Now that the 3G iPhone 2 has been officially announced for a July 11 release, lets review whats new in the new iPhone.

First off, it is clear that Apple has directly addressed some serious issues with the original iPhone.

Speed: EDGE vs 3G

Obviously, its biggest drawback was the slow EDGE speeds, which were targeted at launch by Pogue and Mossberg. With the new 3G support, that’s mostly a non-issue. However, other 3G phones can still load formatted-for-mobile pages faster than the desktop-formatted pages for iPhone, even when in Wifi mode.

Price

When the iPhone was originally released, there were competing 3G Windows-mobile based phones (like the Motorola MDA) with compliant headphone jacks, enterprise support, and even 3G which were being given away for free with a reasonable contract. Meanwhile, the iPhone was an astronomical $599 with a very expensive 2-year contract which led to a minimum cost of ownership between $2000-$6000 depending on model, plan, and options.

With the new $199 and $299 price points, Apple has done a surprisingly good job of getting the iPhone into the realm of practical affordability, although I do not know if the details and pricing of the AT&T plan have changed.

Apple has not been known for affordable pricing. Curiously, an Apple employee emailed me today to ask if I could recommend a good $500-$600 Windows laptop for his friend, as the cheapest Macbook is twice as expensive. At one point, Apple released a $499 Mac Mini, but despite the fact that computer prices have continued to decline years later, the Mini is now even more expensive at $599.

Enterprise support: Microsoft Exchange and Cisco VPN

The lack of these two built-in features of the original iPhone officially prevented it from competing directly with the Blackberry in the Enterprise market. Fully secure VPN and messaging are a must-have for enterprise use, and now the iPhone has them. However, Blackberry’s deep entrenchment into this market will probably make this a long road for the iPhone. Enterprise doesn’t go with whats new and exciting, enterprise goes with whats known, what works, and cost of ownership. Inertia plays a large role in this space. Neither is enterprise big on giving out devices to employees which double as extraordinarily entertaining time-wasters. If they thought Brickbreaker was bad…

Third-party SDK support

This was another big complaint of the original iPhone, as Apple and its proprietary ways insured that it was locked down solid from developers. Apple spent the majority of the keynote (which addressed a developer audience) touting the major improvements to the iPhone SDK, which will seemingly appease third parties and consumers.

GPS

For people who have never had GPS in their phone, I suspect they will be largely unimpressed with GPS in the long term. A proper car unit is far more usable for driving, while I never use my phone’s GPS while walking - its more trouble than its worth. In addition, handheld GPS does not work well when walking in the one place I could use it the most - Manhattan - because of the tall buildings.

Once in a while it is good for locating a store or service nearby, but I have had better results faster with Beyond 411 than, say, with Google Maps & GPS. Sometimes Google Maps on mobile can be a serious exercise in frustration, but looks great under ideal conditions.

Flush headset jack

No need to go into detail on this, but Apple’s poorly engineered jack on the original iPhone has been fixed, so it will actually work with third-party headsets.

Stuff that remains unresolved:

Qwerty vs Touchscreen

Probably the biggest fear leading up to the original iPhone’s release was the touchscreen. Up until the iPhone, touchscreens did not historically work very well, especially without a stylus. Although not perfect by any means, the iPhone touchscreen was definitely much better than anyone anticipated.

However, there are few people who will argue that the touchscreen is as usable for typing as the Blackberry’s infamous qwerty thumbboard - at the very least, it is usable with twice as many digits at a time. I will admit the virtual keyboard on the iPhone is surprisingly good, but I would never prefer it over the thumbboard.

Quite frankly, I think there is no winning in this race - there are always going to be people who prefer a thumbboard. I would have been really impressed if Apple had announced a thumbboard version or clip-on/slide-out adapter for the new iPhone.

One-handed usability

Again, a domain of the Blackberry. Walking around New York City, the iPhone is a stealth device compared to the Blackberry. Why? You see people with arm extended massaging their Blackberry everywhere while walking and riding public transit. However, to use the navigation on the iPhone the user is required to stop and pay attention to what they are doing - it wasn’t designed to work with one hand, and its not designed to take a drop as robustly as a Blackberry (which my wife has thrown down a flight of concrete stairs at a Red Hot Chili Pepper’s concert to no ill effect).

Is it a good phone?

Everyone agrees the iPhone is an amazing device, but most also agree that purely as a mobile phone, it falls a little short in usability, signal strength, voice, and call quality. This wasn’t touched on at the keynote, but here’s to hoping that 3G will solve a lot of these complaints.

No user-replaceable battery

Apple, for whatever reason, pretty much refuses to allow users to replace their batteries themselves. Not only has the iPod never had a user-replaceable battery, but recently Apple made the surprisingly awful move of putting a non-replaceable battery in - of all things - an ultraportable notebook - the Macbook Air.

There is no argument for this practice on the consumer side whatsoever, its just the way things are at Apple, one of their quirky proprietary fetishes no one ever understands.

As the iPhone serves the purpose of a phone, video player, mp3 player, web browser, and email device - and now supports games as well - it is inclined to use more battery life during the typical day than a regular phone - the ability to hotswap to a charged battery would avoid a lot of very nasty situations. Alas it is not to be.

I think this is another issue which would keep it out of enterprise - true mobile professionals - people who are always on the move, and always on their phone - simply balk at the idea of a non-changeable battery.

On the upside, it seems that battery life for most features has been very much improved with this new iPhone, so the necessity for the extra battery for most users will be negligible.

3G Tethering

The lack of discussion of this feature at the keynote was disappointing. A 3G card and plan for a notebook is about $60/mo + hardware - a price all but the most mobile and well-heeled can stomach.

At the same time, there are few mobile users who do not often find themselves in a situation where they could really use a high-speed connection, and there is no free wifi available.

A perfect example, especially for our readers, is the train. There is no wifi on Metro-North, nor any plans to add any. However, there are 10’s of 1000’s of commuters heading to their office and back on 20-120 minute train commutes with their laptops every day, and most are in 3G range most of the time.

Additionally, most are heading off to work, where they can charge their laptop and cellphone, so driving down the battery on either via tethering is a non-issue in the morning. In the new M8 cars, there will be power adapters.

This is another strike in the enterprise space - free 3G tethering is an outstanding feature for business, and again, can be a unique problem solver in important emergencies.