iPhone Fever

With the new 3G iPhone coming out tomorrow, people are lining up all over the world. From the man in New Zealand who plans to be the first person in the world to get one (thank you international date line) to the folks in New York city who lined up a week early.

Almost the whole team at kwiry plans to get the new iPhone, we all waited for this new 3G model.  I’m the only crazy one that plans to wait in line tomorrow morning though, we’ll see how that goes….

Interesting set of reviews came out yesterday from folks like Walt Mossberg at the WSJ and David Pogue at the NYTimes.  Their reviews were relatively lukewarm. Both have gushed about the first iPhone. Their major complaints about the new phone include:

• Batter life is shorter with new 3G data network
• At&t’s 3G network footprint is limited in some parts of the country
• The pricing for the plans is much higher, negating the lower upfront cost of the device.

While all of these are valid points, I think they’re missing the forest for the trees here.  When stating the benefits, they gloss over the amazing improvements:

• 3G data speeds transform the browsing/applications from an “eh” experience to something usable.
• True GPS is transformative, creating an opportunity for applications to leverage location in ways never before possible.
• Increased storage (up to 16GB) is essential to accomodate an individual’s desire for new applications, photos, videos and music.

I certainly agree with Walt that the new pricing plan is a signficant increase, but the old plan was a bargain compared to smartphone plans on other carriers.  I think what happened here is that the 1 month lag between Apple’s announcment and the actual release made people become used to/complacent about the new features so that they don’t seem as exciting as they did when they were announced.  In reality, they’re pretty revolutionary, I think and I’m certainly excited to start using mine tomorrow!

What do you think? Add a comment on if the 3G iPhone is truly “new” or not that much better than the first one.