standard data contract from the cellular operators comes with 1GB of data for about $45 on a 24 month contract including the modem. I just hope the iPhone is the start of something new for our local Vodafone subsidiary.

Like I said, my source isn’t very reliable and might be pulling my leg. Probable, even. And, I’ll be hanging out near an Apple store just in case something cool does come out.

1) Apple has suspended sales of the iPhone.
2) Apple has publically stated they wish to sell 10m iPhones.
3) You can’t sell iPhones if you don’t have iPhones.

A new iPhone is the only thing which explains taking them off the shelves. Else, they’d keep selling the old ones.

Gary: like I said, a new iPhone is probably coming Monday, but there’s one in development that is having troubles getting finished. So, that’s probably where these rumors are coming from. And, like I said, my source isn’t very good. Of course that hasn’t stopped other bloggers from printing photos that other bloggers say are fake. Apple sure has created a PR monster: we can’t help ourselves!

Jon: The UK was in a similar situation until a year or so ago, with telcos seeing data users as a small, vulnerable captive audience they could exploit to an unlimited extent; one guy I know racked up a three figure bill checking his e-mail over the weekend, I had an “unlimited” Vodafone plan (three figures per month, in USD) which had a low usage cap and appalling performance.

Now, however, they’ve changed completely: it’s finally occurred to them that a reasonably-priced data plan will actually sell to consumers in profitable volumes — and several of them introducing caps on the daily cost of pay-as-you-go plans for data as well. One telco, Three, is even bundling free Slingboxes and promoting video streaming to their handsets as part of the $20/month (10Gb/month) pack! I imagine Australia will go the same route quite soon.

Between the level of expectation built up and the way the existing iPhones have been cleared off the shelves now, there MUST be some form of new iPhone coming on Monday. It wouldn’t surprise me if this just switched to 3G (a replacement baseband), with a more dramatic change (better video capabilities, higher resolution etc) coming later as “iPhone 2″.

You might be right, Robert, about at least *one* phone getting delayed. Reuters are speculating about there being an entry-level version of the phone – and many have talked about the iPhone nano for a while. Perhaps it’s that phone which is suffering the delays?
Damn them and their PR. I really don’t get on well with Apple hardware and software and yet here I am whipped into a frenzy by them yet again. How do they do it? I KNOW I’m going to hate the thing when I actually use it, but I can’t help myself. Very much looking forward to tomorrow.

1. The highly questionable Barron’s report is about an order reduction and slowed production (10.5 million by 4Q instead of 12.5 end of 3Q), not an inability to produce nor a delay in launch

2. Infineon produces the mobile communications transceiver not ARM processors — so your rumor isn’t linked at all to this questionable report (which is still very positive for Apple unless you have absurd expectations).

3. Your “source” can’t even correctly identify hardware in existing hardware — no need to claim he’s compartmentalized from future products.

4. You yourself admit your sources suck and have no confidence in them or your own reporting.

5. You just added to the noise. No surprise there.

What’s funny about these telcos is that they’re all switching to unlimited data plans (or the likes), and Internet providers are looking to cap the networks with the same crap that mobile companies are moving away from.

On top of that, it seems highly probable for a 3G iPhone to at least be announced at tomorrow’s WWDC. I’ll be waiting anxiously to see what happens and rush to the Apple store if anything.

The 3G network very well may take a beating because of the iPhone so I hope AT&T is prepping up really well. I just wish the iPhone was opened up a little bit more so I can connect it to my MacBook Pro and use it as a darn modem!

Your sources are bullshit.

Great post (as usual). Very informative. For people like me who are not that technologically knowledgeable about the mobile space, a few words in regard to exactly what 3G is and why I’ve been hearing it is so important (what it means in the evolution, what new capabilities or features etc.) would be helpful. I believe that I read that there are more cell phones (or phones in general) in use in the world than PC’s . That is interesting.

In regard to Friendfeed breaking news earlier than TechMeme, that is interesting as well. I know with the China earthquake, Robert’s focus on Twitter being the newsbreaker. In general, is the news that is being broken (or arriving early) on Friendfeed arriving from Twitter (or some other outside source from Friendfeed), or is it being inputed directly into Friendfeed?

Is this the same source, related to your wife I believe, who told you a Mac tablet was imminent?

It’s also highly misleading to say that the iPhone has a three-core ARM.

It has three separate ARM cores on board – they’re not part of the same CPU. Little screwups like this continue to demonstrate your technical incompetence.

The sad truth is that your blog is a business. What’s worse is that you and your pals use “Wag the Dog” techniques like fake arguments/dustups to generate page views. It’s pathetic and indicative that the A-list blogging community has taken on the worst characteristics of the cheapest forms of media.

I think they could get away with not shipping a new iPhone on Monday, but they would have to unveil the phone’s details, at least.

I could even see them setting a ship date for the 1-year anniversary of iPhone 1.0 or pushing into July/August, as long as they announce the specs, pricing and other details at WWDC.

So much of their developer efforts have been around the iPhone SDK and I know of several software developers who are stuck in neutral with products they’ve been working on specifically for 3G iPhone. It would be a huge disappointment if, failing having the phone in stores, they didn’t at least give us a date and price.

“And, like I said, my source isn’t very good.”

Then what’s the point? That line might have been a good one to include in the first paragraph.

I tend to also believe there’s a high-ish likelihood that Apple is working on one than more model for release this year, or certainly at least they’re working on more than one model at a time (regardless of release timeframes).

I think this post was difficult to read with so many side comments in parenthesis, right in the middle of a thought.

Greg: cause it’s a datapoint worth considering. Engadget is saying that the phone tomorrow will have the same processor as the original iPhone. So, this tells me there indeed are two different phones being worked on. The one my source worked on will come out later this year. Who cares anyway. Tomorrow we’ll all know the truth.

“Who cares anyway.”

You do.

Umm, Snow Leopard 10.6 too, plus 3rd party iPhone applications, with 10.5.4 in 2 weeks or so. But I thought the touch-screen mini-tablet was going to hit, but it might all be 10.6, 3G and way way cheaper subbed iPhones.

The BIG RUMOR be if they are finally gonna bless OS X on PCs (10.6 being Intel only), so no need for Hackintoshing, the whole lack of action on the Psystar being worth a ponder. So 10.6 and OS X on PCs? That news is way bigger than simple iPhone refreshes.

This post is a great demonstration of the problem with blogging. You simply do not quote your sources and say they are unreliable. It mqke your blog look bad and it pisses off your sources.

You ‘bloggers’ like to bash the so called Old Media but the Old Media would never report something and the say… “oh by the way what we just reported is complete BS because our sources are crap’

Welcome to amateur hour.

Your source says it huh? I can’t wait the 18 hours it’ll take to see you fall flat on your face.