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What will Apple announce today? Something with the iPhone 3G battery? We can hope.

Thoughts about the iPhone 3G's battery life and today's announcement.

Kevin Ho
Kevin Ho is an attorney living in San Francisco. He's from Iowa originally where he got his first Atari computer when he was little and remembers using the Apple IIGS. He is PC-user but secretly a Mac person in the closet as evidenced by many an iPod cluttering his desk drawers. He'll be writing about his experience with the iPhone. Disclosure.
Kevin Ho

In a crazy world, Apple would announce a "we-are-so-sorry" iPhone swap today: All first generation iPhone owners and all new iPhone 3G owners would be given a new free iPhone Plutonium, which, of course, has endless battery life. Perhaps this massive reset could be founded by the liquidation of Halliburton or perhaps as part of a massive government effort to promote consumer-spending, oh wait, that was Fannie May and Freddie Mac....

Stranger things have happened. What's the line? We can only hope for change?

But seriously folks, the biggest complaint I've seen (and experienced) is dismal battery life. By the end of a typical day's usage, the iPhone 3G battery is craving to be recharged after a few hours of standby and a just a few calls. This is pretty subpar, even for the most ardent of iPhone devotee.

A close second gripe: (and perhaps an even more fundamental flaw) is the "Call Failed" message that is much more common now than with the first generation iPhone. Apparently, this is based on the iPhone searching for a 3G network in favor over the EDGE network and not being able to do it quickly enough. AT&T and Apple point fingers at each other while we wait.

Public enemy no. 1: sustained battery life that can't come quickly enough. Kevin Ho
Anyway, Apple has defied expectations before and may well do so today. After all, they are the company that has bucked economic pessimism by creating hardware that sells. Let's hope they can keep their growing customer base with something more useful than iTunes 8.0.