iPhone 3G Now Available!

The Apple iPhone 3G is, as of 8am, now available for purchase and promises to deliver some serious performance improvements over it's predecessor. "Twice the Speed, Half the Price" claims the Apple website.

A barrage of new applications that are available to purchase through iTunes, lots of people waiting in line and lots of hype.

When the iPhone first hit the stores I said that I would unlikely buy one, now that the price has come down to a more acceptable range 200USD I will more seriously consider it. So long, that is, I don't have to sign an exclusive 2 year contract for €80/month.

I had planned on buying a hand-held GPS (Garmen) to use when I go on motorcycle tours, but now that the iPhone comes with GPS built-in (though on the Apple website they allude to cellphone tower triangulation) it puts a check-mark in my "reason to buy" column.

Personally having a browser on a phone is totally unimportant, same goes for a camera, but certainly a "nice to have" feature that I could find uses for (e.g. taking a photo and uploading it to flickr while still on the road).

I just checked T-mobile here in Germany for plans. For €49/month (24 month contract) I can get 100 minutes of calling and unlimited data transfers, and pay €60 (8GB modle) for the phone. My current plan runs me about €20 a month and has absolutely zero extras (eg data). Something else to think about.

I think I will still wait a bit longer before buying, I want to see how the reviews of the phone pan out.

Happy Coding...