This is the month of phone hype, beyond a doubt. We’ve seen the Pre release, Nokia’s super-expensive N97 spot with LL Cool J, iPhone OS 3.0, and now the iPhone 3GS. Of the phone launches, the biggest is certainly the update iPhone, though it may have come more quietly than the world expected.

Lines outside Apple’s flagship store in NY reached several hundred, but amidst some rain, they were all shuffled under Apple’s roof making this the smallest iPhone launch yet. Still, AT&T reports hundreds of thousands of preorders for launch day, which dwarfs Palm’s Pre 50,000 first weekend statistic.

It wasn’t just scale that kept the launch quiet, though. In part, it was a lack of hangups that have plagued Apple’s past launches. Apple announced both iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS at WWDC this year, but the set the launch days two days apart. The staggered launch was presumably to reduce server load so that new owners weren’t trying to activate their 3GS while 20 million others were waiting for OS 3.0 downloads. It was a smart move, and it kept problems with the 3.0 release and problems with the 3GS launch (so far, at least) to a minimum.

Now the focus shifts to AT&T and how their network will handle more users hoping to see the wireless carrier make good on promises of MMS and tethering. Will MMS from iPhone users bring the sole US carrier to its knees later this summer?

We’re just a week from launch day of the newest version of the iPhone, the iPhone 3GS, which brings a whole host of new features and some notable new graphical capabilities. If you want to have a 3GS in your pretty paws on launch day you’re going to need a chair and a decent water supply or a prepaid order.

Apple and AT&T have publicly announced plans for early store opening, though few of the representatives (in the Cleveland area at least) seem to know what’s going on.

I visited two Apple stores in the past week to talk about launch plans. For the most part, the employees didn’t know what was going on, as in, “I don’t know when we’ll open,” or, “I don’t know what the inventory will be like.” Most of them cited a lack of training on the new phone, which seems unrelated to their store scheduling, but who am I to judge. After talking through four different people at the last store (and hearing about one of their new exercise plans – I didn’t ask, she just felt the need to share) I found out they would indeed open at 8am, allowing lines to form at 5am. No one, from the store manager down, seems to know about inventory. It’s not just that they don’t want to say, but rather they get that glazed look whereby you know there is no information they can access on the subject at hand.

A trip to my local AT&T store was worlds more helpful, and they offer the surest route to locking up the phone at launch. I was able to preorder a phone on the spot, which means the phone will ship to the store reserved in my name, available for pickup seven days from the time of arrival. While no one was willing to guarantee I would have the phone (and smartly so), they did say the word from Apple was not to expect inventory problems. For all of their helpful info concerning launch, though, the AT&T folks also could not dig up details on store hours for the day, or whether they would be honoring the 7am preorder line, 8am point-of-purchase line.

If you’re one for lines, Apple stores and AT&T stores will both have that option. If you’re more interested in having the phone in hand, get to an AT&T store and preorder. It’s only so long before you’ll be waitlisted behind droves of preorders from, say, June 8th.

Hailed (by Apple) as the fastest iPhone ever made, a lot of attention has been paid to the new processor and RAM specs in the iPhone 3GS. Those new specs will certainly translate to a faster phone, but most likely marginally so, noticeable only within apps that do a lot of algorithm munching. What’s likely to be truly impressive on the 3GS is the new graphical capabilities that come from the Power-VR SGX GPU inside the phone.

Hubert at Ubergizmo, who used to program for Nvidia, gave a quick breakdown of the improvements we could see in iPhone gaming, and they’re pretty damn impressive. As the article notes, the new GPU offers improvements in two traditional aspects of development. First, it allows more triangle processing per second, and second, it gives a serious boost to the number of pixels that can be modified per second.

More than the hardware, though, is the options the new GPU will offer developers. The new chip gives coders access to some of the same principles used when developing games for the Xbox 360 or the PS3. Haven’t seen many shadows on the iPhone? They’re coming. So is bump mapping, normal mapping, light mapping, and multi-textures, making it possible to render complex 3D environments with an unprecedented sense of realism.

While people complained that this iPhone release was an evolution rather than a revolution, the changes to the GPU will be revolutionary for the hand-held device, making gaming the real breakout feature of the 3GS. I was unimpressed by the game demos at WWDC. Hopefully that wil change when developers have had their new kit for a few months.

Source: Ubergizmo

We’ve all been waiting for it. We’ve all seen the rumors. Some of us have even spent loads of time in photoshop doing some mythbusting. Plenty of us have held off on buying a new phone for just this announcement. Well wait no more, fanboys and girls; the new iPhone is here!

Set to be available on June 19th (just two days after 3.0 drops), the 3GS matches up to many speculations we’ve seen over the past few months. For starters, adding the S to the nomenclature stands for speed, because it’s the fastest iPhone ever made at an average of 2X the power (they didn’t release hardware specs). There is, of course, the much needed camera upgrade, lifting your picture-snapping from an abysmal 2 megapixels to an improved 3MP with autofocus and autoexposure. It won’t be replacing your point and shoot anytime soon, but the hardware upgrade was a must, and autoexposure is a great feature for a mobile phone. Simply tap the area on the photo you want exposed and the software adjusts accordingly.

Also included in the update is the much rumored (and nearly confirmed a while back) magnetometer, turning your iPhone into an accurate compass. This one should be a nice little boon for those GPS software developers, giving more accurate turning information. What else will developers do with a compass? At least one mindless “point to this direction” game I’m sure.

As for the things we didn’t fully expect, the 3GS will support 7.2 HSDPA, which is great news as more carriers (including AT&T) update their networks. There is also Nike+ support and voice control for added accessibility and hands-free operation. They’ve also added VoiceOver support that will read what you touch on screen.

Also, instead of releasing multiple new phones, the iPhone 3GS comes in black or white, both at the 16GB ($199) and 32GB ($299) levels, adding up to the 4 phones that were predicted. That rumored $99 device? That’s the new price for the iPhone 3G.

Did they do enough to bring the iPhone up to “real smartphone” speeds? Let us know in the comments.

Kudos to The Green Room Blog for putting together all the 3rd generation iPhone rumors in one very detailed picture. I especially like the color coding system for how likely the rumor is to come true. You must click through and spend the minute or two it takes to read through all of them.

Almost everything from the “Somewhat likely” and “Very likely” categories I do expect to see. However, from the “Unlikely” category, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a front-facing camera. It’s about time video conferencing took off on this phone. Plus, we already have Skype, right. The other unlikely I really wish was true is the Flash support. I agree it’s unlikely, but I’m hoping it’s true.