The current iPhone 3G

So, you saw the post about Palm Pre possibly getting 4G that I found out at Best Buy? Well, I actually had a like 5-10 min conversation with that Best Buy guy that night and he told me some real cool stuff coming out beyond the Palm Pre. As you can see, he told me about some new iPhones as well and one of them is something I’m already saving up for! Remember, this is unconfirmed by Apple, and we’re keeping the info in here as just RUMOR until we hear more. Now that the disclosure is out of the way, let’s talk new iPhones, and he told me about 2 new ones to come this year.

1. 2 GB iPhone/cheaper, lower-end iPhone

A 2 GB model I’m a little more skeptical, as I would expect at least 8 GB in the cheapest model at this point, with the prices for the chips to be used continuing to drop in price. Anyways, he said that we should expect a low end iPhone model (he said 2 GB, though again I would suspect more) to come this summer, though we didn’t talk much more on this so I can’t say what it will look like and price (though rumors of a low end iPhone like this are pretty strong around the internet, and most expect it to price in at below $100– which assuming it is something like an 8 GB iPhone 3G, should make for a great deal).

2. Whole new iPhone with slide out QWERTY keyboard

Yeah, we spoke more on this, and he actually said he saw one in person and showed me a pic similar to what he saw, online (see below). This looks to be THE iPhone, and something that would not only give the Palm Pre (4G or not) a rough time, but could be the final piece that starts luring BlackBerry users to the iPhone. He said the size is the same as the current iPhone 3G (awesome!) with the screen being really thin (think like the chrome/silver ring around the screen being the thinness of the ENTIRE screen), and the black (or white if you got a white iPhone 3G) back being a slide out full QWERTY keyboard. Yeah, awesome I know, and even though its a rumor, the guy seems to be really confident in this.

When should you expect to see this new iPhone? Well, this guy at Best Buy told me this iPhone should come in September– not as good as a summer launch (though not that far off), but hey what better way to go back to school then to make your friends jealous of your cool, new iPhone.

An iPhone with a real keyboard? Note: this is not an actual picture, just a mock up, but the Best Buy guy I spoke to said it looked pretty much like this when he saw it, minus the big pad on the left side of the keyboard

This info also seems to fit well with new iPhone 2,1 and 3,1 designations found in the 3.0 beta (the original iPhone was 1,1 and the 3G was 1,2– so the 2,1 and 3,1 must have some new hardware/ different hardware that get it the new numbers. The 3.0 beta, for those who don’t know, is the next version of the iPhone/iPod Touch software coming this summer. See our post here).

Also rumored to be coming to new iPhones this year are:

• Better, updated camera (some say 3.2 megapixels compared to current 2)
• Video capture (FINALLY!!!)
• WiFi wireless N (the latest and fastest version of WiFi out there, this just really started getting big last year)
• FM radio and transmitter (not only listen to music, news and sports on the radio, but also play your music wirelessly on speakers– like in your car or house– using the FM transmitter)
• Updated memory to 32 GB or more of storage (compared to either 8 or 16 GB currently)
• iChat ON your iPhone-the second coolest thing to be rumored to be coming to the iPhone this year (2nd to getting that QWERTY keyboard). This rumor is really strong, and the tech is very popular in Europe, found on pretty much every phone there, so it wouldn’t surprise us if the new iPhone had a second camera for iChat video chats/calls.

Oh, and AT&T has begun increasing their network speeds (and overall strength- I know from personal use that the iPhone on AT&T’s network is not always the easiest thing to use, with signal drops and such), so we expect whatever new iPhone that comes this year to be ready to harness it fully (and make it struggle to keep up, like it did to the current AT&T network ).

So there you have it. You should now be fully caught up on iPhone rumors, and we even gave you 2 you probably never heard of before

By the way, Apple is holding their Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC for short) on June 8th– this is where they last year announced the iPhone 3G, so I guess we’ll begin to find out then if any of this is happening or not

So, what you think, you like? Would you get an iPhone 3G if it was below $100? You waiting to get an iPhone till it gets a real keyboard, and now gonna get one (assuming this RUMOR- I got to stress the false hope thing)? And if youre a free bird and looking to choose between iPhone and Palm Pre– which would you get, Palm Pre with Sprint 4G, or an iPhone with real QWERTY keyboard and AT&T 3G? We wanna hear your opinion on this, so sound off in the comments!