@Jeff

In the long term future, you may be right and we should be able to use data for everything including voice.

But, the LTE network for most companies won't provide full coverage for many years, especially in a huge country like the US. So, operators will still need legacy networks for users to fall back on if they are out of LTE range. I'm not sure how good Skype would work if you switched from LTE to UMTS or EDGE... (esp with the iPhone hammering AT&T's network.)

Wait, so if these "Cool Cars" interfere with cellphone reception, then people won't be able to make/receive phone calls or send/receive SMS messages. Wouldn't that make driving in CA safer as well?

I'll bite your legs off!

What Chris didn't mention in his post is that all LBS (Location Based Services) on a Korean phone must be Korean-made. In other words, phones with LBS like Google Maps must drop this service on their phone or use a Korean LBS. That's a major reason why smartphones from foreign companies still have trouble bringing their phones to Korea; most companies have to remove their LBS feature on their phones before selling it here. Ex: RIM had to disable GPS on their Bold before it could be sold in Korea.)

Today, the Korean Communications Commission basically gave Apple the ok to sell their phone as is. (Btw, Apple's the first company to get this grant.) So, people will be able to use Google Maps or Find my iPhone in Korea and removed the last obstacle for KTF to sell the iPhone. That's a huge win for Apple because they won't need to modify much, if anything at all on their iPhone. This is also a win for a foreign company cause this is the first since exception to this rule. Hopefully this will open the door for other companies to enter the market and bring other nice phones here as well.

So, the next step is to wait for KTF to reveal pricing plans for the iPhone. Early rumors say that there will be 3 plans in a range from 40,000KRW~90,000KRW/month (roughly $33.49~$75.35 based on today's exchange rate)

I'm kinda worried about the retail price of the phones themselves, though. Korea typically charges insane prices for the phones themselves. To compare, the Bold's retail price is around 700,000KRW, or $586.76.
(Btw, I'm only picking on the Bold because there's not much else to compare with, in terms of foreign phones.)

Now I gotta figure out whether I'm going to break my contract and switch to KTF...

@Eric:

The reason everyone's confused by this is that SKT and KTF both first had a CDMA network for their 2G and initially for 3G.

But, the Korean gov't opened up the 2.1GHz Band and said that only UMTS (=WCDMA/HSPA) could be used on this spectrum. Thus, SKT and KTF now have both EVDO AND UMTS.

From the end of the article:

"you just don't pick up the CEO of Chevy in a BMW."

LOL!!!

Sammy's Haptic AMOLED's been out for some time, I think. I saw commercials for that for at least a month or two...

The standards for the hardware were frozen before the software, so NXP's solution could be compliant if they just upgrade their S/W.

I wonder the same about the same thing, though i'm on the other side of the Pacific...

If memory serves, didn't the iPhone also initially sell well in Japan before tapering off? Judging the iPhone 3GS' success may be a bit premature in just a month.