iPhone4?

10:28AM " Now I'd like to talk about the iPhone."

It was a scene straight out of 1980's India. Instead of 5 Indians gathering around a small radio with commentary of an India-Pakistan cricket game at lunch time, it was a group of my coworker friends gathered around V reading out the live Engadget feed on his iPad. Even passers-by were curiously peeking over V's shoulders to check out pictures of Steve Jobs displaying a picture of another feature of the iPhone. The launch of the new iPhone had all of geek-dom engrossed today and what luck it was lunch time in Boston. Now that's what I call genius... getting consumers primed to watch a 2 hour commercial of your company's wares.

Completely mesmerized I was willing to drive to the nearest Apple store to buy one on my way back home. Turns out instant gratification was not the order of the day today. Thankfully better sense may have prevailed as well. Do I really need a better screen than my 1st generation iPhone? The 5 MP camera with a flash would be a nice to have, but the video chat ability really is meaningless right now. Good-looking people might like the idea of video-chat I guess. And the deaf too.

So what's my conclusion? I have no idea. The price is not as prohibitive as when the first iPhone came out. $15 per month for the cheapest data-plan with AT&T could actually save me money. I did manage to damage my existing iPhone, so it would be nice to have one in pristine condition. I could still make an impulse buy, but honestly it's not much of a step up.