MacRumors

Despite the seemingly shorter lines for the iPhone 3G S, the early sales number estimates indicate that the iPhone 3G S launch numbers could even exceed those of the iPhone 3G launch. Apple managed to sell 1 million of the iPhone 3Gs during its launch weekend last year. Unlike last year, however, Apple and AT&T have allowed pre-orders for the latest iPhone device.

UK mobile carrier O2 reveals that by lunchtime, they've already sold more iPhone 3G S handsets than they did during the entire day of the iPhone 3G launch. They expect by the end of the day to have sold 50% more than last year's opening day.

Meanwhile, AppleInsider reveals that AT&T has sold "hundreds of thousands" of iPhone 3G S's ahead of the launch. Based on these numbers, the site also speculates that Apple could easily sell more than a million devices during the first three days.

The iPhone 3G S went on sale this morning 7 a.m. local time in the United States. First impressions by MacRumors forum members are being recorded in this thread. Highlights include

- "...really does seem a lot faster than my 1st gen, and a lot smoother."
- "Video recording alone makes it worth it - the quality's great."
- "One thing I have noticed in comparison to my 3G is that the screen colours are much warmer - a lot less blue."
- "The screen is great, tap all over it and you barely see any finger prints."

Overall, reactions have been very positive to the quality of the video coming out of the iPhone 3G S. One user posted this YouTube video directly from the iPhone 3G S. Meanwhile, fdot posted a raw QuickTime movie (.mov file - 8.5MB) showing the raw quality of the video. Some more photos taken with the iPhone 3G S have also been posted.

The iPhone 3G S is, of course, much faster than the iPhone 3G. Some users are posting speed comparisons between the two models. We recorded this side-by-side video showing the web rendering speed of the iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3G when on the same Wi-Fi network.

The iPhone 3G S is, of course, on the left and shows a much faster rendering speed.

We're not sure if the iPhone 3G S launch will require long waits in line like previous years. The fact that customers have been able to pre-order the new iPhone will certainly dampen the turnout in the morning. Still that's not stopping some (photo). One analyst predicts Apple will sell about 500,000 units this time around, about one half of the number sold on the launch of the iPhone 3G. Still, that number is twice as much as the sales numbers for the original iPhone's launch weekend.

One French company has already obtained an iPhone 3G S and done a disassembly on the device:

Update: CNet blog documented the opening at the 5th Avenue NYC Store:

First users posting photos:

Apple's new iPhone 3G S launches tomorrow Friday, June 19th.

Apple's retail stores are opening at 7 a.m. in all time zones to accommodate the launch. MacRumors readers are organizing meetups at retail stores around the world. The first lines are already forming in Tokyo and New York. Meanwhile, the Oakbrook, IL Apple store is preparing for large crowds.

AT&T has detailed their launch as well. AT&T stores will also be opening 7 a.m. nationwide. And this year, customers also have the opportunity to buy at Best Buy or Wal-Mart retail stores.

Pre-order customers should begin getting their iPhone 3G S deliveries tomorrow. Those who reserved units at either Apple or AT&T retail stores will be able to visit the stores to pick up their units at any time during business hours. The Washington Post even profiled readers who have been obsessively tracking their iPhone 3G S orders in our forums.

AT&T has even posted this video of iPhone 3G Ss being packaged at their distribution center:

Many AT&T iPhone customers have been disappointed by the carrier's lack of support for both Internet tethering and MMS at launch for iPhone OS 3.0. A pair of new reports today highlight a couple of iPhone hacks for enabling tethering and/or MMS without requiring jailbreaking. Readers should note, however, that such hacks violate the terms of service for many carriers and should therefore proceed at their own risk.

The first hack, brought to our attention by Engadget, activates tethering by modifying a user's carrier settings file. The hack utilizes specific carrier settings files from a wide range of carriers around the globe, opening up the method to a large number of users.

Essentially, you use your iPhone to browse to a site that you've never heard of (help.benm.at), download a file that promises to reconfigure your local carrier profile, and then switch on tethering as you would had you tithed a monthly tethering fee to your carrier. We've confirmed that it works on T-Mobile NL and on O2 UK. There's obvious risk here so be careful and backup your iPhone first before giving this a shot. And don't go nuts either -- remember, your unlimited data plan likely contains a "fair use" clause and you can bet that carriers won't be happy to see their bandwidth diminish without compensation.

Carrier settings files for all carriers (not just AT&T) are also available through iPhone-notes.de. Some users have reported that the hack disables MMS and visual voicemail on their carriers, so users should be aware of the possible trade-off.

