As usual, we have no idea if this is the real thing, a prototype, or just a little Photoshop fakery. The most obvious difference between what Engadget saw first and what's posted here is the color on the back, but then again, why wouldn't Apple release iPhones in different colors? They've certainly done that with iPods.
None of this guarantees anything, but I will say that if I was shopping for an iPhone, the AT&T memo would be enough for me to hold off on a purchase until mid-June at least. There is an iPhone update storm coming, and the thunder and lightning seem to be getting closer together.
Nobody keeps a secret like AT&T, and by that I mean nobody keeps a secret quite so poorly. Boy Genius Report and other sites are talking up an internal Death Star memo that asks employees to hold down the fort during the June 15 - July 12 window. Vacations should be moved if possible, says management, and no additional vacations are being approved during that period.
Since AT&T pulled a similar Mr. Burns-esque maneuver last year prior to the iPhone launch, it's entirely reasonable to pin this year's lockdown on the arrival of the 3G iPhone after WWDC. It's probably not necessary to stake out your place in line just yet, unless you happen to be an elected official or have an injured knee from a previous iPhone queue. If you were planning an iPhone purchase in the next four weeks, however, this is some of the strongest evidence yet that you really should put your credit card down and think it through.
According to a post on fscklog (English translation here), Apple may use the Austrian market as the testing ground for a new 3G phone. T-Mobile Austria announced on Monday that a UMTS version of the iPhone will be available "...soon" with "more flexible" options. We assume that "more flexible options" refers to user plans.
Last September, ZDNet Australia surmised that their country could be the first to receive a 3G iPhone, noting Apple's timetable for a battery capable of supporting a 3G phone ("...late 2008") and the iPhone's launch date in Asia Pacific. A good guess, but T-Mobile's announcement seems to shoot it down.
If any TUAW readers in Austria can shed some light on the speculation, please let us know.
Everyone seems to think that Apple will be announcing a 3G iPhone this coming June, so now it is time to start rumormongering about something else. Fortune is reporting that, according to sources close to the story, AT&T is planning on taking a $200 hit on every iPhone sold (with a 2 year contract, of course). That's right, AT&T is going to knock off $200 on the 3G iPhone to ensure that everyone and their toddlers have (and use all the wonderful features that AT&T's network has to offer) an iPhone or two in their pocket.
This rumor doesn't seem too outlandish to me, given the realities of the cell phone market. Most cell phones are given away for free, since the carriers make their money from the monthly fees. The only wrinkle in the story, of course, is that Apple also receives a cut of the money from the monthly contracts. We'll see if that impacts AT&T's plans at all.
Why is it that our big sister Engadget always snares the great pre-release tidbits? Doesn't anyone want to scoop to us? Sure, we're littler. Sure, we're less well known. But we're fan-bois to the bone. Cut us and we bleed rainbow (and now styled silver).
That aside, Ryan "Da Man" Block found a source who got an advanced look at this slick sexy purported advanced unit. It's black, it's sleek and it just oozes iPhone-y goodness. According to Ryan's source, it will have 3G, proper GPS, a cool black finish and a non-recessed headphone jack. Check out all the deets at Engadget.
And think of us next time some advanced technology just happens to cross your path, won't you?
Update: Some of our readers suggest this "Next Gen iPhone" might be just a slight bit, er, shall we say, "photoshopped"? For realz? Or fake? Let us know what you think in the comments.
The 3G iPhone is (apparently) on its way. 1st gen iPhones are being remaindered and are otherwise thin on the ground. TUAW reader Joël Huxtable writes to ask "what will we do with the old iPhone?" Well, Joel, we're glad you asked. Here are a few thoughts about what you can do with that old phone.
eBay it. The iPhone may soon be previous gen but it still has pretty good market value -- especially if you're willing to take the risk of auctioning it off to overseas clients. I expect to see some enterprising people realize this soon and start a buyback service specifically intended to put blocks of unlocked previous-generation iPhones together for sale overseas in countries without official iPhone support.
iPod it. Once you've pwned your iPhone, it becomes not only a perfectly good iPod touch but one with built-in speakers and a microphone. You don't need an active AT&T account to keep using that iPhone as one of the best iPods ever built.
