Is the new iPhone worth the wait?

Apple has said it will hold an event on Tuesday, September 12 at 10 am ET where it is expected to announce its eagerly-awaited iPhone 3G successor, the iPhone 3GS. What should be expected is the continuation of the trend that Apple pioneered with the original iPhone — namely, fewer, fewer and fewer, incremental improvements to existing iPhone devices.

The original iPhone, released in June 2007, was almost universally praised for its elegant design. However, the most well-known feature of the original — the inclusion of a front-facing “missile launcher” key with which a user could launch games — proved to be an unpopular novelty feature that also added one of the first, and probably highest-profile, examples of iPhone software bugs. In retrospect, the launcher key was a misstep that created unnecessary confusion among users. But at the time, it seemed like a stroke of genius.