Gizmodo offers up a second hack that can enable both tethering and MMS.

Our first method comes from Giz reader Aaron Krill, who has posted a comprehensive guide -- a sort of super-powered update to our old 3.0 tethering hack -- to enabling both tethering and MMS specifically on AT&T. It's not the simplest procedure, but it's approachable, and doesn't require jailbreaking like before. The gist:

- Enable IPCC updates on iTunes 8.2
- Update IPCC files
- Spoof AT&T's website into thinking you have an other phone

The MMS portion of the hack requires another non-Apple phone running on AT&T's network, swapping the iPhone's SIM card into the non-Apple phone, and changing messaging plans.

You should proceed with caution with any of these potential changes as they are unofficial and unsupported.

MacRumors forum user bndoarn has organized a massive list of hidden 3.0 features. The list is over 96 individual features so far. Some are more significant than others, of course. Here are a few interesting highlights:

- There is no limit to the number of apps that can be installed (beside storage space). Once you reach the home screen limit, Apps installed after that are installed without an icon but can be accessed in Spotlight. You can also use this to hide any apple application (i.e. weather and stocks), if you get to 11 pages.
- In the Settings -> General -> Home Button you can now set the double click to the new search feature or the camera
- Notes now has data detectors. Links are clickable, phone numbers are callable, email address are emailable, and address are locatable (using Maps)
- When a phone call interrupts you, after the phone call you are taken back to the app you were in before you were interrupted
- You can now have 11 home screen pages instead of nine
- Now there is a different way to force quit apps. now you have to hold the sleep/wake button until the red slider appears, then you press and hold down the home button to quit the app

The first on the list is perhaps most notable, allowing you to use Spotlight as an application launcher to avoid swiping through pages and pages of apps and also installing more than the allotted number.

With the release of iPhone 3.0, one of the big features anticipated was "Push Notifications". This system allows applications to send you notices even when they are not the currently running application. A running list of app updates can be scanned at AppShopper, but here are a list of apps we've found that support Push Notifications now. We haven't tried them all so can't specifically endorse them, but many are free to try:

- AreMySitesUp (Free) - This version enables Push Notifications on site checks, so you can find out about your server status even faster!
- Tap Tap Revenge (Free) - Support for Push Notifications on iPhone OS 3! Tap Tap's icon on the Springboard will be badged with an unread count for new feed items. SMS-style alerts will arrive when you're challenged to a game by your friends.
- Star Defense ($5.99) - Send your friends direct challenges via push notifications.
- Pollen (Push) (Free) - Pollen is your simple guide to the pollen levels in your area of the United Kingdom with added Map View and Push Notifications
- Weather Alert ($0.99) - True Apple push notifications
- AP Mobile (Free) - Get breaking news alerts even when AP Mobile is not open.
- Leaf Trombone ($0.99) - notifications on all pending performances and judging.
- E*Trade Mobile Pro (Free) - Enable push notifications for stock alerts and account alerts from the Mobile Pro settings page
- Hey Where Are You (Free) - HeyWAY uses Apple's brand new Push Notification Service, your alerts are delivered even when the application is not running.
- Textfree Unlimited ($5.99) - On iPhone OS 3.0, you can get notified of texts even when youre not in the app.

We're still waiting on the first instant messaging app to support Push. None of the major ones have been updated, though future support for Push has been announced for several.

9to5Mac points out that AT&T also announced a welcome piece of news for existing and future iPhone owners. AT&T now supports Wi-Fi "auto-authentication" in the 3.0 firmware. While iPhone customers have had free access to over 20,000 AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots, accessing them required a somewhat cumbersome two-step authentication process using SMS. The new system will eliminate these steps altogether:

Auto-authentication allows iPhone users to seamlessly switch from AT&T's 3G network to an AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spot without being prompted. AT&T customers with qualifying iPhone data plans have unlimited access to the nation's largest Wi-Fi network -- more than 20,000 U.S. AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spots.

The new process eliminates the previous two-step authentication, making it easier and faster for iPhone customers to connect to AT&T Wi-Fi. Auto-connect is established once a customer connects their iPhone to an AT&T Wi-Fi Hot Spot the first time.

The new system is available starting today for all existing iPhone customers who have installed iPhone 3.0 and will also be available to iPhone 3G S owners.

The early reviews for the iPhone 3G S are in and the conclusions seem pretty common across the board. As advertised, the new iPhone 3G S offers a faster experience, better camera, and impressive video recording. All reviewers felt that the upgrade from 3G was more evolutionary than revolutionary and the core phone remains very much the same as the existing 3G.

