High-quality photos of Apple's iPhone 3G

[AppleInsider]

Apple's new iPhone 3G went on sale at 8:00 a.m. sharp Friday on the East Coast. We picked up a couple of black 16GB models, activated them in the store, then came back to the office to prepare the following high-quality unboxing and comparison photos.

Everyone who buys one of the new handsets from an Apple retail store will get a snazzy white bag (below) to tote them home in. It's nearly identical to the black bag that accompanied first-generation iPhone sales last year.

Also similar is the iPhone 3G's retail packaging, which could be mistaken for the original iPhone's box if it weren't for the "3G" on the sides and the photo of the handset's home screen on the front featuring the App Store icon.

There are some slight differences once you pop off the top of the box, however. Immediately you'll find the new iPhone nestled in a carton made of recyclable material. Directly underneath the carton is a polishing cloth (no longer imprinted with "iPhone"), two Apple logo stickers and two pamphlets -- "Finger Tips" and an iPhone 3G "Information Guide."

Removing the pamphlets from the box then reveals three accessories: a set of earphones (no fuzzy covers), a USB charging cable, and a USB power adapter that has seen a hefty size reduction compared to the one that shipped with the original iPhone. What you won't find is an iPhone 3G Dock, which is now sold separately for $29.99.

Apple Retail stores have the iPhone 3G Dock in stock, which is unusual when compared to recent iPhone and iPod launches, where official Apple accessories have lagged days and often weeks behind in availability compared to the devices themselves.

Still, as previous owners of an Apple Bluetooth Headset, we found it a bit disappointing that Apple is not (yet?) offering a standalone version of its Dual Dock capable of charging the headset and the iPhone 3G simultaneously. It's unclear whether newly manufactured versions of the Bluetooth Headset will include a revised Dual Dock to serve this purpose.

Stay tuned, as we'll soon be publishing a set of notes from our activation experiences at Apple's retail stores this morning.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[vinea]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

A gallery of images taken from one of the first iPhone 3Gs that went on sale Friday at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. More to follow notes to follow shortly.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

Heh...lint magnet...

[paxman]

I'd like to think you used an iPhone to take those images. No? Oh well...

[Eduardo]

Originally Posted by vinea

Heh...lint magnet...

I was thinking the same thing...

[Boogerman2000]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

A gallery of images taken from one of the first iPhone 3Gs that went on sale Friday at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time. More to follow notes to follow shortly.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

2.0 Updated basically bricked my original iphone supposedly due to the huge demand on Itunes. It's been two hours.. "accessing itunes store" Kinda poor planning on Apple's behalf. I hear Apple employees are letting new adopters activate their handsets at home because of this mess.

[Eduardo]

Originally Posted by paxman

I'd like to think you used an iPhone to take those images. No? Oh well...

...and this was also my thinking. I don't think the pictures were taken with a SLR camera.

[JustBrady]

Should have maybe wiped these phones off before taking photos. But oh well. Thanks for the pics.

[dbritton]

Originally Posted by Boogerman2000

2.0 Updated basically bricked my original iphone supposedly due to the huge demand on Itunes. It's been two hours.. "accessing itunes store" Kinda poor planning on Apple's behalf. I hear Apple employees are letting new adopters activate their handsets at home because of this mess.

My ATT store in Central time Zone couldn't unbrick any of the phones. total confusion. Sent us home to do it on itunes. Can't connect to itunes store, they went ahead and changed my SIM # so im dead in the water with no phone. What the heck is going on. Poor experience Apple. How long have you known this was coming ? I should have waited a few weeks.

[Wally]

Is that the photographer's eye in the middle of the lens? (showing through the viewfinder)

[shutterrelease]

This is what I've been waiting for, some pictures comparing the two phones side by side and stacked. Thanks Appleinsider. I'm still going to wait though.

Maybe...

[ncee]

Screw the damn phone, when are they going to fix it so I can plug my iPod Touch into iTunes and download music!!!

