iPhone
For those of you who avoid the news and technews in particular, Apple Computers Inc. have announced they are going to be producing a mobile/cell phone.
Not a surprise, it's been rumoured for ages and ages (the sneaky thing they did was not to file for FCC approval before the announcement, which means it was more of a surprise, but that they won't be shipping the iPhone until the end of 2007. They also didn't announce that they'd done a deal with the trademark holder(s) of iPhone, but I guess they must have done so...)
So let's take a look at the features:
a) It's a 4 or 8Gb video iPod
b) it's a widescreen video player
c) a web browser and email platform (internet appliance some call it)
d) it has a touchscreen (and more than that, a multitouch touchscreen, see below)
e) it has a 2Megapixel camera
f) it runs on GSM networks
g) it runs (some variant of) Mac OSX
h) it uses sensors to determine portrait or landscape format and resizes applications based on orientation. It also has a sensor to dim the screen when you hold the phone to your ear, and a sensor to adjust screen brightness depending on ambient light conditions
i) Wifi
j) it will cost something like $600 when subsidised by a two year contract with Cingular
a) means it syncs music, videos, photos and contacts with your Mac or PC using iTunes, which is good (nice and simple for the "average" user). Nothing new in that, it's what iPods do. As others have pointed out, the appeal of an 80Gb iPod is that you can carry around all your music and stuff with you, even if you only listen to 10% of it ... 8Gb (less once it is loaded with applications etc.) is back to Nano and Shuffle sizes. Hopefully they will take a leaf out of the SlingPlayer and allow you to stream music and video from your home PC over the internet/phone network to your iPhone ...
b) widescreen video players are around already, nothing new there
c) web browser and email platform - nothing new there either, there are many "smartphones" out there that do that (I have one in my bag now that does email and uses Opera as a web browser)
d) touchscreen ... these have been on phones for years now, so nothing new there. And multitouch screens are cool, but we've been seeing them demonstrated for years by various people so it's a little hard to believe that Steve Jobs has just invented them. A multitouch screen is one where you can use more than one finger at a time (like holding down the shift key with one finger while typing letters with the other, or more impressively, picking a photo on the screen by touching it with one finger and then using another finger to "stretch" it to zoom in ... see Multitouch on YouTube for many examples, though I'd probably start with this)
e) Two megapixel cameras are everywhere now, and Samsung (I believe) have shown eight megapixel cameras. Lens quality is vital, as are the CCD sensitivity and noise levels, about which we know nothing yet. And no optical zoom. Still, it's pretty much a requirement for a decent feature phone nowadays, so nothing new there ...
f) GSM, yay. The French have defeated the Americans! Seriously though, GSM is the digital mobile phone standard throughout most of the world, so it's a good step forward. But not 3G.
g) Mac OSX, good news, OSX is loved by millions. Unknown how hard it will be to port other Mac software to the phone. Unknown how well it will run within the usually very limited CPU and memory of a phone (usually limited due to size, battery drain and heat, oh and cost!). Unknown whether it will be able to keep running without lockups and reboots for several months at a time (sure some desktop and server machines do, but most of them aren't being thrown into a jacket pocket and bounced around and having to handle all that while big RF transceivers are sitting millimetres away)
h) sensors: ok, these are cool, but not new (I suggested the ear proximity sensor to people here at work over a year ago and was told it wasn't new then) though I'm not aware of any other phone that has all these
i) WiFi (wireless ethernet) good news, though again there are already phones on the market with wifi built in (I should be getting one in the next week or so from work)
j) Price, ouch! As predicted Apple have decided to pick one network in each territory and establish an exclusive deal with them. This is necessary so that the infrastructure required to support some of the iPhones features (listening to voice mail out of sequence, seeing a list of voice mails waiting, possibly "over the air" downloads of iTunes Store songs and videos etc.) are not standard, but will involve data transfer and so can be charged for. This allows that single network partner to subsidise the cost of the iPhone since they expect to make the money back on exclusive services (podcasts, TV etc.)
What it doesn't have
a) 3G. The high speed data standard for most of the world. It's difficult (but not impossible) to build all the aerials and provide the power for all the standards in one phone (my new one has them all) but Apple have chosen not to support this one
b) the front mounted camera used for video calling on 3G networks, so no iChat
c) a cover to protect the screen! (You'll have to buy a case separately)
d) a higher resolution camera
e) a camera with optical zoom
f) not shown on the stuff I've seen, a standard numeric keypad with T9 texting (it does predictive word offerings off the qwerty keyboard but that's a lot more keys and no tactile feedback) ... this may not be important to you of course!
g) a blackberry client (though I'm sure it will be along in moments)
h) the storage of my 80Gb iPod
i) a click/scrollwheel
j) GPS
k) FM radio (or DAB radio)
l) a TV tuner (some phones have DVB-H or something similar)
My new SonyEricsson P990i has a touch screen, MP3 and video player, syncing software, wifi, GSM, bluetooth, IR and 3G, a 2Mp camera, email clients, web browser etc. and is available now. I don't think it can handle 8Gb of data (but I believe it can have a 4Gb card, and you can always carry a second card with more music on it if you want!). Other new handsets (e.g. from Nokia) have GPS, 3Mp+ cameras with optical zoom and Carl Zeiss optics, horizontal/vertical switching etc.
