One year and 11 days ago, our nation was swept by iPhone Mania. TV news coverage was relentless. Hard-core fans camped out to be the first in line. Bloggers referred to Apple's new product as the “Jesus phone."
(Photo: People lined up outside the Apple store in Manhattan on Tuesday in advance of the new iPhone's release on Friday.)
Apple's iPhone 3G will cost much less than the original. It was a stunning black slab of glass: a cellphone, a brilliant music and video player and the best pocket Internet terminal the world had ever seen. The huge, bright, touch- sensitive screen made it addictive fun to rotate, page through or magnify your photos, videos and Web pages.
Today, the iPhone is in the hands of six million people. Clumsy touch- screen lookalikes from rival phone makers line the shelves.
And Friday is the iPhone's second coming.
This time, though, when the iPhone 3G goes on sale in AT&T and Apple stores, iPhone Mania will be considerably more muted. That's partly because the mystery is gone, partly because the AT&T service costs more and partly because there aren't many new features in what Apple is calling the iPhone 3G.
The new name hints at the biggest change: this iPhone can bring you the Internet much faster. It can exploit AT&T's third-generation (3G) cellular network, which brings you Web pages in less than half the time as the old iPhone. As a handy bonus, 3G means that you can talk on the iPhone and surf the Internet simultaneously, which you couldn't do before.
There is, however, a catch: you don't get that speed or those features unless you're in one of AT&T's 3G network areas -- and there aren't many of them. The 3G coverage map at wireless.att.com/coverageviewer (zoom in and turn on “View 3G/Mobile Broadband Coverage" below the map) reveals that in 16 states, only three cities or fewer are covered; 10 states have no coverage at all. (Tip: Whenever you're outside of a 3G area, turning off the iPhone's 3G feature doubles the battery's talk time, to 10 hours from 5.)
