iPhone times two in Australia and India - where next?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 12 May 2008 16:18

Your IT - Mobility

Being able to choose between a 2G service and a 3G service is a very important feature.

Virtually all 3G phones today can be set to a 2G only mode. Yes, setting your 3G phone to 2G removes the ability to make video calls and to download data at much faster 3G speeds, but it also lowers the toll that 3G takes on battery life.

Look at Nokia phones, for example, which can be used in 2G and 3G modes, and you’ll get at least an extra hour of actual talk time – if not more – when set to 2G mode, compared with 3G mode.

The answer to whether a 3G iPhone will offer video calls is still unknown, but we certainly do fervently hope that a front-mounted camera exists on the 3G iPhone, as it will also open up the possibility of Internet based video chatting through Apple’s own iChat application, something that doesn’t exist on the 2G iPhone currently.

It will also allow Apple users to video chat with iPhone users as easily as they do now with other Apple Mac users.

So, the day the iPhone goes 3G will be a momentous day, hopefully without the nasty surprise of there being no video call capability.

And before that day rolls around, the expectation is heavy that not only will many more countries get the iPhone, but that more carriers in those countries will be offering the iPhone to their customers.

Telstra – and Three Mobile – are the remaining two carriers in Australia that are yet to make any iPhone announcements.

Surely, if – or hopefully, when they do, they’ll also announce that they’ll be offering the iPhone “later this year”, just as Vodafone and SingTel have already announced.

Let’s just hope that “later this year” is in June, and preferably from June 29, the day of the iPhone’s first anniversary.

All that’s left to discover is the plethora of extra surprises Steve Jobs will unveil on June 9, the day of the Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developer Conference) in San Francisco, where he is expected to unveil the 3G iPhone officially for the first time, along with whatever “one more thing” his one more thing will be!