What the iPhone adds is a slick user interface (excellent!) including nice ways of handling photos, plus easy integration with iTunes to allow your iPhone to be the portable media device some other phones have tried to be.
In all I've read so far on the iPhone, the one thing they've not mentioned (possibly deliberately) is its use for business (Word, Excel and Powerpoint clients, PDF readers etc.) though I'd imagine that a lot of that *will* be available, it clear that that's not the iPhone's initial targetted market.
Will it sell? Absolutely! Will it succeed? This almost certainly won't be the only model Apple release so I expect that we'll see more functionality and more features in later versions. So yes, I think it will. Not because it has much amazingly new technology, but because Apple understand that people want a single device in their pockets that entertains, that informs, that allows people to stay connected, and above all, jumps the chasm between "early adopters" and the next, larger, bunch of people that want trendy gadgets but don't have time to read through thick manuals (if the "Dummys Guide to using an iPhone" turns out to be a thick book, I'll be very surprised!)
I have a SonyEricsson P910i, a little chunky, but it does almost everything the iPhone can do (just not in as pretty and easy a manner) and it's been out for two years now. Then I moved to a SonyEricsson K750 for the better camera, for the FM radio, for the smaller form factor, and I used it every day for listening to radio, for storing my contacts and diary entries etc and the P910 (which could do some of those things better) stayed in a drawer or in the pocket of my bag. And for Christmas I got the 80Gb iPod which gives me a lot more storage and an easier interface for getting at it ... and yet I still find that I'm using the phone more than the iPod (due to the radio and due to wanting to be ready to make/receive calls while travelling) and having to swop between headsets is a little bit of a hassle, so having a single device that can do both will be great ... but the iPhone is too big to just throw in your pocket (with your keys etc.) so I'm still unsure about it ... I think I will probably wait to see what the second generation iPhone is like.
Apple/Cingular/whoever still have to show how they are going to make things like setting up IMAP email simple, but it's certainly possible and I'd expect Apple (or its loyal customers and volunteers) to do a good job of it.
Perhaps that's the major thing missing from most of the other mobile phone companies ... passion. Passion to make a friendly UI, passion to produce the supporting materials for each other to simplify things, passion to delight the end user.
I wonder if lproven will agree with this?
Not a surprise, it's been rumoured for ages and ages (the sneaky thing they did was not to file for FCC approval before the announcement, which means it was more of a surprise, but that they won't be shipping the iPhone until the end of 2007. They also didn't announce that they'd done a deal with the trademark holder(s) of iPhone, but I guess they must have done so...)
So let's take a look at the features:
a) It's a 4 or 8Gb video iPod
b) it's a widescreen video player
c) a web browser and email platform (internet appliance some call it)
d) it has a touchscreen (and more than that, a multitouch touchscreen, see below)
e) it has a 2Megapixel camera
f) it runs on GSM networks
g) it runs (some variant of) Mac OSX
h) it uses sensors to determine portrait or landscape format and resizes applications based on orientation. It also has a sensor to dim the screen when you hold the phone to your ear, and a sensor to adjust screen brightness depending on ambient light conditions
i) Wifi
j) it will cost something like $600 when subsidised by a two year contract with Cingular
a) means it syncs music, videos, photos and contacts with your Mac or PC using iTunes, which is good (nice and simple for the "average" user). Nothing new in that, it's what iPods do. As others have pointed out, the appeal of an 80Gb iPod is that you can carry around all your music and stuff with you, even if you only listen to 10% of it ... 8Gb (less once it is loaded with applications etc.) is back to Nano and Shuffle sizes. Hopefully they will take a leaf out of the SlingPlayer and allow you to stream music and video from your home PC over the internet/phone network to your iPhone ...
b) widescreen video players are around already, nothing new there
c) web browser and email platform - nothing new there either, there are many "smartphones" out there that do that (I have one in my bag now that does email and uses Opera as a web browser)
d) touchscreen ... these have been on phones for years now, so nothing new there. And multitouch screens are cool, but we've been seeing them demonstrated for years by various people so it's a little hard to believe that Steve Jobs has just invented them. A multitouch screen is one where you can use more than one finger at a time (like holding down the shift key with one finger while typing letters with the other, or more impressively, picking a photo on the screen by touching it with one finger and then using another finger to "stretch" it to zoom in ... see Multitouch on YouTube for many examples, though I'd probably start with this)
e) Two megapixel cameras are everywhere now, and Samsung (I believe) have shown eight megapixel cameras. Lens quality is vital, as are the CCD sensitivity and noise levels, about which we know nothing yet. And no optical zoom. Still, it's pretty much a requirement for a decent feature phone nowadays, so nothing new there ...