Here are a summary of key impressions from the early reviews that have hit the web.

Walt Mossberg / AllThingsD
- Speed: "the new model proved dramatically snappier in every way than my iPhone 3G. "
- Battery: "the new model did much better [than the iPhone 3G], never hitting the red zone and rarely requiring interim charging at the office or in the car, even though, because I was testing it, I was pounding it much harder than usual"
- Camera: "didnt think the pictures it took were dramatically better than those on the old model"
- Conclusion: "Both the new iPhone and iPhone OS are packed with features that make a great product even better. But, for many users, the software may be enough of a boost to keep them from buying the new model."

Sun Times / Andy Ihnatko
- Speed: "Everything feels faster. Safari on the iPhone 3G S seems as interactive as a desktop browser."
- Gaming: "Gaming has been kicked up a notch; intensive 3D games are elevated from 'Wow, thats a great frame rate for a phone!' to simply 'Wow.'"
- Battery: "The 3G S has enough juice for a full day of normal use, but if youre going to rely on it heavily throughout the day its still best to have an external battery."
- Video: "The video quality is impressively smooth and natural given the source, and the sound quality is practically astonishing"
- Voice: "Voice control is a tough feature to successfully pull off on any device. No, the iPhone doesnt pull it off."
- Flickr set of photos taken with the iPhone 3G S.

Engadget
- Game Performance: "If you're an avid gamer looking for the device with more power, the difference will be crystal clear: the 3G S obviously flexes in this department."
- Olephobic screen: - "The most surprising thing about the tech is that it actually does what the company says it will: namely, it resists new smudges and wipes almost entirely clean with a single swipe on a pant leg."
- Camera: "We do have some complaints about exposure, which seems to be permanently cranked to "blinding," and while the shutter speed is faster than on the 3G, it's still not quite snappy enough for our taste."
- Video: "Video recording on the iPhone 3G S is really quite impressive"
- Compass: "Once the compass picks up your bearing, it rotates the map to reflect. This may not sound like much, but if you've ever tried to walk a new city using just maps and geolocation, you'll understand quickly. "
- Conclusion: "For current users, we have this to say: the iPhone 3G S is a solid spec bump to a phone you already own... but it is, at its core, a phone you already own. "

Gizmodo
- Olephobic coating: "Surprisingly, the coating actually works in preventing a good deal of fingerprints and face grease, and it allows the phone to still be smooth and usable even if there are fingerprints on the surface."
- Speed: " Safari, Email, Camera all load noticeably faster than on the iPhone 3G (both running 3.0 software). Even booting the phone takes about half the time. "
- Video: "Even if it's not quite 30FPS at all times, the video is smooth as hell. Recording still isn't great in low light since it's a physical limitation of cameras in general, but at least it's fluid."
- 7.2Mbpz data speed: "on average the 3GS scored about 50% higher than the 3G, occasionally, in individual runs, it could have ranged anywhere from twice as fast to about the same speeds."
- Battery: "What's also surprising about the 3GS is that you wouldn't expect battery life to be improved, but it is."
- Conclusion: "The only issue with the iPhone 3GS, if you already have the 3G, is that it's not all that different of an experience." ... "as a whole, the iPhone 3GS is the best all-around smartphone available"

CNet
- Voice: "In our tests, the voice dialing performed well."
- Accessibility: "Visually impaired people can use Apple's Voice Over to navigate the handset's menus and type messages and e-mails. "
- Camera; "good, but far from great, with decent photo quality, but no editing features."
- Video: "you can trim only in a linear format--meaning you can't cut out something in the middle and stitch the remaining two ends of the video together."
- Speed: "For example, Bejewled 2, which can take up to 12 seconds to load on the iPhone 3G, started in just 5 seconds on the 3G S. Even better, Pocket God went from opening in almost 30 seconds to starting in just 11. The iPhone also started up much quicker than the iPhone 3G--we were up and running in 26 seconds instead of 50 seconds."
- Conclusion: "If you don't own an iPhone yet, and you've been waiting for the right model, now is the time to go for it. .... But, if you're a current iPhone 3G owner, the answer isn't so clear."

While today's big news has been the release of iPhone OS 3.0, AT&T today also announced that it is expanding the eligibility window for determining which customers are eligible for upgrade pricing on the iPhone 3G S. Customers who previously would not have become upgrade eligible until July, August or September of this year will instead qualify for AT&T's lowest upgrade pricing as of tomorrow, making them eligible to purchase the iPhone 3G S at the $199 (16 GB) or $299 (32 GB) price point at launch. Affected customers will save $200 on the purchase of a new iPhone 3G S as a result.

