Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Live from the Apple announcement, London

Quite a few sites have reported on the UK iPhone announcement today. And no one that I've seen so far, not even the rumor sites, has remarked on this tidbit regarding His Steveness' answer to a question about why they haven't launched a 3G version of the handset.

It's pretty simple, says Jobs. "The chipsets work well apart from power. They're real power hogs. Most phones now have battery lives of 2-3 hours and that's due to these very power-hungry 3G chipsets. Our phone has 8 hours of talktime life. That's really important when you start to use the internet and want to use the phone to listen to music. We've got to see the battery lives for 3G get back up into the 5+ hour range. Hopefully we'll see that late next year. Rather than cut the battery life, we've included Wi-Fi and sandwiched 3G between Edge and a more efficient Wi-Fi."
The key part being, "Hopefully we'll see that late next year." Sounds to me like Steve is pretty much saying that we'll see a 3G iPhone by late next year. Given his aversion to revealing Apple timelines, or even plans, I'd say that's a pretty significant comment. I suspect he really intends to release earlier than that, so as to maintain some surprise.

The question is, how much earlier? Dunno, but I'd say this means there's not any chance it will happen in 2007, and very slim that it will happen in early 2008 (like Macworld in January). So, if you're thinking about buying now or waiting for 3G, I'd say you're safe in assuming the wait for 3G is going to be on the long side. (via Fake Steve)

UPDATED: AppleInsider did mention it with regard to a report indicating a Q1 release for the 3G model. So there's your window of possibility. Steve is a sly one.

Jump

1 comment:

  1. Does 3G stay active on a phone while it's making a call? I've noticed on the iPhone that while on a call in a wi-fi zone it stays active so I surf the net and send a web link to the person I'm speaking with. But EDGE deactivates during phone calls.

    ReplyDelete