iPhone 3G S To Land In Stores With A Bit Of Buzzkill
But has a new Apple iPhone arrival lost its luster? It stands to reason that an iPhone upgrade would never draw the same feverish crowds as at the iPhone's original launch two years ago -- the scent of the new, back then, was powerful indeed. And when Apple upgraded the iPhone to the iPhone 3G model in 2008, the advances in hardware and network abilities were big enough to be considered another giant step for Apple.
But this year, it's hard to work up any more buzz for Apple's iPhone 3G S now that all the details have been learned, the initial reviews have circulated throughout the tech press, and current iPhone users learn that upgrading, at least through AT&T's plan, isn't going to be silk-smooth, exactly. The upgrade to the iPhone family itself just isn't that dramatic and, with slick competitors like Palm Pre and Research In Motion's latest BlackBerry collecting headlines aplenty themselves, we're wondering if the buzz for Apple and iPhone is, well, killed.
Of course, the big iPhone story this time around isn't the device itself so much as the guts: Apple introduced a new version of its iPhone operating system, version 3.0, which with features such as cut, copy and paste have already impressed tech reviewers, including the CRN Test Center. Along with the cut, copy and paste functionality -- which allows users to select blocks of text or images and move them seamlessly between applications -- iPhone OS 3.0 also allows users to send MMS messages with video and has a new voice memo function.
But if Apple is hoping for large crowds Friday going rah-rah over MMS video messaging and the other features of iPhone OS 3.0, it may instead find recession-weary souls just a little too sick of AT&T's iPhone plan foibles. Currently, AT&T customers ruled eligible for upgrades from iPhone 3G to iPhone 3G S -- that is, they are eligible for a phone upgrade between June and September and pay $99 a month or more for iPhone service -- can purchase a 3G S for the same price as a brand-new AT&T customer ($199 for the 16-GB phone and $299 for the 32-GB).
But if you're ineligible under AT&T's knotty rules, you're paying the "early upgrade pricing" fee of $399 or $499 for the 16-GB and 32-GB models, respectively. And no contract? Forget it, sport: You're paying $599 or $699.
Granted, none of this is to say that Apple is taking a step backward or losing any of its iPhone ground (not yet, anyway). But as the iPhone 3G S arrives for purchase at Apple and AT&T stores starting at 7 a.m. Eastern time Friday morning, it feels like some of the air's been let out of the balloon.