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So iPhone Jonny is the world's first person to get a retail version of the 3G iPhone. Not sure if it was worth the 3 days wait. But more interesting, I found the following after installing iTunes 7.7 (released today):

Notice the South African flag??? Yes, as starters, Apple has at least opened up the iTunes store to allow the purchase of iPhone and iPod Touch applications. If you want to purchase media-content, you will still have to go for that US-store account and that EntroPay card (and no, I am not going to explain further - smile)

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few weeks, the following should be no news for you: Vodacom is the only provider offering the new 3G iPhone in South Africa.

With the official launch just around the corner, you should better move and pre-order here:

Nokia is still my favourite phone-manufacturer and most of Nokia's competitors have lost the plot (look at Sony Ericsson). In my previous posts I listed the shortcomings of the iPhone and subsequently got plenty of fan-mail (not really - lots of emails with the F-word in it) when proposing the new Nokia N96 as an iPhone-alternative.

But I think that the latest Nokia addition, the Nokia E71, will go nicely with my MacBook Air:

The quadband E71 is about 10mm thick thin and features WiFi (802.11b/g), HSDPA, Bluetooth 2.0 (with A2DP - iPhone, eat your heart out), A-GPS, 3.2 megapixel camera and a front facing camera for video chat. The business-class phone features 110MB of built-in storage and a microSD slot if you grow out of that. The battery life on the phone is also impressive:

Talk time: GSM up to 10 h 30 min, WCDMA up to 4 h 30 min
Standby time: GSM up to 17 days, WCDMA up to 20 days, WLAN idle up to 166 hours

If you live in Germany and sign up with T-Mobile, you can get your 3G 8GB iPhone for 1 €:

The catch is that you signup for a Complete XL-contract at € 89,00 per month (the 16GB iPhone goes for € 19,95). The T-mobile contract gives you however benefits which we South African will not see in the near future:
* 1000 free minutes
* 300 free SMS
* 5GB UMTS data-bundle (soft-capped thereafter at 64 Kbit/sec)
* Unlimited T-Mobile WLAN hot-spot access
* free weekend talk

Similar in price to MTN's Procall 120 or Vodacom's Talk 100 you will get the T-Mobile Complete M-bundle (8GB iPhone for € 59,95 and contract at € 49,00) - the bundle is the same as the above with the only difference being 100 free minutes and 40 free SMS.

Boy, did I get flamed today because of my previous iPhone post - most of the comments I could not publish - and I my deleted folder contains some 50 emails. Everyone who sent me those nice emails containing plenty of profanity, was clearly shooting from the hip. I was never slagging off Apple; I raised the point that Apple did not exceed people's expectations. If you had also listened out in the community, you would have noticed that this is the common sentiment.

The bottom line remains (and makes the 3G iPhone not reasonable enough):

Camera: No improvements on the 2.0 megapixel camera, which is currently below par among the iPhone's competition.

Headphone Jack: The new headphone jack is not recessed so you no longer need to buy special headphones to fit your iPhone. This would be a good thing, if the recessed jack weren't such a stupid design move in the first place. You can't fix a mistake and call it a feature.

Improved Audio: The iPhone's speaker is abysmally quiet, making a speaker phone conversation almost impossible. Jobs says the audio is improved, but made no specific mention of the speaker phone, so we'll see. This is still a big question mark.

Bluetooth / tethering: No bluetooth profile support for headsets or being able to pair the iPhone with my in-car handsfree kit - come on. (Not to mention the lack of being able to pair your phone via bluetooth with your laptop and use it as a 3G-modem)

Docking connector: The guys over at Engadget confirmed that the iPhone's power/docking-connector will not fit the current docking stations and users will require a newer version.