You have to understand, GRD is a cult digital point and shoot. With the fix 28mm (and now f/1.9!) it's perfect for street snap and lomo style pics. I call it the "designer point n shoot"....

The black body is full meta btw. You call it cheap looking, I call it under-state and low profile design - which btw hasn't change for 3 generations. Just look up GRD I II, and III. They all look identical which I think is brilliant.

Yes I am a GRD fan. :)

If it is unlocked in Hong Kong which means they will be on eBay very soon. This is great news.

Apple TV is only suppose to be a "hobby".

Let me know if NetShare still works after this....

It's actually a little funny they actually mention SMS. In Japan, they don't really use SMS for short messaging. People send short messages to each other via email.

It's funny most of us are pretty negative about the line while I consider most of the TUAW readers are loyal mac fans.

I have to admit, I did get in line last year, but that was on the launch day at 3pm (only 3 hrs ahead).

This year, I am planning on rolling into the Apple Store to get a iPhone 3G on the 12th as well...

Great thoughtful comments instead of the usual "Mac Fanboi rah rah and MSFT must lose for Apple to win, etc".... Good stuff. Keep it coming...

Check AT&T's international Roaming. I suppose you are in the US.

My guess is, when you roam in Japan your AT&T iPhone 3G will hop between DoCoMo and Softbank's network and KDDI is out since they are CDMA shop.

In Japan, you don't send MMS or SMS TXT, you send email from your phone. When you sign up mobile service with a JPN carrier you get an email address.

Christian, you really need to correct the part about "I expect that the Japanese iPhone will be very different, internally, from its counterparts from other parts of the world."

2-3 years ago, that could be true since 3G in US and 3G of the rest of the world (Asia / Europe) are on different bands, and we ended up with US only 3G or Asia/Europe only 3G phones. Mind you, those phone can all fallback to GSM network.

But since mid 2006, true "World band 3G" radio chipsets became more and more common among smartphones (especially the ones HTC produced). These "World band 3G" phones can work nicely in 3G mode in the US, Europe and Asia (including Japan), and I am sure that's the type of chipset the iPhone 2.0 will use. After all, we're in 2008.

Educated guess points to a single streamlined design of iPhone 2.0 for the entire world. After all, it can be done. There's no technical reason why it can't.