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Supports OpenGL 2.0 [Edit: ES 2.0].  Lots faster (faster than PSP possilbly?), and cheaper bottom end.  This could have a big impact on the market I reckon. 

How about some factual specs?

A little hostile there man. Is there really any need?

I'm not a computer magazine, can only tell what I know. OpenGL2.0 is a fact, from today's keynote, as us the new generation Arm proc, which AFAIK is quite a decent leap. Sorry I can't give the Mhz gain. Bottom model's going for $99 is the US.

that's not good enough..

I need cpu clock speed, textured and lit triangles per second, total ram, screen resolution.. 

I suspect this is Apples Wii to the Gamecube but without the innovative controls.

"How to piss off all your existing customer".

The $99 model is just the 3G, not the 3GS.  So it doesn't have the new, faster guts.


By releasing new products regularly?  I don't see the problem here.  I'm not buying one because my iPhone does the things I need it to.

I don't know, It looks like the old one is going to become obsolete, doesn't it?

It will still do everything it did before, and I assume people will still make software that works for it.

is it openGLES 2.0 or openGL 2.0

If it's the latter, then SWEET

Otherwise, meh

Looks like ES. So basically, mehs all around.

Ah is it - so what features does GLES2.0 bring over 1.1?  Not shaders presumably, or maybe yes but unsupported on iPhone / PoverVR? 

Edit: I don't know much about the new PowerVR chip - is it a faster MBX or something new? Either way this could bring better frame rates which is no bad thing!


Edit2: from the GL Spec, seems it might be totally programmable.  That could be sweet!:

OpenGL ES 1.X
For fixed function hardware: OpenGL ES 1.1 is defined relative to the OpenGL 1.5 specification and emphasizes hardware acceleration of the API, but is fully backwards compatible with 1.0. It provides enhanced functionality, improved image quality and optimizations to increase performance while reducing memory bandwidth usage to save power. The OpenGL ES 1.1 Extension Pack is a collection of optional extensions added to OpenGL ES 1.1 that reduced variability and bring significant improvements in image quality and performance.

OpenGL ES 2.X
For programmable hardware:OpenGL ES 2.0 is defined relative to the OpenGL 2.0 specification and emphasizes a programmable 3D graphics pipeline with the ability to create shader and program objects and the ability to write vertex and fragment shaders in the OpenGL ES Shading Language. OpenGL ES 2.0 does not support the fixed function transformation and fragment pipeline of OpenGL ES 1.x.

The shader support is the big deal here I think. I'm excited about that.

And Gravious, Apple doesn't tend to release specific specs on the iPhone.

One thing I a little bit wonder about is that the iPhone platform is now split. Up until now the iPhone kind of had the sort of advantage consoles have from a developers' perspective, that if I'm not mistaken basically all the units for sale had the exact same hardware so you could target that hardware very specifically. I assume they're just upping the megahertz on the ARM and upgrading to the better PowerVR part? So probably if you code for the peculiarities of the first-gen iPhone you'll also get good performance on the iPhone "S". But it seems worrying that if you have an "S" you may not have any way of knowing if your game performs on the earlier iPhone, and if you have an earlier iPhone/iPod you're certainly not going to be able to tell whether ES 2.0 code works (Apple's simulators so far are nice but don't even attempt to simulate either pixel-perfection or accurate performance). Are you going to just have to own one of each to debug? And they don't seem to have announced an iPod "S" yet...

That's exactly the problem.  I think for at least the near term everyone's going to program for the old iPhone, but I can see a lot of S-only games if everyone upgrades as people often do.

For normal "app" apps, I don't see anything different.  They'll just run faster on the new phone.

Except that ES is a much nicer API than the mess that OpenGL is right now...

Oh, looks like the iPhone is going to become a force to reckoned with on the handheld market. Just not mine for that matter.

So will Apple be adding an "S" only section to the App Store for games needing the higher performance?

Good question! I don't think they will initially, but we'll see.

Here is a nice article analyzing the 3GS's hardware: Anandtech (http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3579)