f) GSM, yay. The French have defeated the Americans! Seriously though, GSM is the digital mobile phone standard throughout most of the world, so it's a good step forward. But not 3G.
g) Mac OSX, good news, OSX is loved by millions. Unknown how hard it will be to port other Mac software to the phone. Unknown how well it will run within the usually very limited CPU and memory of a phone (usually limited due to size, battery drain and heat, oh and cost!). Unknown whether it will be able to keep running without lockups and reboots for several months at a time (sure some desktop and server machines do, but most of them aren't being thrown into a jacket pocket and bounced around and having to handle all that while big RF transceivers are sitting millimetres away)
h) sensors: ok, these are cool, but not new (I suggested the ear proximity sensor to people here at work over a year ago and was told it wasn't new then) though I'm not aware of any other phone that has all these
i) WiFi (wireless ethernet) good news, though again there are already phones on the market with wifi built in (I should be getting one in the next week or so from work)
j) Price, ouch! As predicted Apple have decided to pick one network in each territory and establish an exclusive deal with them. This is necessary so that the infrastructure required to support some of the iPhones features (listening to voice mail out of sequence, seeing a list of voice mails waiting, possibly "over the air" downloads of iTunes Store songs and videos etc.) are not standard, but will involve data transfer and so can be charged for. This allows that single network partner to subsidise the cost of the iPhone since they expect to make the money back on exclusive services (podcasts, TV etc.)
What it doesn't have
a) 3G. The high speed data standard for most of the world. It's difficult (but not impossible) to build all the aerials and provide the power for all the standards in one phone (my new one has them all) but Apple have chosen not to support this one
b) the front mounted camera used for video calling on 3G networks, so no iChat
c) a cover to protect the screen! (You'll have to buy a case separately)
d) a higher resolution camera
e) a camera with optical zoom
f) not shown on the stuff I've seen, a standard numeric keypad with T9 texting (it does predictive word offerings off the qwerty keyboard but that's a lot more keys and no tactile feedback) ... this may not be important to you of course!
g) a blackberry client (though I'm sure it will be along in moments)
h) the storage of my 80Gb iPod
i) a click/scrollwheel
j) GPS
k) FM radio (or DAB radio)
l) a TV tuner (some phones have DVB-H or something similar)
My new SonyEricsson P990i has a touch screen, MP3 and video player, syncing software, wifi, GSM, bluetooth, IR and 3G, a 2Mp camera, email clients, web browser etc. and is available now. I don't think it can handle 8Gb of data (but I believe it can have a 4Gb card, and you can always carry a second card with more music on it if you want!). Other new handsets (e.g. from Nokia) have GPS, 3Mp+ cameras with optical zoom and Carl Zeiss optics, horizontal/vertical switching etc.
What the iPhone adds is a slick user interface (excellent!) including nice ways of handling photos, plus easy integration with iTunes to allow your iPhone to be the portable media device some other phones have tried to be.
In all I've read so far on the iPhone, the one thing they've not mentioned (possibly deliberately) is its use for business (Word, Excel and Powerpoint clients, PDF readers etc.) though I'd imagine that a lot of that *will* be available, it clear that that's not the iPhone's initial targetted market.
Will it sell? Absolutely! Will it succeed? This almost certainly won't be the only model Apple release so I expect that we'll see more functionality and more features in later versions. So yes, I think it will. Not because it has much amazingly new technology, but because Apple understand that people want a single device in their pockets that entertains, that informs, that allows people to stay connected, and above all, jumps the chasm between "early adopters" and the next, larger, bunch of people that want trendy gadgets but don't have time to read through thick manuals (if the "Dummys Guide to using an iPhone" turns out to be a thick book, I'll be very surprised!)
I have a SonyEricsson P910i, a little chunky, but it does almost everything the iPhone can do (just not in as pretty and easy a manner) and it's been out for two years now. Then I moved to a SonyEricsson K750 for the better camera, for the FM radio, for the smaller form factor, and I used it every day for listening to radio, for storing my contacts and diary entries etc and the P910 (which could do some of those things better) stayed in a drawer or in the pocket of my bag. And for Christmas I got the 80Gb iPod which gives me a lot more storage and an easier interface for getting at it ... and yet I still find that I'm using the phone more than the iPod (due to the radio and due to wanting to be ready to make/receive calls while travelling) and having to swop between headsets is a little bit of a hassle, so having a single device that can do both will be great ... but the iPhone is too big to just throw in your pocket (with your keys etc.) so I'm still unsure about it ... I think I will probably wait to see what the second generation iPhone is like.
Apple/Cingular/whoever still have to show how they are going to make things like setting up IMAP email simple, but it's certainly possible and I'd expect Apple (or its loyal customers and volunteers) to do a good job of it.
Perhaps that's the major thing missing from most of the other mobile phone companies ... passion. Passion to make a friendly UI, passion to produce the supporting materials for each other to simplify things, passion to delight the end user.
I wonder if lproven will agree with this?