Unless you’ve been living in 1997 for the past 48 hours, you’ve probably heard that Apple has announced their new, breakthrough device called the iPhone (at least for now). They’re billing it as an iPod, Phone, and revolutionary internet communicator all in one device. Since I’m currently a Treo 650 user and a gadget junkie in general, this has me really interested.

Some basics. It is scheduled to be released in June 2007. There will be two versions–a 4 GB model for $499 and an 8 GB model for $599. I’m fairly sure that the 4GB model won’t sell nearly as many. Without having spent any time with the device, nor being able to read any third-party reviews, I am giving a tentative very positive review.

There are some really cool things that Apple has done. First off, it looks sweet. There are no hard buttons. Everything is touchscreen and done with virtual buttons or tap-scrolling. Another breakthrough they’ve done is having the ability to have multiple touches at the same time. That means that you can use two fingers at once to navigate the phone. You’ll have to see the demonstration. The other thing that seems really cool is the random-access voice mail. That means that you can choose which voice mail you want to listen to when you want to listen to it, in any order. That would be really nice to have TODAY!!!

There are only two negative things I can see from the beginning. First is the “small” storage space. I say small because the normal iPods have 30GB+ of storage. For people who have 10,000+ songs and want them all the time this will not be enough space. But this is A LOT more than my Treo has built in (32MB, yes megabytes). The other is the lack of a removable battery. Two things that worry me about this are running out of juice on the run and reseting the device if it locks. I know, you mac fanboys will tell me that Apples don’t freeze, but my brother-in-law would disagree. His iPod has frozen/locked up on him two or three times. Granted, this won’t be a big deal day-to-day, but it is something to think about.

Service will only be available from Cingular, so us Sprint users will have to make a switch if we decide to get it. You’ll also have to sign a two-year contract. My initial suggestion is to wait at least three to six months before you buy one. Most first-generation devices will have some minor, but annoying, bugs to work out and the price will most likely drop after a year or so. However, if you just have to have it, you’re probably safe to go ahead and buy it. Just make sure you let me play with it for a while!!!