Today at the WWDC 2008 at San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs has responded to many woes as far as the iPhone software and hardware are concerned. Talk about timing in response to growing excitement hype.
Here’s the check list:
- 3G network support
- Enterprise support
- Third party application support
- More countries
- More affordable
Apart from 3G which allows almost triple the speed over EDGE networks, and it approaches WiFi speeds regardless of any accessible WiFi around you. Apple’s measurements indicate it’s 36% faster then competitor mobile phones Nokia N95 and Treo 750. The 2nd gen iPhone comes with GPS, or more precisely A-GPS which uses cell tower location info to improve precision while consuming less battery juice. GPS functionality has been nicely integrated into Google Maps where you can see where you are with an overlayed pulsating dot. That might make your childhood wet dreams related to action movies finally come true.
Enterprise support will be available out of the box (as a part of the upcoming iPhone 2.0 firmware software) and it will include push (instead of the usual information pull model) of email, contacts, calendars, auto-discovery, global address book, remote wipe. These push features will come as a part of MobileMe service. Enterprises will be able to distribute apps selectively within the enterprise, i.e. to their employees’ iPhones only. They authorize iPhones within their enterprise and then create applications that just run on those phones. The apps can be distributed just through their intranet.
Third party application support will be made though iPhone SDK. It has the following parts: Cocoa Touch, Media, Core Services, and Core OS. Core OS makes use of the same kernel as Mac OS X. Nice! Tapping core functionality of existing Mac OS X applications. Core Services includes everything from a complete database layer to core location, for easily building location-based functionality into applications. Also a very fast implementation of OpenGL. 3rd party application development will be possible using development tools like xCode, Interface Builder, the iPhone simulator, and Instruments. Some of the APIs that will be available are: Address Book API to access contacts, as the Core Location API for implementing location-based apps. Applications developed by 3rd party developer will be available to iPhone users via App Store, and Apple will take 30% off any purchase, where the rest will go to original developers.
The iPhone 3G will be available July 11th in 22 countries. Over the coming months, iPhone will be made available in 70 countries. Apple has responded to the viral expansion of iPhones beyond the countries where it was originally made available under 2-year contracts.
Lastly, new iPhone will be more affordable. It will come in two basic versions: 8GB and 16GB. They will cost $199 USD and $299 US, respectively, and that will be the maximum prices around the world.
When Apple products are concerned something needs to be said about design. The new iPhone is 1mm thicker and wider then the 1st generation iPhone, it has black plastic back, solid metal buttons, same display, camera, flush headphone jack. It will be also available in white color. Functionality-wse, audio has been dramatically improved and now it’s possible to record sounds (virtual piano, drums, 12-bar blues “instrument”, and a bass) that can be played on iPhone itself. BTW, a SIM ejector comes in the box too.
The new iPhone is a really nice device and it’s definitely something I will consider buying in the coming months. That is, unless some appealing sexy mobile phone based on Google Android hits the market in 3Q 2008.
Here’s the first ad for 2nd gen iPhone.
