Japan's exclusive iPhone dealer, Softbank Mobile, will sell the 3G iPhone for the equivalent of $215 starting on July 11th. The service plans start at $68 and include unlimited data transmissions. Also, subscribers will be able to talk for free with other Softbank users for most of the day. The 16GB version of Apple's smartphone will be correspondingly more expensive, at around $320.

Softbanks's CEO Masayoshi Son said he expects the first lot to "evaporate instantly." The exclusive deal with Apple will probably determine users of rivals such as DoCoMo who pay a lot for their phone bill each month to switch to Softbank, Son said.

The 3G iPhone is coming in about two weeks in the U.S., which will be at half price compared to its predecessor ($199 for the 8Gb), and the iPhone 2.0 firmware is also around the corner with significant improvements.

The iPhone 2.0 firmware is the enterprise-oriented update which tries to snatch customers away from the likes of BlackBerry by adding previously unavailable features on Apple's gadget such as interoperability with corporate email systems. There is also VPN, support for Microsoft Office and iWork documents, as well as other improvements. The update will be available for free to iPhone users and will cost 10 bucks iPod Touch owners.

The new iPhone will pack 3G, GPS, better battery life (300 hours for standby, 2G talk at 10 hours, and 3G talk of 5 hours, or  5-6 hours of browsing, 7 hours of video, and 24 hours of audio) and much more. It is slimmer. Overall, it is better and cheaper that the 2G iPhone and will hit 22 countries starting July 11, with a goal of rolling it out to 70 countries eventually.