Big news today at Macworld. After years of anticipation, speculation, and rumors, Apple has announced the iPhone! Here are some of the features:
11.6 mm (thickness)
3.5 in. (width)
Runs Mac OS X (access to Safari Web browser)
Touchscreen display with multi-touch support
2 megapixel camera
8 GB storage
Bluetooth with EDR and also WiFi
Quadband GSM radio with EDGE
EDGE or WiFi, the phone switches to WiFi when detected
Google Maps: Satellite directions, traffic monitoring, and normal maps.
Random access voicemail
Widgets: Weather and stocks
Photo album lets you scroll through images with your finger and you can zoom in/out by “squeezing” or “pinching” the screen with two fingers.
The orientation of the screen (landscape or portrait) will automatically rotate based upon the orientation of the device itself.
One of my favorite features is the quick switching. While listening to your music using the iPod application on your iPhone, the phone rings. As the phone call comes in, the music fades out, and the screen changes allowing you to answer. While on the phone, you can even pull up photos to send in an email, and browse the web. After you end the call, the iPod continues playing where you left off. Amazing!
Also on stage with Steve Jobs was Jerry Yang of Yahoo and Eric Schmidt of Google. A big part of this iPhone is the use of some of Google’s services, like the maps for satellite directions, and traffic. Yahoo is involved by offering free push IMAP email for all of the customers.
Now for the price: The 4GB model will be $499 and the 8GB model will be $599. They’ll start shipping in June! Note: As Nate the Great mentions below, it does require a 2-year contract.
Battery life is a killer, up to 5 hours, I think they need to get that up to at least 10 hours or you won’t last a day with a combo tunes and phone while your out all day.
At just 5 hours I hope you don’t want to use the phone, when you have been thrashing the battery with some tunes.
Yes, but the whole idea of having a phone incorporating a music player is to play music otherwise there is no pint in having that capability. If you use it extensively for what it is designed to play music (even with only 4 GB of music), when you come to need your phone you could find your screwed, sorry about getting technical ;D
The other thing I think Apple are having two bites at the apple cherry, excuse the pun, as you probably can’t transfer the iPod iTunes to your phone you will have to buy them all over again. Isn’t this what gets you steamed, Fair Play was it ?
I haven’t seen anything about being able to transfer existing iTunes to the iPhone.
David I agree on the battery life that 5 hours is too short.
Also no you do not have to buy the music again. You are allowed to transfer any music/music video/movie you purchased from the iTunes Store to an UNLIMITED number of iPods or iPhones. The only thing FairPlay limits is the number of Computers that can be authorized to play the content
and he said you can playback music for 16 hours on a single charge and it goes to a low power mode when not being used so unless you are watching videos all the time the battery will last all day.
I will believe it when i hear from people who have them which will be after June (dosent ship till june)
Bob, apple tried to get cisco’s blessing for a long time and since they would not agree to apple’s terms Apple released it anyway (Steve always gets his way and if he doesnt he will do it anyway regardless of what law it breaks)
So true, and frankly, I’ve always admired him for his chutzpah. Personally, I like a phone to be a phone, and a player to be a player, so I don’t think I’d be interested in it, but the “eye candy” factor is certainly a 10+. Congrats to Apple!
Edit: Posting at the same time…
Probably true, but if Apple has to change the name, it’ll make them look like the underdog in the minds of the target market for the iPhone. Sales will be spectacular, even at $500 a pop, which of course, is all that Apple really cares about, and I’m sure they’ve already factored in litigation costs in the business model.
It will be interesting to watch this one play out.
Software giant Microsoft has warned its rival, Apple Inc., into launching its iPhone and said the much-awaited modern mobile phone could face some very serious challenges if the popular iPod MP3 player is integrated into it.
Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division president admits the company is also planning to introduce its own mobile phone and integrate the Zune digital music player, but said such plan “is not at top of its priority list.”
Bach said, “You have to find out what it’s great at. Is it great as a phone, or is it great as a music player? If it’s great as a music player, then it’s just another iPod trying to be a phone.”
He said the biggest challenge facing Apple is merging the two different formats of media player and phone, as well as making sure the unit have sufficient battery life and good screen size.
That was my first thought when I saw it first time