Right now, if I plug my iPod Touch into my Mac, and it launches iTunes, it Locks up!

Skip

[Rot'nApple]

Anyone have a white 3G iPhone they can send detailed images? The more I see of black, for some strange reason, the more I am beginning to like white!

[Wally]

Originally Posted by dbritton

My ATT store in Central time Zone couldn't unbrick any of the phones. total confusion. Sent us home to do it on itunes. Can't connect to itunes store, they went ahead and changed my SIM # so im dead in the water with no phone. What the heck is going on. Poor experience Apple. How long have you known this was coming ? I should have waited a few weeks.

Well, they obviously misjudged the response this new release was going to get. The MobileMe servers are dog slow - and Apple took the 2.0 software link down for us 1.1.4 users... They are apparently getting slammed. I empathize with your predicament, that is very frustrating...

[Constable Odo]

More detail than necessary for me. There's not very much to see on the outside and I've already seen the inside on MacFixit.

Too bad for those that had problems activiting their iPhones. You should have seen this coming on the first day of introduction. Not your fault but you just should have waited a few days until the excitement and activation load settled down. I don't think this sort of thing can be helped with such a huge amount of orders to process at one time. It's not a natural load for any server.

[Xian Zhu Xuande]

Settle down guys... they're being slammed across the world right now with interest in multiple services. The volume on their servers, while clearly beyond what they were expecting, will be way greater than what it will be in short order as things calm down. You will live just fine having endured a short period of inconvenience.

[BioTech]

Mine is bricked till they fix this, Talked to apple support and they say its att fault that they are not activating after the upgrade.

[dontlookleft]

Originally Posted by Rot'nApple

The more I see of black, for some strange reason, the more I am beginning to like white!

hahaa. i kid.

the new phone does look really nice. and i really like all the apps that just came out. i wish i had the money to waste on this phone, it's just not a practicle purchase for me right now.

[Mitch1984]

It's like they are having phone sex.
(I know not funny).

[paxman]

Originally Posted by Xian Zhu Xuande

Settle down guys... they're being slammed across the world right now with interest in multiple services. The volume on their servers, while clearly beyond what they were expecting, will be way greater than what it will be in short order as things calm down. You will live just fine having endured a short period of inconvenience.

Do you really think the response was beyond what they were expecting? I don't think so, I just think it all went 'a little' wrong. They haven't managed to get me.com working properly. They've had a long time prepping this. I tested the email today and if it remains this slow I'll stick to gmail. Several of the other services have ben on and off for days. This is a 'world wide' launch - there is no way they didn't realize that a people were going to activate their phones, or try me.com. They have so many outlets, multiplied by the number of sales staff and / or terminals. Not complicated to figure out what the load would be. They just screwed up. Not good advertising but it'll get fixed. For a company that prides itself on presentation and design, this really sucks, however. 1st impressions are IMPORTANT. I would not like to be hanging out with SJ today.

[gsus]

I was in line at an AT&T store this morning in NJ (right outside of NYC)... there was over 200 people there... The store was only given 65 phones to sell!!! Guess i should have been there overnight to get one! booooooo...

[Shaun, UK]

I was just reading the reports on the Macworld UK website about the launch in the UK and they are already calling it a 'fiasco' with a multitude of problems and long delays to activate the phones once purchased.

Quote: "Apple has an exclusive deal with network operator O2 in the UK - but O2's web-based activation system requires the use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to register a new phone: It won't work with the Safari browser bundled in Apple's Mac OS X. In its Regent Street store, Apple had installed VMware Fusion desktop virtualisation software on some of its Macintosh computers, allowing them to run Internet Explorer on Windows, but the activation process was still not working."

I'm no expert but surely these problems could have been forseen and ironed out before launch day? It's been over a month since Apple announced the iPhone release date.

Clearly the problems are not with Apple or the iPhone itself but with the activation process.

I had a play with the iPhone in my local Carphone Warehouse. Looks really good and seems to sit in the hand more comfortably than the first version.

