iPhone 2 is all the news as the World Wide Developer’s Conference of 2008 draws close. With legitimate GPS and 3G, the iPhone 2 promises to bring a lot of new customers to the market. With that said, there shouldn’t be a single iPhone user who ditches the current model for the new one, and here’s why.

First, I have to say I’m a bit underwhelmed by all the updates that are supposedly going to be included in the new iPhone. Sure, the biggest request with the old iPhone was realtime GPS. Many jailbroken iPhones currently have a GPS mockup that establishes positioning based on triangulated local cell phone towers, but it isn’t real “global positioning” based on satellites.

The second big upgrade that many people have been pining for is for the new iPhone to work on the 3G data network that AT&T has. 3G is admittedly much faster than the current standard data transfer rates, and will aid in streaming media from Youtube as well as downloading music, videos, games and more from iTunes and from the soon-to-be-unveiled iPhone Apps store.

However, the turnover costs of either selling your old iPhone person-to-person or on eBay just can’t justify the costs of adopting the new model. Many of the first iPhone adopters spent upwards of $500 (and some more) to have the first models on the shelves. Later users were lucky enough to see a price drop, but consider this: is there any chance that the cost of the new iPhone 2 will be close enough to what current users could sell their iPhones for second hand?

Furthermore, there are significant upgrades that users requested that have been left out of the upcoming iPhone 2 (supposedly). Many users have been frustrated that no removable and replaceable battery existed in the first iPhone, and many reputable Mac sites have already weighed in, saying that the iPhone 2 won’t have a replaceable battery either. With iPhone batteries discoloring the screen displays, that’s a serious problem.

The point of this is to say that the upgrades and upgrading costs necessary to move from the original iPhone to an iPhone 2 just aren’t worth it. If you’re lost in the woods with an original iPhone that doesn’t have GPS and can’t get help, your problems are bigger than not having the latest and the greatest cellular technology from Apple. If you’re having trouble watching Youtube material on your iPhone as fast as you would like, use a computer. Those are still in fashion. And that’s the stuff dreams are made of.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 9:21 pm under Apple.

Read more entries by Triston McIntyre.
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