Apple’s new iPhone

After having sold 6 million units since its launch last year, Steven P Jobs, chief executive of Apple, introduced a new cheaper iPhone model...

After having sold 6 million units since its launch last year, Steven P Jobs, chief executive of Apple, introduced a new cheaper iPhone model that navigates the Internet more quickly, expanded its distribution overseas and displayed a range of new applications and services. With this it aims at selling 10 million units by the end of 2008.

In India, Bharti Airtel and Vodaphone have both announced they will launch iPhone services in the coming months. What can the new iPhone do and what is beyond its capability?

• The new iPhone 3G will be available, first in the US beginning on July 11, in 8-GB and 16-GB models

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• The prices have been slashed, and will cost $199 and $299 for the two models. The earlier iPhone cost $399

• The phone will run on 3G or third generation wireless networks that allow much faster Internet connections. The 3G network is almost three times as fast as Edge.

• The phone, sleeker than the original, will also have built-in Global Positioning System capability to allow location-based services

• It will have a longer battery life in some cases, five hours for talking on the 3G network and 24 hours for playing music

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• The announcements came on the opening day of Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, where several developers showed off software that turned the iPhone into a game console and a musical instrument

• New applications range from video games that use the iPhone’s motion-sensing technology to guide characters to study tools for medical students and a program that allows users to find nearby cellphone-carrying friends on a map

• The 3G iPhone will also support Microsoft Corp’s Exchange software, an addition that puts the iPhone in more direct competition with BlackBerry and Palm Treo smart phones and is intended to appeal to the business market

• Apple also announced a new Web-based service “MobileMe”, which the company describes as “Exchange — for the rest of us,” a consumer-friendly way for people to link their iPhones to their home and work computers so updates entered into one device automatically appear in the others

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• Owners of the current iPhone also get an upgrade. On the same day the iPhone 3G goes on sale, Apple plans to update existing devices to the same software, called iPhone 2.0. It will include features such as the ability to move and delete multiple e-mail messages, search for contacts and turn on parental control restrictions.

• The new iPhone will not include some features that Apple fans had been clamouring for, including a video camera and the ability to cut and paste text to save time typing