Can't wait for the PAYG version so I get one for myself.

[bigmike]

Originally Posted by Xian Zhu Xuande

Settle down guys... they're being slammed across the world right now with interest in multiple services. The volume on their servers, while clearly beyond what they were expecting, will be way greater than what it will be in short order as things calm down. You will live just fine having endured a short period of inconvenience.

Ditto that. Well said.

[Mr Underhill]

Got mine this morning from Car Phone Warehouse thanks to my mate working for them and hiding one under the counter On saying that there were no queues outside and only 3 people in the store, all collecting iPhone's of course.

Transaction went fairly smooth although that can't be said for my other mates who either left 02 stores empty handed or came out with their iPhones unactivated. This was due to the internal systems overloading and people queing.

Anyway it's beauty and set up in 10 mins. My only beef was i would have thought they'd put the sim card in. Whilst not an issue for me, thanks to YouTube, i can see the average user scratching their heads wondering where the sim card goes. In fact i handed the iPhone around to three colleagues and not one of them guessed were the sim went. Now that's what i call a well designed product.

[trevorlsciact]

Originally Posted by Mitch1984

It's like they are having phone sex.
(I know not funny).

made me laugh

[roehlstation]

Originally Posted by Boogerman2000

2.0 Updated basically bricked my original iphone supposedly due to the huge demand on Itunes. It's been two hours.. "accessing itunes store" Kinda poor planning on Apple's behalf. I hear Apple employees are letting new adopters activate their handsets at home because of this mess.

As long as the SIM cards are activated then you can activate it at home


I'm still waiting for mine to unlock

[JoeDyndale]

I had decided to stop by the Netcom store which is right outside my office building on my way to work. However, there was a line of 200 people there (at 06:30 AM) - so I didn't have time to wait for all those people to get and activate their phone. So I hoped the supplies would last until the end of the work day. No such luck. Netcom, the exclusive iPhone provider here in Norway, SERIOUSLY underestimated the demand. All the stores in all of Norway sold out in a few hours - and, get ready for this... - Netcom's online store sold out within ONE MINUTE.

How is it possible to be THAT far off when estimating the demand?

[NanoAkron]

Mmm....geek porn

[Mosqutus]

Originally Posted by NanoAkron

Mmm....geek porn

that's what I was going to say....some of those pictures can be slightly erotic to the right person viewing them, the close ups, the unusual angles, a pair of naked phones

[Ireland]

Originally Posted by trevorlsciact

made me laugh

I agree. Where's he getting this not funny business from? Nice grills!

[dagamer34]

Originally Posted by Shaun, UK

I was just reading the reports on the Macworld UK website about the launch in the UK and they are already calling it a 'fiasco' with a multitude of problems and long delays to activate the phones once purchased.

Quote: "Apple has an exclusive deal with network operator O2 in the UK - but O2's web-based activation system requires the use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to register a new phone: It won't work with the Safari browser bundled in Apple's Mac OS X. In its Regent Street store, Apple had installed VMware Fusion desktop virtualisation software on some of its Macintosh computers, allowing them to run Internet Explorer on Windows, but the activation process was still not working."

I'm no expert but surely these problems could have been forseen and ironed out before launch day? It's been over a month since Apple announced the iPhone release date.

Clearly the problems are not with Apple or the iPhone itself but with the activation process.

I had a play with the iPhone in my local Carphone Warehouse. Looks really good and seems to sit in the hand more comfortably than the first version.

Can't wait for the PAYG version so I get one for myself.

Well, the actual launch plans and details were probably only decided 1-2 weeks ago (sadly). My local AT&T store ran out of phones right when I got there so I paid the $300 to reserve a 16GB black iPhone when it ships to them.

Honestly, unless you are a new AT&T customer, sadly your best bet is to go to an AT&T store to get your phone. I don't think the Apple dudes are trained enough to handle more complicated cases. In my case, getting a number in another state (I'll be moving soon) would prove too much of a hassle for the Apple guys to take care of, but at least the AT&T sales reps have a small clue about what they are doing.