Importantly, we want our customers to better understand our wireless device upgrade program. Like most U.S. carriers, we offer a variety of phones that we sell below our actual cost when customers agree to sign service agreements. In general, the more a customer spends with us, the quicker they become eligible for a price break on a new device. For example, iPhone customers who spend more than $99 a month per line with us generally are eligible for an upgrade between 12 and 18 months into their contract.

We also currently offer early upgrade pricing only for iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3G.

All of that said, we've been listening to our customers. And since many of our iPhone 3G customers are early adopters and literally weeks shy of being upgrade eligible due to iPhone 3G S launching 11 months after iPhone 3G, we're extending the window of upgrade eligibility for a limited time.

We're now pleased to offer our iPhone 3G customers who are upgrade eligible in July, August or September 2009 our best upgrade pricing, beginning Thursday, June 18.

Newly-eligible customers who have already pre-ordered the iPhone 3G S at the higher prices will receive credits for the difference in price. Users can check their upgrade eligibility status by visiting AT&T's iPhone page, calling *NEW# (*639#) on their AT&T device, or visiting any AT&T store.

Reminder: The new pricing will not appear in the eligibility tools listed until Thursday, June 18th.

Apple today released the long-awaited iPhone OS 3.0 (Build 7A341) for both iPhone and iPod touch via iTunes. Users should sync their devices with iTunes and check for updates in order to access the new version. iPod Touch owners will need to purchase the new firmware for $9.95 while iPhone owners will get the firmware downloaded automatically.

While many of the features of the new operating system have been detailed over the past few months, a large list of features are detailed by Apple:

- Copy and Paste: Quickly and easily cut, copy, and paste text from application to application. Select entire blocks of web text with a tap. Copy and paste images from the web, too.
- Landscape Keyboard: Want more room to type? Rotate iPhone to landscape to use a larger keyboard in Mail, Messages, Notes, and Safari.
- Spotlight Search: Find what youre looking for across your iPhone, all from one place. Spotlight searches all of your contacts, email, calendars, and notes, as well as everything in your iPod.
- Safari: Enjoy faster performance, autofill user names and passwords, and more.
- Auto Wi-Fi login: Log in to a Wi-Fi hotspot and iPhone automatically logs you in when you connect again
- Find My iPhone: Find your iPhone if you lose it and protect your privacy with Remote Wipe.
- Shake to Shuffle: Give iPhone a shake and it shuffles to a different song in your music library.

Other sites have provided detailed walkthroughs of the many new features, including some handy tips:

- Mac|Life: 16 Tips to Become an INSTANT iPhone OS 3.0 Power-User

Select Text then delete it

What happens is you hold the delete button, and it starts removing offending characters -- and then it goes on to removing whole words. Next thing you know, you've deleted too many words, and you have to start over. To avoid this, use tap and hold to show the Select|Select All pop-up. Select what you need deleted, hit the delete button and -- poof! -- you've gotten rid of the offending text without trying to judge the speed of the delete button.

- Fortune: The 4 new iPhone features I use most

Safari Autofill

Any browser worth its salt ought to be smart enough to remember the name and password you use on the sites you go to most often. I dont know why this wasnt available on the iPhone from Day 1, but now that it is I find myself visiting sites I had avoided because I was either too lazy to enter the password or too absent-minded to remember it.

- iSmashPhone: How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0

Undo

No matter what application you are using, you can undo typing by shaking your iPhone. If you want your text back, simply shake again. If you had something else written before you started writing the sentence you chose to undo, it reverts back to that. If this was the first thing you wrote, it simply erases it.

- iLounge: Apple iPhone 3.0

Snappier General Performance, with Offsets

Though its hard to quantify, iPhone OS 3.0 feels a little more responsive than its predecessors when it comes to certain tasks: snapping pictures, opening Safari pages, and loading certain apps all seemed to be a little faster, though the specific improvements were sometimes difficult to quantify. Some of the web pages we loaded over Wi-Fi on a 2.2.1 iPhone loaded just as quickly as on a 3.0 iPhone 3G; others loaded faster on the new iPhone. iPhone OS 3.0 is a little quicker at taking still images than before, and appears to be a little better at producing sharpened, higher-contrast snaps of black text on white paper. Lens differences or software, were not 100% certain, but we think its the software.