iPhone 2.0 Announcement

Steve Jobs has just finished his keynote at WWDC and here are my thoughts along with some highlights:

• The new firmware won’t be available until early July so this is a bit disappointing as most thought it would be released in the next couple of days. Kind of a let down but I think it would be hard for them to release it today or even tomorrow.
• One awesome feature is the syncing with Exchange. Data will be synced both ways and stay up to date on your iPhone as well as the exchange server. Really cool feature it sounds like. This is also going to use the recently purchased me.com website to sync everything together. And that looks like it is replacing the .mac service; for the low price of $99 a year.
• Now to the big news. The new iPhone will use the 3G technology thus drastically improve the speed of the network. Also, GPS support is integrated. That is really cool. With the 3G and the GPS, I am really enjoying what’s being said right now.
• And now the price has been announced. $199 for an 8gb model and $299 for the 16gb one (which you can also get in white). Will be available on July 11th in 22 countries.
• That seems to be it as Steve Jobs has just left the stage

Overall I am really excited about this announcement today. He never mentioned any catch for the low prices for the iPhones but I am guessing that there is. Hopefully I am wrong.

UPDATE:

Apple’s iPhone page does state the following:

Requires new 2-year AT&T rate plan, sold separately.

That sucks. I guess the price is $200 higher as per the rumors if you get it without. We’ll see.