We now know the details (or at least, many of the details) about the next version of the iPhone, the iPhone 4. Some of the folks who got a chance to play with one on Monday have now written detailed posts on the experience that are worth reading if you want to know all of the details about the next model. I previously mentioned this great piece by Joshua Topolsky on Engadget. The staff of Macworld wrote a great article titled iPhone 4: What you need to know. MG Siegler of TechCrunch wrote a great article titled An iPhone Lover’s (Initial) Thoughts On iPhone 4. And Kent German of CNET wrote a detailed iPhone 4 First Take. Some of the features that I am still waiting to learn more about are the hardware and software enterprise improvements in iPhone 4 such as better security, improvements working with Microsoft Exchange, etc.
So now you are convinced and you want to get an iPhone 4. Where do you get one? Back in February of 2009, I wrote about the five places to buy an iPhone, and since that time (in fact, since December of 2008) that list has essentially not changed: an Apple store, an AT&T store, Best Buy, Wal-Mart or Sam’s Club. At least, not until now.
Late Tuesday night, RadioShack posted on its official Twitter account that it would have the new iPhone. And then last night, RadioShack tweeted that you can preorder on June 15: “JUST IN: #iPhone4 pre-orders start
next Tuesday @RadioShack…
and that’s only the beginning. RT!”
There were signs in the past that this was coming. Last November, for example, RadioShack announced that it was selling iPhones at a limited number of company-owned stores in Dallas and New York. But now it looks like RadioShack will have the iPhone across the country. And this is big news for RadioShack. Jon Mooallem wrote a great article for Wired magazine earlier this year about RadioShack’s plans to change the focus of the stores to sell more cell phones:
The plan? The new bosses want to turn RadioShack into a hipper, more
mainstream place for “mobility” — which is what they insist on calling
the cell phone market. (In an interview, RadioShack’s marketing chief
used the word mobility an average of once every 105 seconds.)
Selling phones is central to the new RadioShack. And so far, it seems to
be working. Per-store sales are up, and corporate profits jumped 26
percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.
If RadioShack wants to be serious about being in the “mobility” space, it seems obvious that it needs to carry the iPhone, one of the most popular smartphones and arguably the best.
Thus, if you are trying to decide where to buy an iPhone, keep in mind that you now have six options. The prices are virtually the same everywhere, so where you shop is largely a matter of convenience. Note, however, that if your iPhone is part of an AT&T corporate account, in the past this has meant that you have had to go to an AT&T store to upgrade. If this is you, just in case this hasn’t changed, I encourage you to shop at your local AT&T store.
