My contract with TMobile is up, and I've been noticing how much better the coverage is with AT&T/Cingular's network.

So since I'd be switching to the proper carrier anyway, I'm thinking of pulling the trigger on an iPhone pretty soon. Vixy will get my iTouch as a hand-me-down.

Anyone heard rumors about Apple doing stuff in the near future that might make me want to wait a month or so before pulling that trigger?

After all the bad language I used when I discovered the iPhone/iTouch/iTunes photo-rotation feature was utterly broken, I wouldn't expect any actual Apple folk would want to speak to me even if they could (and they can't anyway). So I'm thinking maybe the usual rumor mill might have some dirt on timetables. Anyone?

The rumormill is churning away. Of Apple rumor web sites, I tend to prefer www.9to5mac.com.

The nutshell seems to be that everybody's expecting something this summer, and there are a small number of supporting factoids that are used to corroborate this. If nothing else, Apple had lines around the block last summer. They may want to get a repeat performance this summer. They're going to need to keep innovating anyway, as other vendors have now finally gotten the clue.

I, personally, was speaking to a Motorola cell phone guy who was talking about Android and how they're all excited to be building new stuff around it. Sprint has announced that they licensed a patent, not from Apple, that claims to cover visual voicemail. One way or another, iPhone-ish features are going to start appearing from other vendors.

Browsing rumor mill sites, I'm seeing the following:

- 3G version of iPhone expected.
- Expected to launch in June with the announce at WWDC.
- Same price points and capacity as current models.
- Thinner case design.

All of the above sounds pretty solid so far. A less solid rumor is that there will be a 32-gig model at that time, also.

So I might just wait until June to pull this trigger. I'd certainly make use of the 3G. And slimmer would be very nice.

As you already said, the people who can say won't. Jobs said day one that a 3G phone would come eventually, so the existence of it isn't really a surprise.

With how well they kept the initial iPhone detailed bottled up, down to only announcing the official launch date a few weeks ahead of time, I highly doubt much info will be out there till it is nearly out.

Never trust a rumor site period. Sure, they sometimes get things right, but they also make a lot of blind guesses. The only times I have seen properly reliable info from them is the few days right before an event or product launch, but even then the info can be wrong or a hoax.

For me, I may get the 3G iPhone when it launches, but it mostly will depend on the data plan price. $20 is pretty much my limit, so if it goes up, I'll probably keep my existing unit and plan. The hardware cost of the iPhone really isn't all that much when factored against how much you pay monthly over the lifetime of the product.

I damn near almost bought the first iPhone when it came out. I didn't for a few reasons:

- no support for A2DP (bluetooth stereo audio)
- no support for DUN (bluetooth networking)
- no support for third-party software

Note that "slow networking" wasn't on my no-buy list. At this point, third party software appears to be a solved problem. I use DUN whenever I'm traveling and don't want to shell out $10 for some random WiFi just so I can get my laptop online. I realize this is less necessary when you can just use the iPhone's own interface, but it's not the same thing as using a real computer. The A2DP thing, though, mystifies me. This should be a no-brainer for Apple. It's even supported by the chipset that's already in the iPhone.

In the past year, I've found myself increasingly using Gmail (via J2ME widget) on my non-smartphone. I'm ready to make the jump to an iPhone. If/when the next-gen iPhone comes out, I'm likely to make the jump. I'm tempted, though, to wait to see what these mythical Android phones end up being all about.

FWIW, GMail's IMAP support seems to work pretty well. Not that a non-smartphone is likely to have an IMAP client.

There are plenty of non-smartphones for sale in the UK with IMAP clients.

Another rumor I've heard (that sounds pretty unlikely) is that there will be a second camera on the screen side for video calls.

I would own an iPhone this moment if it had 3G and A2DP. It baffles me that they haven't enabled the latter on the current gen. My crackpot theory is that it took so long for them to work it out, they decided to make it another feature that the 2nd gen has over the first. Sort of like how Airport Extremes could use external disks with Time Machine, but it's "not supported."

As it is, I'm going to be a little torn when the 2nd gen version comes out. When it comes to a portable video player, I've found that ~30GB is enough storage space for a decent selection of audio and video. I'm tempted to wait until the iPhone has 32GB.

The lack of bluetooth sync is just really dumb. That is a must for me. My wife has the current iPhone and the cord already needs to be shoved hard into the slot to get a connection.

I'm wondering what Nokia's response to the iPhone will end up being. I've seen some shots of a Nokia "Tube" phone, but it has a stylus. Now that is dumb! Do they really think that will compete with the full touch screen of the iPhone.

Nokia seemed to do high end phones well years ago, but for the last few years nothing in their line-up really seems all that special.

Cough cough, N95...... Although last I heard it still wasn't available in the US. You guys really are missing out.

Gah!

Work finally relented and will approve, on a case-by-case basis for a phone with a built in camera. My boss (two levels up from me) said that I could probably get an iPhone approved without too much of a hassle, but if they add another camera I'm sure that would change. That, and all the places that still won't allow cell phones with cameras makes me start all over at the beginning in trying to convince myself to get one. This makes me want to go cry in my pillow.

Why would two cameras rather than one make any difference ?

A specific "North American Model" or NAM came out in September, but I still have yet to see anyone with one. Looks like AT&T and T-Mobile haven't added it to their lineups still, and other carriers are excluded due to not supporting GSM.

Pretty much I haven't seen anyone with a Symbian smartphone in a while now that I think about it. It's either Windows Mobile crap, BlackBerries, or the iPhone.

