Jobs announces iPhone 3G

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 9 Jun 2008 at 18:26

Steve Jobs has unveiled Apple's second-generation iPhone at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference.

Jobs claims that 56% of people claim the price of the first device prevented them from buying, so the new 8GB version of the new iPhone 3G will now cost only $199, with the 16GB version priced at $299. The device will go on sale from 11 July.

Apple says the battery life of the device has been improved, now offering up to 300 hours on standby, 10 hours talktime (five hours on a 3G connection) and up to six hours of web browsing.

The device also includes built-in GPS for the first time, allowing Apple to introduce a new range of location-based services to the handset.

The new iPhone platform will offer full Exchange synchronisation, with push email, calendars, contacts, auto-discovery, global address lookup, and the ability to remotely wipe data from the device.

Jobs claims 35% of the Fortune 500 companies have been running a beta of the new enterprise platform. "Everything they told us they wanted, we built in," he claims.

The new iPhone software will also have full support for iWork and Microsoft Office documents - although whether that includes the new OOXML files from Office 2007 isn't clear.

Jobs says the new iPhone software will be available in July, and will be free to all iPhone owners and $9.95 for iPod Touch owners.

Apple has also unveiled a new service called MobileMe - which will replace .Mac - which will ensure that contacts, email and other data is sycnhronised across the user's various devices, including both Macs and PCs.

MobileMe includes a series of web apps, including email, calendar and photo managing software, that look impressively similar to Apple's desktop apps.

Like .Mac, MobileMe will cost $99 a year.

Developer tools

In addition to the new phone features, Jobs revealed details of the new iPhone SDK. He says developers will have access to the same APIs and tools that Apple's internal team does.

It's not all business with the new iPhone: Sega took to the stage to demonstrate an iPhone version of Super Monkey Ball, which looks highly-polished from the screenshots.