What do you mean by "using iTunes" optimally? It's the most self-explanatory thing ever. You put your music in iTunes, and you plug your phone in. How much harder does it get? How much more optimal can I use mine (half sarcastic only here)?

This announcement makes that article even funnier than on the 3gs release.

responding on Clovis8's behalf

Please change your avatar so I stop thinking it is Ed posting great stuff and then having the realization that it is you doing an extremely poor man's version of his greatness.

find me a new avatar bitch

For the reasons given above, by ungol, I was a little underwhelmed with this. I have my 3Gs and love it. I'll have to weigh having to stick to friggin AT&T for even longer as the phone competition has narrowed lately. I'll also have to wait until someone breaks 4.0 first because I'm not losing out of my tethering/etc.

Same here. Another consideration: I am definitely not upgrading if it looks like a Verizon version is one the way, as an extra year of AT&T is a pretty steep price to pay.

Assuming I were upgrading or buying a new one: I'd have accepted a thicker iPhone, even thicker than the existing one, as a tradeoff for more battery life and certain other features (camera optics and flash, for example). What it seems we've gotten is about the least exciting release possible, considering what else is out there these days.

Atak, fwiw, it seems more and more likely, if not confirmed, that AT&T and apple have a 5 year exclusivity agreement, so I don't how Verizon can get past that, despite the rumors. It wouldn't surprise me if they don't come out with a version next year either, but I guess it's just speculation as well.

Like others said, this was apple seemingly catching up with most of these additions.

The iPhone4 is based on the A4 processor found in the iPad, should be much faster than the 3GS.

absolutely.

The more i use my iPad, the less i care about my iPhone.

I have a 3G now + iPad wifi and will probably upgrade once confirmed I can grandfather my unlimited, JB & MiWi, but I'm in no hurry at all.

Looking more forward to iOS4 on the 21st. Not going to upgrade my phone though of course.

I had to buy a #G when mine was stolen like 6 months ago...don't really see anything about the new one that would want to make me fork over another $200-$400 bucks.
Maybe if I could sell my 3G for like $150+ then yeah it makes sense to pay $50 for the 4G. But besides the updated camera...nothing really wows me.

I wonder what else there is left to do that would be really "oh **** that's awesome" in terms of smart phones?

I think Apple will always be happy with 90% of the features of their competitors as long as the iPhone looks better and is easy to use. The new phone is about a millimeter thicker than the touch, which is just ridiculously thin and the OS has been much easier to use than any of the versions of Android out there. I doubt they'll be able to keep these on the shelf any better than the other versions of the phone.

Lol gyroscopes.

Didnt the iphone already have tilt sensors? I dont really get how the gyro adds anything.

Tbh the iphone camera is disappointing when you look at the market and it is pretty amazing that video calling is considered a new feature nowadays. The use of iads and a gyro as important feature upgrades sums up how unrevolutionary the next "revolution" seems to be.

As for where we go, until the next level of tech like flexible screens hit the market it is largely just going to end up with a top trumps of big numbers (resolution) and small numbers (dimensions) with the software being the next staging ground.

I wasn't saying they won't sell them, just that they probably won't sell one to me. (And it's not like I'm that far away from their normal customer base — I had a first gen and have a 3Gs.) There were improvements they could reasonably have made that I'd have cared about, but they chose not to.

It's my opinion that two things have to happen before we really get into the next wave of 'oh ****'.

1) Improve network infrastructure. 3G was a big step up, but that network is already straining under the new demand. 4G or LTE or WiMax **** is way better and has the bandwidth potential to allow people to access the next oh **** thing.

2) The power supply is also going to have to be improved. It's nice that the iPhone supposedly gets better battery life than the EVO, but it also doesn't have a 4G antenna that requires shifting through many frequencies to operate. The 'oh ****' features of the future are going to require a lot of power, whatever they are.

I love the timing of this. A week after AT&T announces the end of unlimited data usage Apple releases a new product/features that will eat data like crazy. Netflix on the iphone, video chat, video ads. I know the ads won't eat a ton of data but it seems like a bad precedent to start charging people per MB while giving devs easy access to ads that need to be downloaded even for non data consuming apps. I also realize that video chat is wifi only but it seemed implied that it would move to 3G eventually (though it took AT&T a full year to get on the tethering that was only supposed to take a few months last summer).

I expected more cloud type features to be announced this year. Google has gained a lot of ground in this area and with Apple acquiring lala I fully expected a big streaming music/content delivery system.

^^^ the fanbois on 2+2 say AT&T's plan change is all g00t, the data shows that 98% of users don't consume more than 2GB yadda yadda yadda.

But, as a non-fanboi, you realize that it was a price *increase*. this 98% figure comes from historical (!!) data. but people's 3g data usage isn't stable, it's growing exponentially. it won't be long before more people run into the cap. AT&T is doing everything it can to make it happen

This was probably the least surprising thing about the whole announcement(s).

att needs to do something. the current iphone usage was breaking their network.

this doesn't make any sense

ATT's plan provides a strong incentive to not use large amounts of finite network resources. A big part of ATT sucking comes from the fact that they simply don't have enough bandwidth to support every iPhone user in major cities. The least painful way to deal with this problem is to charge the extreme users more.

Once ATT loses exclusivity to the iPhone, which should happen soon, they won't be burdened with this problem too much longer.

Cliffs: Low supply, high demand and constant pricing plans don't make a stable state.

Someone convince me to get a ****ty 4g phone or the incredible over this. The only reason I have so far to not upgrade my 3g is that AT&T's 3g network is clogged as **** and they haven't really been showing any willingness/plans to upgrade to a faster data network.

I don't think the difference between phones is really enough for anyone to convince you on your own. Go check out the Incredible and talk to your friends about how Verizon does in your area. Go check out the HTC EVO and talk to your friends about how Sprint does.

Personally, I don't see a huge difference between the three phones so I'm choosing based on network more than anything. Since I live in 4G area, I'll be getting the EVO. Hopefully it works out.

I wonder how many people don't understand that wifi doesn't go against your data allotment. I'll bet the number is higher than you would think.