I guess it's hard to know what we are missing when Nokia isn't pushing hard for market share here anymore. Most people here would probably name Nokia as that cheep phone company that makes all those pay as you go phones for providers.

It sounds like this rumored second one is video. Still images show a lot - depending on the subject, video show a ton more.

I thought you could take video with the current iPhones. The second camera would be so you could be looking at the screen and a camera at the same time for video chats. It would still have a camera on the back of the phone for normal cameraphone operation.

But seriously, this is all rumor anyway. Personally I think it's a stupid idea.

Amusing story about iPhones in "sensitive" environments: I was in a government-related meeting on a sensitive topic. Everybody in the room was asked to remove the batteries from their cell phones. There were several iPhone people who just kind of shrugged and turned the things off. That was okay, but I'm sure if the meeting was more sensitive, they would have forced those people to leave their phones outside or something.

Anyway, I don't know how much credence to place on the dual-camera rumor. I imagine AT&T would take an all-or-nothing approach. Either video-calls work spectacularly, or they don't deploy them at all. Given that their 3G roll-out will take years, and coverage will be spotty, I doubt they'd think they were ready for video-calls.

3G seems to be a guarantee. Any other rumored feature, I'd be less sure.

Please clarify.

If I'm waiting until June so that I can buy a 3G-enabled model, are you saying it would be years before I realized the speed gains from that feature? If so, I wonder if I should just pull the trigger now since my trigger finger is itchy.

I believe it just depends on whether there's HSDPA in your area. Check it the coverage here, though it's very unspecific. There's a link at the bottom right that merely gives you a list of cities with HSDPA coverage. I think Dan is saying that until 3G is widespread, only people in certain areas who have 2nd gen iPhones will be able to use the feature. I don't necessarily think that rules it out (as far as I've seen, ATT has little say over what Apple does - they're just grateful for the exclusivity), but I do think it's a dumb feature.

I do agree, Dan, that the only guaranteed feature of the 2nd gen is 3G.

*edit*
And Tony, I'm not sure why the timing matters. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the price of the iPhone is independent of whether you're a new customer. I just signed up with ATT in October, and they've told me several times since that they'll sell me an iPhone for the listed price. So you could just sign up now and get one of the crappy free phones with your contract, then upgrade to the iPhone later.

No not at all, you don't live in BFE. I don't know what the numbers are, but 3G covers a vast majority of the population, but a tiny majority of the land mass. The difference between 2G and 3G is like night and day. As soon as my HTC Touch hits 1xRTT (CDMA's edge), I know without checking. Tethering becomes painful. Syncing email becomes noticeably slow, and web browsing on the phone just gets worse. There's frankly no excuse for the iphone to have had edge in the first place, but if you've waited this long, wait a little bit longer.

Apple/AT&Cingular wouldn't want to roll out video calls because it's an application which just wouldn't work as soon as you hit edge/gprs. It wouldn't just be slow, it'd be unusable. (Or, in steve-speak: it works perfectly - if you're outside 3G, it seamlessly falls back to displaying the contact's icon)

Matthew

Me me me. One of the disallowed, camera wise, that is. Or anything with a data port for that matter.

Might as well go eat worms. Or buy a Moto c139.

Which is about the same.

I was only planning to make the Tmobile->AT&T switch simultaneously with the purchase of the iPhone. I wasn't planning on going to any hassle until I actually got one. And if the 3G coverage maps I'm seeing are any indication, I really want to wait for that. Thanks for those links.

I took a look at the 3G coverage maps. It's annoying that they only let you see city-level maps rather than zooming out and seeing the bigger picture. However, they let you scroll around. According to their maps, all of Houston and its nearby suburbs is covered with 3G. It would sure be interesting to know how well it might work, but the coverage is here.

If I were to drive to Austin, for example, there are two main routes I might take. On the slightly faster I-10/Hwy 71 route (switching from the Interstate to a Texas freeway roughly halfway through the 160 mile drive), I'd loose 3G coverage once I left the greater Houston area (30-60 minutes of driving) and wouldn't get coverage again until I was all the way to the south Austin (total drive time, typically 2-2.5 hours). The Houston coverage map is a largely solid blob of coverage. The Austin coverage map, however, is much splotchier. It looks like you'd only get coverage on about half of Lake Travis, for example.

Poking around, it looks like a handful of the bigger towns, like College Station, have 3G coverage, while you're out of luck pretty much anywhere else. I'm most surprised that they don't have the Interstates and other main roads covered. Back when it was all analog with a small bit of digital coverage, the coverage maps for the state looked like a halo around the major freeways.

With zero inside information about AT&T's 3G roll-out plans, I'll bet they try to get the major interstates covered before bringing the iPhone mob into the house.

The UK has had 3G for a while now and coverage is still patchy in places. However, it's hardly ever a problem as most of the phones just jump back to 2G. My N95 is the first 3G phone i've owned and for data stuff it just switches seamlessly between the two systems as and when they become available. Video calls are 3G only, but i think it's still a bit of a gimmick, i've only made two video calls since i got it.

I've always said, if i could get a 3G iPhone on orange i'd probably get one. Especially now the SDK is out. Although i think my next phone will be the HTC Tytn II. Windows mobile is crappy, but now Trolltech have got a version of Qt that runs on it, i can finally port the frontend of my control system to it without much fuss (it's all written it Qt 4).

All the meetings like that I've been to, they just collect anything that transmits (pagers are OK) and they leave them outside the room. It is just easier to avoid any mistakes or somebody forgetting or similar. There are different levels of sensitivity though.