Update: Jobs announces iPhone 3G to much fanfare

10With anticipation at a fever pitch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 3G to an appreciative audience during the opening keynote speech at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference.on Monday.

The new iPhone, sporting a thinner and sleeker look, will support faster 3G broadband wireless networks and come with built-in GPS capabilities, Jobs said. Support for 3G networks will enable the new iPhone to download data up to 2.8 times faster than the earlier model, Jobs said. Built-in GPS will make it easier for users to navigate roads.

[ Keep up with WWDC news with Tom Yager's enterprise Mac blog | Video: Steve Jobs introduces the 3G iPhone at WWDC | Special report: IT's guide to the iPhone ]

The iPhone 3G will come with a 3.5-inch screen and have better battery life, with talk time of 5 hours, standby time of 300 hours, 6 hours of high-speed browsing time, 20 hours of audio, and 7 hours of video, Jobs said. Some who had previously bought iPhones complained about its battery life, and that was a problem that Apple needed to solve with the new iPhone, Jobs said.

While Jobs said the phone is "even thinner at the edges," it is just a hair thicker than its predecessor. The 3G iPhone is 0.48 inch, or 12.3 mm, thick, while the previous version is 0.46 inch, or 11.6 mm, deep.

Quicker data downloads and lower prices are key to greater adoption of iPhones worldwide, Jobs said. Apple has cut the price by half to make the new iPhone more affordable for users, so that the 8GB model will sell for $199 and the 16GB model for $299. The company found that 56 percent of people surveyed wouldn't buy the earlier iPhone because they found it expensive.

The phone will ship on July 11 in North America and will eventually be rolled out in 70 countries, including India, China, Singapore, and Australia, Jobs said.

The release ends months of speculation surrounding the iPhone 3G's release date and features. Apple earlier acknowledged that stocks of the original iPhone were low in the U.S. and Europe, fueling speculation that Apple was winding down supplies to ready the market for iPhone 3G.

In the U.S., AT&T is ready for the new iPhone, announcing last week that it had upgraded its 3G wireless network with improved downlink speeds of up to 1.7Mbps, a 20 percent increase over previous speeds. The broadband network is available in many U.S. metropolitan areas and the carrier intends to expand it. The network uses HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology.