July launch for new iPhone in Singapore

Image by Donatello Trisolino via Flickr

Now this is more like it! Maybe now I can get my iPhone. As I said, let those who want to swim on the first, second and third waves do so… they'll get all the sharks. Now it is clean water, and the unit is more stable, more gadgets loaded, have additional features – and, CHEAPER!

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By Ariel Tam in San Francisco, TODAY | Posted: 10 June 2009 0835 hrs

Come July, SingTel users in Singapore will be able to get their hands on the Apple iPhone 3G S, the most significant hardware upgrade yet for the popular touchscreen smartphone.

"The new iPhone 3.0 software, with useful new features including Cut, Copy and Paste, Landscape Keyboard and MMS, will be available as a free update to all existing SingTel's iPhone 3G customers from 18 June 2009," SingTel said Tuesday in a media statement. Pricing details will be released when available, it added.

The iPhone 3G S (S stands for "speed"), unveiled on Monday at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), boasts an operating speed double that of its predecessor. 7.2Mbps HSDPA (3.5G) support has been added, allowing for accelerated Internet surfing.

In the United States, the iPhone 3G S will cost US$199 for the 16GB model and US$299 for the 32GB model with an AT&T plan when it launches there on June 19.

Confirming recent months' speculation, the new version sports a 3-megapixel auto-focus, auto-exposure, auto-macro camera that lets you tap on the screen in order to focus on an object. You can record VGA videos at 30 frames per second, trim them and share them via YouTube, email and MMS, which is finally making its debut in this third version of the iPhone.

Battery life -- long a bugbear for many iPhone users -- has improved, with the 3G S estimated to last three hours longer than the iPhone 3G for surfing the Internet over WiFi, six more hours for music and three more hours for video playback.

Apple also revealed features of its new iPhone 3.0 software update, which will be free to iPhone users and will cost iPod Touch users US$9.99 to download from June 17. One new feature is Find my iPhone - a handy tool that lets MobileMe customers locate their lost/stolen iPhone on a map and wipe data from their device remotely.

The current iPhone 3G will be retained in the line-up in an 8GB version, but the price is falling to US$99. This marks the cheapest official US price for an iPhone, and is also the first time Apple has made an entry-level iPhone model simultaneously available alongside a cutting-edge version.

Meanwhile, Singapore's StarHub said on Tuesday its customers continue to feedback that they'd like to get the iPhone and be connected to its network. "We really want to meet these requests and have continuously indicated our keen interest to Apple to distribute the iPhone," said StarHub consumer sales head Ng Long Shyang.

- TODAY

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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