I'll wager it doesn't have GPS, but we'll know for certain in June when the first one gets taken to bits and photographed for all the world to see. Meanwhile, cellular networks have gotten much better at doing geolocation. One handset can measure the relative signal strengths of all the different cellular base stations and use that to look up its location in a database (I'm simplifying, but not by too much). The upside of this is clear: extra functionality without needing extra hardware. The downside is training. Somebody has to wander around and measure what signal strengths are visible at which locations. As such, it's unlikely to be an announced feature any time soon.

As to this whole "just a phone" debate, it all boils down to who you are and what you do. I've got one of those awful Moto RAZRs, but I've got the calls I tend to make on speed dial (e.g., hold down the "4" key and it calls my home phone). That's fast and efficient. Will the iPhone come close? Probably not, but still worlds better than digging through the awful RAZR phone book. Likewise, it's clear that the Blackberry has gone through some insane amount of usability testing. Regular users can crank through their email fast. Did Apple focus just on eye candy or did they do serious usability work as well? We'll have to wait and see.

Based on today's NYT article, it looks like there will be third-party apps, but it will be a closed world, where Apple has to bless your app. This is similar, I suppose, to what you can get for iPods these days. That tends to work against many of the custom things you'd want, like an ssh client, but I'll bet somebody, somewhere figures out a way around it. At the end of the day, it's just a computer, and computers are general-purpose beasts.

Intriguing quote from that article:

Quote:
The device is not currently compatible with the faster 3G wireless data networks that are driving sharp gains in cellular revenues in the United States, although several Apple insiders said the phone could be upgraded to 3G with software if Apple later decides to do so.

Somebody tearing the hardware apart may find hints of the 3G support, if it's actually there, since 3G runs on a different frequency (right?).