M1 and StarHub have officially announced the launch of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S. Sales will commence on Wednesday 9 December 2009. The prices of the phones as well as the specially priced phone subscription plans have also been announced. Prices are remarkably different from those of SingTel. There is also some differentiation between M1 and StarHub.
StarHub has announced that it will be starting to sell the Apple iPhone later this year. M1 already earlier announced their deal to sell the Apple iPhone, also slated to commence by year end. These sales will break SingTel’s monopoly over the offering of these phones since 2008. Neither M1 nor StarHub has announced pricing of the phones and subscription plans. With the iPhone now generally available through any of the telcos in Singapore, we can imagine competition to heat up.
Verizon, a big telco in the US, has started a commercial and an ad campaign to attack the iPhone. It’s really hilarious. iDon’t have a real keyboard. iDon’t run simultaneous apps. iDon’t take night shots. iDon’t allow open development. iDon’t customize. iDon’t run widgets. iDon’t have interchangeable batteries. Everything iDon’t. DroidDoes. See the DroidDoes website, or the commercial on YouTube.
They’ve waited a long time. For iPhone customers on the AT&T network, finally, MMS has arrived. You’d have thought that the US would be more technologically advanced in these sort of things, but MMS has only just rolled out on 25 September 2009 for them. Yeah, all of us in the rest of the world… MMS is nothing new.
Hello, Singapore iPhone fans. SingTel has decided the penance you have to pay for your iPhone craze. It’s not cheap. Existing iPhone 3G users are being slapped a $600 or $300 upgrade fee for those who have completed 6 – 12 months or 12 – 21 months of their existing contract respectively. But there is good news for new iPhone 3G S wannabes. The new phones will cost slightly less than they did when the iPhone 3G was launched.
Perhaps you’ve already heard all about it. SingTel will start selling the iPhone 3G S in Singapore on 10 July 2009 (see SingTel Shop announcement). I think this iPhone 3G S will finally be what the iPhone is meant to be. It is two years late in coming, after the iPhone 3G launched in 2008 and the original iPhone in 2007. Ignore all the Apple marketing for a moment, the iPhone 3G S now finally has all the major features that everyone has come to expect of a smartphone. That’s great, but how does it stack up against other smartphones?
I heard that the iPhone 3G’s camera wasn’t all that wonderful. But I never knew it was that bad. If you actually need to take pictures, the iPhone 3G’s camera is totally a joke. You really need the iPhone 3G S upgrade. Here’s some side-by-side photo comparisons taken with the 3G and 3G S by Guy Kawasaki, one of my favourite writers.
I cannot resist the opportunity to say something sarcastic about the iPhone. But I think Apple is asking for it. Their self-professed “most advanced mobile operating system” now has such wonderful features as Cut, Copy and Paste. Yah, this part just doesn’t sound right. One of the other “new features” includes MMS. Wow. This is 2009. Cut, Copy and Paste, as well as MMS, are still counted as new features in certain mobile operating systems.
With the just announced upcoming iPhone OS update, Apple’s iPhone can now finally do just about what other phones have been doing for years. I cannot resist dissing the iPhone, because I’m so amazed at how such a modern piece of technology can be missing such fundamental features that everyone just assumes is there in every phone. What are the new features in the new iPhone OS 3.0? Hold your breath…
More information about the non-contract price of the iPhone 3G has been revealed. Recall that I previously posted news about the non-contract iPhone 3G price from AT&T at US$599 and US$699 respectively for the 8GB and 16GB models. The new information comes from the online Apple Store itself, which gave prices for the non-contract and unlocked iPhone 3G. It seems to be slightly more expensive than AT&T’s, probably because AT&T’s iPhone 3G will still be locked to the carrier.
I think we had 11 oysters each, from The Line restaurant at Shangri-la Hotel. It's a big buffet with plenty of food.
Lunch at Lerk Thai some weekends ago.
