New iPhone!

As expected, the new iPhone is announced this morning at WWDC. The new iPhone 3G is, of course, 3G, which means a faster connection. Also A-GPS, which can use as a locator, nevigation and geo-tagging for photos. A little downside is the camera is still the old 2 megapixel unit. Language support is much better, the iPhone 3G with hand-writting recognition for chinese.

There is a pretty big price cut, the 8 GB model starts at US$199 from the previous US$399 and the 16 GB model is now US$399. They will be avalible in July 11. The App Store will also be opened soon with third-party software for old and new iPhone as well as the iPod Touch.

The question is should I be getting it? Hardware-wise the iPhone 3G seems to be pretty good a deal, GPS and 3G together with a lower price is certainly a good reason to get one. However, don't forget the subscription you have to pay to the carrier, after all it's still a phone. Currently in the US, AT&T is the designated carrier for iPhone and the cheapest voice plan started at US$39.99. The unlimited 3G data plan for the iPhone will be US$30. The total would be US$70 with a two years contract. It's still not that bad, but for me, I would like AT&T to offer a cheaper price plan, since I don't talk on the cell phones that often.

May be I should only get the 3G plan and use my existing voice plan from another carrier.