Okay, so last Monday (June 9th), Steve Jobs took center stage at the WWDC 2008 and made some awesome announcements regarding the iPhone’s 2.0 Firmware that’s scheduled to be released “Early July,” after which, other Apple head honchos got on stage and talked about the 2.0 Firmware upgrade. Some developers got up, talked about their newest developments for the iPhone using the SDK - blah, blah, blah.

About an hour and a half later, Steve Jobs reclaimed the stage to thank everyone for coming and commented that WWDC 2008 is the first time a WWDC has been sold out. All 5,000+ seats were filled - from press, to staff, to developers, every seat was filled.

But just before Steve released the conference, he made his most important announcement since the original iPhone. The announcement everyone’s been waiting for - the iPhone 3G. Steve continued for about 20 minutes talking about the iPhone 3G and their plan for world domination in the smartphone market. In my opinion, they have a strong product, but growth in the Asian markets is going to be slower than expected.

As with the original iPhone, the iPhone 3G sports a 2 MP camera and no video recording and there wasn’t an announcement of a 32GB model. Apple did fix the recessed headphone jack issue that upset many people when the first model was released almost a year ago.

Apple has a stronger, faster iPhone for the world market, and I do plan on buying one on July 11th when the iPhone 3G is released into the wild, however, Apple still has some major work to do to make it a stronger contender against its competitors.

Here’s a list of things the iPhone 3G needs to pack in before going world wide:

• MMS (Multimedia Messaging)
• 5MP photo & video camera
• iChat
• Voice commands/Voice dial
• More compatible/flexible Bluetooth
• Copy & Paste Commands
• 32GB model
• Mobile TV
• True GPS Navigation (Turn-by-Turn, i.e.: TomTom)
• iTunes over-the-air (songs, ringtones)
• iTunes TV & Movie downloads (WiFi)
• OLED Multi Touch Display
• Adobe Flash player for Safari

This list is similar to my previous posting (here), but overall most of my exceptions are the same between the two lists.

While I’m disappointed that the iPhone 3G doesn’t support the full list of features I was expecting, most of them can be added on with software updates - aside from the 5MP camera and the 32GB storage - so, come July 11th, I’ll be inline, awaiting my birthday gift to myself as I will be purchasing an iPhone 3G.

I’ll more than likely work a half-day and sit outside the Apple Store at Lenox Square and wait for the store to be closed at 3 P.M. and re-opened at 6 P.M. as they did with the first iPhone and the release of Mac OS X “Leopard”