New iPhone 3GS and $99 iPhone Announced at WWDC

After listening to almost two hours of iPhone app demonstrations and MacBook spec sheets, Phil Schiller finally took the WWDC Keynote where we all knew it was going to go: the new iPhone announcement.



The new iPhone has been dubbed the iPhone 3GS. The S stands for speed apparently because Schiller said "this is the most powerful, fastest iPhone ever made." He showed a comparison too, saying that the new iPhone 3GS launches messaging 2.1x faster, loads SimCity 2.4x faster, views Excel 3.6x faster and loads NY Times 2.9x faster.

Pretty impressive, but that's not all.

• New Camera is 3 megapixel with auto focus, auto white balance and auto exposure. Tap to focus on a specific part of the image. Low light sensitivity has improved too.


• Video capable! iPhone 3GS can shoot 30FPS VGA with auto focus, auto white balance and auto exposure. Videos are stored in the Picture app. Videos can be trimmed by finger taps too.


• Voice Control allows you to do what other phones have been doing for years, namely use voice commands to call people. But the Voice Control interface will also take commands for the music player.


• Built-in digital compass shows your orientation, longitude and latitude. It also links to Google Maps.


• Voice Over will read what you touch on the screen.


• Built-in support for Nike+


• Improved battery life gives you 9 hours on WiFi, 10 hours on video playback, 30 hours for audio, 12 hours for 2G talk, and 5 hours on 3G talk.

The 3GS will be available in white and black, and it will run you $199 for 16GB and $299 for 32GB. The 3GS will be available on June 19, which is nice and soon.

Here's the big news that will probably appeal to the average consumer though, especially considering that the 3GS isn't THAT much of an improvement over the 3G. Starting today, you can get the original iPhone 3G for just $99. And it appears like that deal is permanent, too.

So whether you have to have the newest iPhone or you were looking at getting an iPhone 3G anyway, this is a pretty great day for you. Just don't get too excited about AT&T; they won't even be offering MMS on the iPhone 3.0 software until late summer. Lame.

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