Kid it. I don't know about your kids but mine are constantly after me to use the iPhone. It offers a perfectly portable sub-laptop solution for hooking into the Internet at Wi-Fi hotspots. It takes a lot of the burden off our main computer and allows my kids to watch endless Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus clips.
I'm sure there are plenty of other uses as well in addition to selling, re-purposing or sharing the iPhone. You can probably set it up as a SETI host or cryptography number cruncher. Got more ideas? Let us know about them in the comments.
Update: I am not now and have never been on an iPhone contract. I use prepaid (AT&T GoPhone). The rates are pretty stinky but with good WiFi and now VOIP, I'm not hurting for minutes. When I bought my new refurb 8GB, I swapped out the SIMs and then activated with iLiberty+. It's working fine--sends and receives calls and SMS. I did not activate through iTunes.
Engadget posted about some information they received from the ZiPhone folks. According to ZiPhone, they have spotted some code in the new iPhone 2.0 beta software that suggests Apple will use the Infineon 3G chipset. The code mentions "SGOLD3," which is a series of chips that Infineon produces. iPhone currently uses the S-GOLD2 EDGE chipset.
S-GOLD3H, also known as "PMB8878," supports 7.2Mbps HSDPA and has built-in acceleration and media playback features (which, incidentally, the iPhone already has and does well). This chip also includes a higher resolution camera, 5 mega-pixels instead of a 2. Engadget notes that the processor speed stays the same.
Talk about your offhand comments getting scrutinized for every nuance of meaning. In a chat with Silicon Alley Insider, our dear Uncle Walt expresses his bemusement that a casual remark in Finland has echoed around the blogosphere so vigorously.
As we noted along with plenty of other sites, Walt's "the iPhone will be 3G in 60 days" statement seemed quite loaded with certainty -- and he'd be in at least some sort of position to know before the rest of us -- but as it turns out, Walt was basing his estimated date off of the same rumors and other remarks that we've all heard already.
It's back to reading tea leaves and the entrails of birds for us prognosticators, I guess.
You have to smile a bit at the role Walt Mossberg plays in the geekosphere -- he's like the chairman of the Federal Reserve, what with the excitement that his offhand comments can generate. In this case, towards the end of a rather interesting rant about the obstacles to video delivery ("8 minutes of horrible commercials in a 30-minute show... there are lots of people who could care less about erectile dysfunction... in the US, we really suck at broadband") captured on beet.tv, he casually mentions that the iPhone 3G is coming within 60 days. What, now?
We've been gaining confidence in the time horizon for a new rev of the iPhone hardware along with everyone else these past few days, but having the imprimatur of Mr. M on a June 3G release makes it all seem more real, somehow. Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Way back last year, Steve Jobs mentioned that a 3G iPhone would debut some time this year. Then we started seeing iPhones being clearanced. And now, Yahoo reports that the 3G iPhone is on-track for, um, real soon now -- as early as Q3 2008 with a possible Q2 launch.
Everyone and their brother has been waiting for the 3G iPhone. So is this report reliable? AT&T declined to comment on specific launch dates. Apple declined comment. Yahoo bases its article on a report by Bank of America analyst Scott Craig. But it fits into what (a) everyone expects and (b) we already know. Is there anything new here? Possibly not. More from Apple Insider and iPod observer about possible Hon Hai 3G contracts and Kevin Rose's 3G iPhone predictions.
Does this spin & speculation make any difference to your purchasing plans for the iPhone of today -- buy now, or wait until something better comes along? Let us know.
Insanely Great Mac has the breakdown on a meeting between O2 (purveyors of the iPhone in Britain) and Mr. Jobs from the UK's Financial Times, and it seems iPhone users across the pond can't get enough data. Over 60% of iPhone users use over 25mb/month of data, while only 1.8% of non-iPhone users on O2 go over that mark. That's a lot of data downloading.
