iPhone 3G — 3G, GPS, the App Store, and Japan

The iPhone 3G was announced on 9 June 2008 at Apple's WWDC 2008 keynote in San Francisco and released on Friday 11 July 2008. According to Apple's press release of 14 July, it went on sale on 11 July in 21 countries, including the US, Japan, the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia; France followed on 17 July. Japan was in the first wave — and the iPhone 3G was in fact the first iPhone officially sold in Japan at all. The original iPhone of 2007 had launched as an AT&T exclusive in the US and never went on sale in Japan.

In the US, with a new two-year AT&T contract, the 8GB model cost $199 and the 16GB model $299. The original had launched at $499 for 4GB and $599 for 8GB, so the entry price fell by $300. Steve Jobs summed it up in the announcement press release: "twice as fast at half the price". The speed he meant was the network.

Japan: sold by SoftBank Mobile

In Japan the iPhone 3G was carried by one operator, SoftBank Mobile. SoftBank and Apple announced the 11 July Japanese launch on 10 June 2008, and on 8 July SoftBank said sales would begin at noon nationwide, with its Omotesando flagship store opening at 7 a.m. Sales were limited to one handset per person for the time being.

Pricing came on 23 June. Paid over 24 monthly instalments with a special discount, the effective cost of the handset was ¥23,040 for 8GB and ¥34,560 for 16GB. In exchange, a monthly bundle of ¥7,280 was mandatory: the ¥980 White Plan (i) voice plan, a ¥5,985 flat-rate data charge and a ¥315 basic pack. Subsidise the handset, recover it through the service — the same logic as the US $199 price. The iPhone 3G needed a dedicated USIM; existing SoftBank SIM cards would not work in it.

What changed from the original iPhone

The 3.5-inch screen and the single home button on the front stayed as they were. What changed was the radio, the software running inside, and the way the phone was priced.

3G and GPS

As the name says, the headline change was 3G. Apple said data was twice as fast as on the first-generation iPhone, and pointed out that on 3G networks you could talk and use data at the same time. The original supported only EDGE, and web pages loaded slowly.

The other change was built-in GPS, which let Maps track the phone's position as it moved. A map stopped being something you looked things up in and started from where you were standing — the precondition for the location-based third-party apps that would soon fill the App Store.

The price was battery life. Apple's figures were 10 hours of talk time on 2G and 5 hours on 3G: using 3G halved the talk time.

The App Store opened the day before

Crediting the iPhone 3G's success to the hardware alone misses half the story. The App Store opened on 10 July 2008, the day before launch, and the iPhone 2.0 software arrived on 11 July. The new phone shipped with it, and Apple's release of 10 July described iPhone 2.0 as a free update for all iPhone customers, so original owners got the App Store too. iPod touch owners paid $9.95.

In other words, third-party apps were a feature of iPhone 2.0, not of the iPhone 3G. But with 3G, GPS and the App Store all arriving in the same week, July 2008 is remembered as the week the iPhone became a device you installed apps on.

The same update brought business features: push email, contacts and calendars through Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, remote wipe, and Cisco IPsec VPN. Apple presented them at the announcement as aimed at enterprise adoption.

A million in three days

On 14 July 2008 Apple announced that one million iPhone 3G units had been sold in the three days to Sunday 13 July. In the same release Jobs noted that the first million original iPhones had taken 74 days. The comparison is Apple's own, and there was no country breakdown. It is also not like for like: the original launched in one country, the iPhone 3G in 21 on its first day.

At the announcement Apple had said it planned to sell the iPhone 3G in more than 70 countries by the end of the year.

Where the iPhone 3G sits

The iPhone 3G kept the original's form almost unchanged and rebuilt the radio and the price. In June 2009 the iPhone 3GS replaced it with a faster phone in nearly the same body, and the 3G stayed on sale as the entry model at $99 for 8GB.

For the generation before, see the original iPhone. The whole line is on the iPhone timeline; the company is on Apple, and the presenter on Steve Jobs.