It’s the different-enough- to-buy-again iPhone, 3G white

Nerds watched in unison today at 10 am, pretended to work, took the day off, or kept an auto-refreshing feed of the keynote speech on their second monitor. The keynote lasted over an hour without a single “boom” uttered and without any surprises. The Apple rumor mill has perfected the art of conjecture and piecing together of small leaks and bobbles into product-forecasting science, with the vast majority of details of today’s announcements made known within the last two weeks. For the uneducated, the new iPhone is as follows:

iPhone 3G

• The back casing is now glossy plastic:
  • 8GB model: Available in black
  • 16GB model: Available in black and white
• The prices have dropped severely:
  • 8GB model: $199
  • 16GB model: $299
• 3G (HSPDA) internet is 250% faster
• Now includes A-GPS:
  • The camera app now geotags photos
  • Google Maps utilizes the GPS in addition to Wifi and cellular positioning dynamically.

The only significant, earth-shattering change in the device is the price. The rest of the changes are far more evolutionary than revolutionary, and nothing in that list screams at current iPhone users to upgrade from the first iPhone model, except for perhaps one very non-obvious change: white casing. What the white casing represents is a shift in product aesthetics, in acute differentiation of the product from the first model, of conspicuous consumption. Certainly, when a friend sees me holding up a shiny white device to my face with an apple symbol front-and-center, they’ll know it’s new. This is not necessarily true for the black one. I’m certainly not above the ploy despite being quite aware of the reason behind the white casing; I want a white iPhone for the reasons listed above: because it’s different and because it’s obvious.

There are, of course, other reasons for a white iPhone. The United States and the six other countries that have the first generation iPhones are not the only market anymore. The iPhone 3G is being rolled out to 60 countries this year. Having choice is good. Women, for one, surely would prefer a white phone above a dark, serious, black iPhone.

Despite this, it will be interesting to see how many first generation iPhone users pick up the white one when they upgrade. I’ll be among them.