AT&T posted a PDF that seems to answer common questions related to the new iPhone.  Two of the bigger questions has to do with how they are going to handle MMS and Tethering.  While the pdf mentions that MMS will be provided at no extra charge, they still don’t address tethering.  As I stated in a previous post though, I would expect tethering to cost an extra $30 a month.

AT&T Questions from our Customers

On Monday, Apple officially launched the new iPhone at the World Wide Developers Conference and to everyone’s surprise AT&T was absent from the list of providers who will support tethering and MMS. On Wednesday, AT&T was quoted all over the web saying that they would support MMS by the end of the summer as they are in the process of upgrading their networks to provide the best service possible to their customers.

As for tethering, that still seems to be up in the air, but people are beginning to speculate on what the real motive behind the delay is and people are curious if they are looking at charging extra for tethering and MMS.  My thoughts on this is that AT&T will charge extra for the tethering, but not for the MMS.  If you look at their existing plans for smart phones they have tethering and messaging options for those phones.  Tethering is an extra $30 and according to the details of the messaging, it includes MMS.

Here is a screen shot from the AT&T website:

ATT Features for tethering and MMS

If iPhone users are given an “iPhone Tax” for MMS, then AT&T and digging their grave even deeper with iPhone users.

What are your thoughts about an iPhone Tax?

BONUS:  Tweet this review to be entered into a contest to win a copy of SimplyTweet. Click here to Re-Tweet! We have a few promo codes to give away.

SimplyTweet (version 1.6) by MotionObj is a Twitter client that provides a simple to use interface to help you manage your various accounts on Twitter.  SimplyTweet comes in 2 versions, a lite version that is free and a paid version that will cost you $3.99.  You will want to check the SimplyTweet website for a break down of the features between the two versions.

Product Highlights

1. Manage multiple accounts.  This is a pretty big feature for most people that use twitter clients, so its nice to see that it supports this functionality
2. Built in browser.  This is another nice feature that makes following links easier.  The built in browser will launch when you click a link in a tweet.  The built in browser does support panning and zooming, but does not allow you to view the page in landscape mode.  The options menu does provide a few other nice features.  You are able to open the current page in Safari, and you are also provided with an option to read later which will save it to your Intrapaper account
3. Conversation view.  This view is helpful to view a particular conversation wtih someone or view a conversation about a specific topic
4. Custom views give you the ability to group friends together and view a timeline based on who is in your view.  For example, you can create a view that has your family grouped together.  When you click more link, the view will be listed there for easy access.
5. Trends are listed in the more options menu so that you can find out about the hot topics that are being talked about on Twitter
6. When composing tweets, you have lots of options at your finger tips.  You have easy access to creating  a reply, as well as replying to multiple people at once.  Just swipe a tweet and you are on yoru way.
7. When editing a tweet, a shortening option is available that will attempt to shorten the tweet for you.  It doesn’t appear to be tied to a URL shortening service, but it will abbreviate words when applicable.
8. Twitpic integration allows you to share a photo from your iPhone

Overall I think SimplyTweet is an awesome Twitter client.  Most of the features you come to expect in a Twitter client exist.  The ability to manage multiple accounts, and the conversation features are the features I like the most.  It would be nice if the built in browser would support landscape mode, but since its easy to jump to Safari I can easily over look the missing feature.  For $3.99, I would highly recommend giving this app a try.

SimplyTweet Lite [iTunes Link]
SimplyTweet [iTunes Link]

[View with PicLens]

12►

T-Mobile Netherlands just published specs for the iPhone 3G S.  The specs pretty much match what was rumored back in May by MacRumors.

According to the T-Mobile spec page, the iPhone 3G S has 256MB of RAM, which is up from 128 in the current iPhone 3G model.  The new iPhone 3G S also has a faster processor running at 600MHz, compared to 412MHz found in previous models.

[T-Mobile Link]
[MacRumors]

Yesterday during the WWDC, Apple announced some new iPhone hardware.  During the keynote two new features were announced, MMS support and Internet tethering.  During the announcement, it was mentioned that AT&T would support these features later this summer.

After the keynote, AT&T announced the pricing and upgrade information for existing iPhone 3G customers.  Long story short, if you have owned your 3G iPhone for less than 18 months, it would cost you $399 for the new 16GB model and $499 for the 32GB model.  If you have had your phone for longer than 18 months, then you qualify for the $199/$299 pricing.

