Who Will be Happier? An iPhone 2G/3G Owner or iPhone Convert?

You'll see the iPhone 3G-S coverage on almost every news channel, from America to Europe and China. We've a feeling an iPhone launch has already become an international event. There's insanely high expectations for the new iPhone models, but most people's attention largely focused on the version 3.0 platform. In a sense, iPhone 3G-S (S denotes 'speed' BTW) is stunningly good but not groundbreaking. To begin with, it's mostly the same phone. Granted, it's reportedly twice as fast, takes better pictures, records video, connects to the Internet at greater speed, has double the storage (if you choose the 32GB), and even boosts better battery life. And on top of all, the new iPhone 3G-S retails for $100 less than its predecessor.

While all these will certainly make customers happy, the current iPhone 2G and 3G users are the ones who are going wild. This is all because they are getting a free update, which will be made available on June 17th. You just couldn't ask for a better feature list (not sarcastically speaking): MMS with forwarding; cut, copy & paste; stereo Bluetooth audio; Internet tethering; phone-wide search; push notification (for instant messaging); auto Wi-Fi login (this will kill half a dozen of related apps); shake to shuffle (like that on the iPod nano 4G) and lost phone locator for Mobile Me users. Apple could probably have thrown in video capture and hardware encryption for Exchange if not for the relatively slow ARM processor. Whether you already own an iPhone 2G/3G user or plan to switch from a Nokia or Sony Ericsson smartphone, there is a lot to look forward in the next week.

More Smartphones

• Get Apple iPhone 3GS - 32GB - black (AT&T) now for $299.00 at AT&T Wireless