It's probably not a surprise, then, that about 60% of iPhone buyers are also new to O2, which, in my estimation, means that people who switched for the iPhone also switched from a non-data cellphone, and are making up for the difference. We talked on the Talkcast a little while ago about how the iPhone isn't necessarily stealing the "business smartphone" audience away from brands like Blackberry-- it's actually attracting new smartphone users completely. And there are a lot of them-- O2 is looking to sell 200,000 iPhones in Britain by the end of January, and they say that despite Apple's cut of the profits, they're making money on every one.
Finally, we get almost-but-not-quite-final confirmation that the 3G iPhone is due next year, and that O2 will very likely carry it. Which isn't really a surprise-- seems like things are going pretty well for O2 and Apple in GB, and so it's hard to see either one of them breaking up a good thing.
The iPhone has been a big financial win for Apple. So, as pretty much everyone and their brother expected, Apple will follow up the current EDGE version with a true 3G iPhone in 2008: "later next year", according to Jobs back in September. Today, AT&T's CEO Randall Stephenson confirmed a 2008 ship date.
Apple's dedication to evolving the iPhone product line may indicate further development of non-phone platforms including the touch line and, perhaps, a larger tablet computer. Apple is not alone in exploring the wireless tablet market. Amazon recently introduced the Kindle e-reader, which sells for about the same price as an iPhone and offers fee-free (albeit limited) wireless browsing. (It also has a crappy 256 MB onboard, so if you want to talk about evolutionary dead ends, the Kindle may not survive rekindling.)
Okay I'll be the first to admit this is pure rumor, but the French Mac site MacBidouille has posted (translation) what appears to be a leaked T-Mobile (Germany) advertisement for a new 3G iPhone to be released on November 12. The specs include HSDPA/UTMS 3G data (up to 3.6 MBmit/s) plus 16GB of storage for €499 (~$684). I have to admit that this smells right to me. It would help explain the US price drop and we already know that T-Mobile will be the German carrier. Furthermore, a 2.5G EDGE phone just wouldn't cut it in Europe. On the other hand, it misidentifies the iPhone as an "iPod," but since Steve Jobs himself occasionally makes the same mistake it wouldn't be that surprising on an early draft. If this is true, the question is: will a 3G iPhone hit the US before Christmas?
Last week, Apple announced that Europe would see the iPhone in Q4 2007. Today, Gregory Ng of iPhone Matters writes that there is mounting evidence for a 3G European version of the iPhone. Pointing to an iPhone FAQ post, he suggests that a non-3G release would hinder the international success of the iPhone; 3G is far more widespread in Europe than here. Ng believes that we may see two versions of the iPhone debut in Europe: both a GSM/EDGE version and a 3G version.
So what do you European TUAW readers think? Could a 2.5G iPhone succeed? Does the iPhone need to be 3G?
MacRumors cites an ABC News [via PC Magazine] report that T-Mobile's CEO (USA), Robert Dotson, spent a bit of time at a press conference last Friday discussing what a shining example of innovation Apple is and how "Apple's and T-Mobile's visions seem to be aligned."
Dotson refused to comment on the possibility or likelihood of a T-Mobile/Apple partnership on any upcoming products or services, and even downplayed the importance of mobile music and video in the 3G (mobile broadband) marketplace, although he did speak highly of Apple's upcoming Mac OS X Leopard and more specifically the trend toward dynamic, image-rich email communications, which Mail 3.0 will be optimized for.
Perhaps there's a mobile Mail-enabled phone coming soon to a T-Mobile kiosk near you? Maybe all these years of iPhone rumors have gotten it all wrong and the future isn't about cramming MP3s onto your cell phone, but making your cell phone more useful as a text-based communication device! I don't think I'll be giving up my Blackberry any time soon, but the prospect of a better cellphone mail interface is appealing.
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