Apple today officially introduced its rumored iPhone 3GS, the s standing for “speed” as it’s the most powerful, fastest iPhone ever made, Apple’s vice president of marketing Phil Schiller told attendees of Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference held today in San Francisco.
The new device looks the same as the iPhone 3G, but will launch most apps more than twice as fast, according to Schiller. It will also include a new 3MP autofocus camera, which lets consumers tap the handset to focus the camera on the fly, as well as support video capture and sharing and an editing function that lets users trim video through touch. Voice commands will let iPhone 3GS owners do everything from call a friend to play a song on iTunes or find out what song is currently playing. A built-in digital compass shows the phone’s orientation, longitude and latitude and can link to Google maps. The phone will also support the 7.2 Mbps HSDPA standard for connectivity.
The handset, which will have up to five hours 3G talk time and nine hours of WiFi Internet, will be available for $199 for 16GB or $299 for a 32GB version in a week and a half. The iPhone 3G will remain on the market as well, but with a lower price of $99. Schiller said that more than 80 countries would have the iPhone 3GS by August.
Apple also officially introduced the new OS 3.0 and new apps to add to its more than 50,000 apps in the App Store today. According to several sites live-blogging the event today, some of the noteable iPhone OS 3.0 software updates, available free to iPhone owners on June 17, include:
• cut, copy, paste and undo on all its apps
• new developer APIs
• MMS picture messaging support, but not until this fall for AT&T subscribers
• landscape keyboard for email, notes and messages
• search for calendars, music, notes and email
• TV shows, music videos and audio books over 3G
• Tethering to share the iPhone’s Internet connection with a PC – but again not on AT&T
• AutoFill for Web sites
• Find My iPhone: if the handset is lost, consumers can log into MobileMe on any browser to see where the phone is. They can then message the phone to alert it if left in silent mode or to request whomever finds it calls a certain number.
• In-app purchases