The iPhone 3G demand has been predicted by various pundits to be poor, as it adds so little to the original iPhone.

Well, it is so poor that on the day the O2 make it available as an upgrade, in fact within the first 30 minutes of availability, it has crashed their upgrades website:

Apple seem to have made a pretty shrewd move with the packaging of the iPhone. People that criticise the total package price of the iPhone with the 18-month contract of £35/month seem to forget that the contract includes unlimited data usage and connectivity to “The Cloud”. O2 charge me £1/MB for data on my Nokia. With on-the-road email usage, it often costs me around £20/month for just data.

The iPhone, as well as being a cool phone, is an internet device. Well integrated email, a good web browser, Google Maps, switching over to Wi-Fi automatically when in coverage all encourage data. Alison is already reading blogs while in the queue at Tescos. If the user was constantly worrying about the data cost of these features they would turn them off, especially the email which can be configured to automatically check for email every few minutes.

So, the idea seems to be that Apple want the iPhone to be a data terminal. I’m sure AT&T and O2 (and the others) are worried by the unlimited data contracts, and don’t want millions of iPhones users swamping their data networks for a fixed revenue. So, all high bandwidth functions are not there. This leads to the following limits:

• No Bluetooth GPRS modem link for your laptop.
• No YouTube over GPRS
• No iTunes Music Store over GPRS
• No third-party apps, which couldn’t be guarenteed to play by “The Rules”.

I understand, it’s quite simple really.

A phone from Apple, although based on slightly inferior hardware (only a 2 megapixel camera, no 3G, etc.) reinvents the modern feature rich phone returning it to the ordinary user. A revolution, even though most reporters in the UK that copy each others articles fail to realise it.

Alison got her iPhone last night. She went to the O2 shop in town to queue for the opening and had a little fun.

I’m not getting one. Unfortunately, despite the fact it is a brilliant innovation, I need one killer feature that isn’t on the phone. I need it to be able to act as a Bluetooth modem. Not for email when away from home for my MacBook, as I originally thought (since the iPhone’s email app rocks), but as a way for my TomTom to connect to the traffic report server. So, I might sulk a bit.

I love the anti-hype going on too. Comparisons to the Nokia N95 or Sony Ericsson P1, comments about 3G vs 2.5G, criticising the fact that it is locked to O2, and even advice that people should wait for the next generation of iPhone to avoid bugs.

Reporters saying that the N95 is better because it kicks the iPhone’s specs are sort of right. The iPhone is not best of breed in data connectivity, or with it’s rather inferior (by today’s standards) camera, or even richness of supported applications. Correct Gold star reporting. Except, you’ve all missed the point.