Everyday we get countless amounts of questions regarding cell phones and today we are going to answer the most common question; should I upgrade to the new 3g iPhone 2.0 coming out this June or stick with the original? Well to answer the question as simple as possible, yes. Honestly Apple has almost answered this question for potential buyers and existing owners with the lack of inventory and availability in both the US and Europe. Currently we are seeing iPhones selling for as much as $700 which faintly reminds us of the outrageous iPhone prices of iDay last June when the iPhone was first launched. Now for T-mobile subscribers and hopefully unlocked iPhone owners, the answer to this question might have a slightly different answer.
Clearly the main focus of the update to the iPhone will be the inclusion of 3g connectivity, but T-mobile USA uses the 1700MHz 3g band which will not be supported on the 3g iPhone. The other factor contributing to the decision is that the new iPhone has not been unlocked, although unlockers are already capable of handling the new iPhone 2.0 Software which will be pre-loaded on the 3g iPhone. So why upgrade to the 3g iPhone if you have T-mobile? At this point there are not many reasons to do so, since ZiPhone is a solid unlocking, jailbreaking and activation bypass tool which gets the job done for all current generation iPhones running firmware 1.1.4 and prior. If you want the safe bet, you can always stick with the current generation iPhone and then sell it unlocked once the 3g iPhone is released. Our thoughts are that the best road to venture is to give the unlockers some time and confirm that ZiPhone will work on the 3g iPhone and then make that purchase since you will be paying the same $399 as the original.
So what will be different in the 3g iPhone versus the original iPhone? Besides data speeds there are few details leaking any other prominent features. What we can tell you is that first generation Apple products are always less stable and buggy than their future generations so this could be a big factor in your purchasing decision. On the back burner, At&t has recently completed most of their HSPA network upgrade which would make it possible for the 3g iPhone to complete video calling so it is possible that we will see a front-facing camera on the new iPhone. As far as dimensions go, the leaked icons for the iPhone in the new iPhone SDK and the MacOS X update hint that the bezel will be narrower, but no major size modifications are expected.
The real questions left to be unanswered are whether the 3g iPhone will sport an improved camera, since 2.0 megapixels is not cutting it these days and we really want to see 3.0+ if possible. The existing 624MHz processor is plenty fast and we have no complaints on the multi-touch or computing speed of the existing iPhone since it has speedy performance and equally impressive battery life. It will be interesting to see if Apple is able to maintain the battery life of the existing iPhone since more speed equals less battery, but we expect the settings option to disable 3g Internet to be the path of max battery life.
Overall, the 3g iPhone is still expected to be announced on June 9, 2008 at the WWDC and until then you can expect more and more rumors to break. We would also expect an equal number of “possible” 3g iPhone images to continue to surface and we will leave you with one of the first “rumor” shots.