Based on various tweets and blog postings, people are pretty upset with AT&T.  I can understand being upset for not supporting MMS and tethering at launch, but I think people are overreacting to the upgrade policy.  When you got the iPhone 3G you signed a 2 year contract for that phone, so they are not required to let you out of your current contract just so that you can get the latest and greatest iPhone.  We can definitely thank phone subsidies for this as this is a pretty standard practice across the mobile industry.  When the Storm 2 comes out for Verizon, those customers are going to have to go through a similiar process if they want to get the newest version.

Could you imagine life without phone subsidies?  I sure wouldn’t want to?  Yes, I know we marry ourselves to a carrier for 2 years, but it gives us the option to own incredible “phones”.  I use the term “phones” losely because these days these phones are turning into mini super computers.  With this capability, comes a price that would prevent most consumers from ever even coming close to owning these devices.

So please, lets move past all the griping about AT&T and how they mis-treating loyal customers, and lets start focusing on the countdown to the new 3.0 OS that will give existing customers most of the new features that are part of the iPhone 3G S.

So now that all the new sexy hardware and software has been announced, we can now focus on what was not announced for the new iPhone 3GS:

Same Case/Body – The biggest thing that wasn’t announced for me was a redesign of the case.  I was really hoping that Apple would have moved to a soft back like the Storm has.  While I have already added my own case to provide that, it would be nice if it was built in

No glowing Apple logo – I am so glad this rumor is not true!  I could not imagine having something as silly as a glowing logo on my phone, and lets not even get started on how that would affect the battery.

No screen improvements – I was really looking forward to some improvements to the screen as this could have helped with some of the battery issues, but maybe they are holding this back for the next version

No color selection - No big loss here thanks to skins and cases, but I am sure some people would have liked to have the iPhone in various colors

No Verizon deal – Looks like we will have to continue to wait to see if the iPhone eventually lands with Verizon.  Based on what I have read so far today, there are a lot of Apple fans who are just flat out pissed with AT&T right now, so it will be interesting to see what happens here

No camera flash, or front facing camera – I have a feeling this will stay on the wish list for a lot.  I think we would see a front facing camera before a flash, but no one really knows

Adobe Flash support – I think for this one we can blame Adobe, but again we will have to wait and see.  The nice thing about this feature is they can add this through a software update.

Wireless N – Another nice to have and I assume this will be in the next revision.

What feature do you really wish they would have announced?

So unless you have been living under a rock today, I am sure you heard by now that Apple announced the new iPhone models today.  The new device was announced at the WWDC (WorldWide Developer Conference), which is Apples big developer conference that they hold each year.  Apple just posted the keynote presentation where they announced the new hardware.

Here is a summary of what was announced for the new Speedier,  iPhone 3G S:

Fastest iPhone Ever! The new device should be faster all around.  Safari will be faster, the graphics processor will be faster, and the device should have more internal memory.  It was rumored that they were doubling the internal memory that is available to the applications, but since Apple doesn’t usually release the official technical specs, we will have to wait until the device is officially released and torn down to get the details

Video Support – We will now have video recording, VGA up to 30 fps with audio.  What is really going to be cool is to have the ability to also edit the video on the device before we share the video.  We will be able to share our videos with MobileMe, YouTube, MMS, or send it to someone through email.

Improved Camera – The iPhone will now come with a 3MP camera with auto focus.  The new autofocus will be a great improvement, but you can also control the focus by tapping on the glass to tell the device what object to focus on.  The standard sharing options that are available for video are also available for the camera.

Voice Control – A feature thats been missing for a while that is considered standard on most phones is voice control.  The iPhone will finally get this feature, but I think we found out why it took so long.  Its not your standard voice control where you can just dial a contact.  While the new iPhone will allow you to say the name of the contact you would like to call, the voice command can also be used to manage your music.  You can ask you phone what song is playing, but you can take it further and even tell the phone what album or artist to play.  To top it all off, the voice control supports over 20 languages!

Compass Support - now that the iPhone has this feature, we are finally able to get turn by turn applications onto the iPhone.  TomTom officially announced that they will be releasing an iPhone verison of their application and they will certainly take advantage of the new compass feature.

Other goodies such as Copy and Paste, MMS support, Internet tethering, Voice Memo, Search, and landscape mode everywhere was also announced.  While the items listed above in bold are hardware changes that will only be available in the iPhone 3G S, a lot of the other features will be made available through a software updated on June 17th with the new hardware coming June 19th.

For full details of everything and anything about the iphone, be sure to check out http://www.apple.com/iphone/