Hopefully everything will have calmed down in a month or two.

[macFanDave]

Originally Posted by Mitch1984

It's like they are having phone sex.
(I know not funny).

You must have a poor sense of humor because you don't know when you are being funny. I did LOL.

I was looking at the strip tease as predictable geek porn when we got this XXX Hot iPhone on iPhone Action as a bonus.

[Xian Zhu Xuande]

Originally Posted by paxman

Do you really think the response was beyond what they were expecting? [...]

The other possibility worth considering here is that they knew this would happen, but simply decided to accept a degree of difficulty. It is entirely possible that the volume of traffic they are facing right now could be 30x or more their normal volume, and when you translate that into resources and server capabilities, you are left quite quite an incredible cost and need. We can only speculate, of course, but some of this may have been seen as an acceptable cost.

Not all of it, though. I'm sure their engineers are working their asses off right now.

I think you know that the email will not remain this slow. Is there even a point in complaining about it?

As for predicting the load on their servers, you clearly aren't a network engineer.

[JeffDM]

Originally Posted by paxman

I'd like to think you used an iPhone to take those images. No? Oh well...

I don't think iPhone's camera can take pictures that nice.

Originally Posted by Eduardo

...and this was also my thinking. I don't think the pictures were taken with a SLR camera.

If it's not a dSLR, it sure looks close to it. You should see the reflection in the bezel in some of the photos.

I don't think the high, undiffused sun is helping. The lint and scratches aren't helping make the pictures look nice, but then, it's a realistic look at what the black will look like with even the lightest use.

It's a little overcompressed, but really, if AI gets a DIGG flood, then you don't want picture files to be too large.

All in all, I think it looks pretty nice. I don't think any cell phone or pocket camera can make pictures that nice. Maybe a high end point and shoot. I see nothing that says it wasn't dSLR. A lot of P&S cameras can't focus that close either.

[McHuman]

Is that thing scratched ALREADY???

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by dbritton

My ATT store in Central time Zone couldn't unbrick any of the phones. total confusion. Sent us home to do it on itunes. Can't connect to itunes store, they went ahead and changed my SIM # so im dead in the water with no phone. What the heck is going on. Poor experience Apple. How long have you known this was coming ? I should have waited a few weeks.

Yes, you should have. Wasn't there a similar problem @ last year's launching, albeit with AT&T, and shouldn't that have been lesson enough?

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by Mitch1984

It's like they are having phone sex.
(I know not funny).
[/IMG]

And shot as a cheap porn.
Where's the makeup artist to remove those blemishes?

[kresh]

Originally Posted by McHuman

Is that thing scratched ALREADY???

That was the second thing I noticed. The first was the lint.

So it appears the photog wiped the phone with a non-lint free cloth, it left lint as well as micro-scratches. Wow I bet the back gets scratched no matter what you do, I bet even cases that you put on the iPhone will scratch the back.

I already miss the metal back

[teckstud]

Originally Posted by kresh

That was the second thing I noticed. The first was the lint.

So it appears the photog wiped the phone with a non-lint free cloth, it left lint as well as micro-scratches. Wow I bet the back gets scratched no matter what you do, I bet even cases that you put on the iPhone will scratch the back.

I already miss the metal back

I guess you never owned an iPod? Simply get a clickshield or some sort of clam shell case that seals tight and the back will look pristine for as long as you like.

[kresh]

Originally Posted by teckstud

I guess you never owned an iPod? Simply get a clickshield or some sort of clam shell case that seals tight and the back will look pristine for as long as you like.

I have several. I have a leather covered hard shell, clip on, case for my iPod Touch 32GB and even this case made some scratches around the edges. I can't imagine what an iPhone is going to look like if it can be scratched simply by wiping it.

[Fairly]

I suspect there are those in this thread who would wish for a hands free slide show. It wouldn't have to recycle - once through should be enough for them. Cheers.