The front-facing camera is also handy for taking pictures of yourself, or taking picture of yourself with a friend.
Not sure if this is true… but my brother (who’s a contractor overseas) stated that in Europe it’s illegal for the company to tie the phone to a service. Hence you could have the phone and whatever service you’re using…
TO the European dopers … is this accurate??
My question is that I have a 2g iPhone that has the old $20/unlimited data plan; the 3g and 3gs have $30/unlimited.
All I hear is that the $30/unlimited will be grandfathered in (if they want to); what about my $20/plan if I get the iPhone 4?
Nobody’s going to force you to use the camera. Just don’t turn it on.
I think I must be getting old, though, as my first thought on seeing the latest iteration of the iPhone is not “Ooh, shiny”, but “My phone’s only three or four years old - why would I want to buy another one?”.
I really do hate this disposable culture where we are urged to throw away and replace our electronics every year or two just because a new and slightly better version has appeared.
What happened to building things to last? How long are the raw materials for all this fancy technology going to last, and how much of the planet are we going to fuck up digging them out?
Nice screen, though.
Social pressure doesn’t necessarily make it easy to simply refuse to do certain things.
This question puzzled me until I remembered that not everyone is gifted with my heartbreakingly good looks.
Very cool. The bump in the stock price that will result, I mean.
I seriously doubt there’ll be any social pressure to use video calling in day-to-day life, other than between narcissistic teenagers.
(Maybe I am, in fact, old at the age of 33. My teenage social life was conducted from a payphone down the street so that my parents couldn’t listen in - we only had one phone, and it was in the living room. Nowdays, kids can text, send rude photos to each other, have phone sex etc 24/7 
)
… And everyone thought the *sexting *is bad, just wait 'til we’ve got video phones.
The video calling only works with other iPhones, and only via WiFi. That’ll change at some point, but I wouldn’t worry about being deluged with video calls or using up all your bandwidth on it at this point.
Me too. I am looking for a new phone as the Scotch tape holding together my ancient flip-phone is wearing out. I scoured reviews of the current (now previous) iPhone, which were less than complimentary about phone reception and quality. I get iffy reception at home which I handle by buying phones with a strong signal.
So for this new iPhone - how well does it work as, you know, a phone? I would like some of the other features also, but they become irrelevant if it isn’t a very good phone.
Well, one of the benefits of Apple products is the quality build construction. “cheap” phones do indeed fall apart after a short, as noted by amarone’s scotch tape flip phone. In terms of technology, the older iPhones are become “obsolete” but the are hardly not “built to last” as you say. They still work as a phone, and they will continue to function in the same way they do today. They are only left out of the latest upgrades (say, multitasking in iOS 4) because they aren’t powerful enough to handle the feature while preserving a reasonable battery charge.
I intend to keep my 3GS for another 2 or 3 years. If a great new must-have-feature comes along that my phone can’t support via a software update, I may buy a new one, but until then, I’ll be happy with my “last year’s model”
Well, The iPhone’s weak signal strength has been a known issue for some time, and many have complained about it. The new design combines the antenea with part of the case (the strip of metal around the sides) in order to solve this problem. Its a clever solution, but we will have to wait for hands-on testing to know how well it really works.