Wow, I want the new iPhone. It has everything. Apple can do no wrong.
I’ve been watching the play by play on macrumorlive and I must say I like what I see, but I’m slightly skeptical. Looks cool, but what happens when you drop it, scratch it, etc…etc…
I don’t think I need to be that mobile. My wife on the otherhand is already telling me, “no matter what - that is what I want for my birthday…”
Like the good husband… “Yes dear, but you must wait or you may end up like Veruka Salt.”
Holy crap that is nice.
I can only imagine how much it will cost though. Even with carrier subsidies. If this is Cingular only, as it looks like it will be, I guess I’ll be back to Cingular.
Cingular only?! Ugh. Guess I’m not getting one yet.
Want!
That is one hell of a cool piece of kit.
Noone can seperate money from my wallet like Apple can. It isn’t even close. I have no real need for it as I just got a fancy new phone a few months ago but I’ll probably buy this one.
I think I’m one of the few people my age on this planet who are looking at that and going “UGH. Steve Jobs, what have you done?”
I’m weird, though. My phone does three things - it makes calls, it receives calls, and it text messages. That’s all I want out of a phone.
Now, if they made an iPod only with that interface, I’d seriously consider it.
~Tasha
This thing looks fantastic. And the Apple TV box is impressive too. The best thing is that these announcements pushed my Apple stock up enough to pay for a iPhone for me! 
Woah. That is pretty damn neat. If I could afford the phone and the service for it, I’d get one. I already have Cingular. Wonder if mom could get a discount on that phone too? (her work has a corporate Cingular webpage with discounted phones and service, how I got my crap phone dirt cheap with discount on monthly service) I’ve always wanted a phone with internet and all that, but this is the first I’ve seen that just looks REALLY cool. Wonder if they developed a new screen that won’t scratch so easily? Or give you a nice, slick, thin case for it for your pocket? Hopefully this phone really works amazingly well and Apple can kick some ass in another market.
It looks nice, and if I could afford it I would think about buying it. Why only think?
Well, battery technology is far enough behind that this phone can’t get any better talk or use time than the MotorRola Razr, and it has a talk time of like 2 hours. Whats the point of having a gadget that you have the capabilities to do all kinds of neat stuff, but you can’t because you have to save what meager battery life so you can talk to your SO or friends that day?
yeah, I know you could charge it up in the car, on the go, or carry spare batteries, but those things really only have so many charges before they are effectively useless.
The Apple website specifies a 5-hour talk time.
It is not actually incredibly thin - thicker than the RAZR - and the fact that it is not a flipphone and has no keypad saves some space for the battery as well.
Said battery better be freaking replaceable, though.
That touch screen better be damn sensitive if they expect someone to be able to type on a full QWERTY keyboard.
I agree; what possesses any company to choose only 1 wireless provide for their device? It’s the stupidest marketing decision.
Does Jobs get yet another fortune in Cingular stock for this?
I think it’s tied to Cingular because of the features like Visual Voicemail, which presumably isn’t built into current standards.
I waaant one
Well, except for that exclusive-to-Cingular deal. That is against the spirit of GSM interoperability. I would not be surprised to find that the unit is locked to Cingular’s SIMs in the States as well. (I would not be surprised to find it offered by Rogers in my country of Canada–and locked to Rogers’ SIMs.)
I believe provider locking is actually illegal in some countries. You should be able to get any GSM device unlocked and use your own SIM card on any GSM network with any GSM provider. Of course, providers may choose to lock and supply a subsidy, but it should not be mandatory.
If it is locked, expect a crack to unlock it within a month of release. And a month after that, those booths at the mall will offer to unlock it for $100.
It looks like they’ve taken a lot of pretty neat ideas that have been floating around for quite a while and applied the typical Jobsian Reality Distortion Field to them.
First, the cool stuff:
Sensors sensors everywhere!: It has a proximity sensor, an ambient light sensor AND an accelerometer. This is going to be unbelievably awesome for interface design. One of the current things that really sucks about phones is how limited the input channel is. There are so many cool and intuitive ways you could use an accelerometer to provide a better interface. Imagine a map software where you could navigate by tapping. Tap the top of the phone and the map scrolls down. Tap the back of the phone and it zooms in etc. I wish they included GPS into the bundle as well but I guess they had to stick to a budget.
Multi Touch Screen: I don’t know what the technology is behind it or how it performs but true multi-touch has been a conspicuously absent technology. There are all sorts of neat gesture based technologies which have been languishing in the research world for lack of appropriate hardware to test it on. For a glimpse of what might be possible, check out this youtube video
Visual Voicemail: Not a groundbreaking innovation by any stretch but just a really, really, nice feature whose time should have come 3 years ago. The next thing I’d like to see them do is create some sort of standards for voice menu systems so they can also be navigated visually. Instead of having to listen to 30 seconds of “press 1 for customer support, press 2 for billing…”, all the options would just be displayed on screen.
Now for some of the things they failed to mention:
Stylus vs Finger: Jobs glossed over this point incredibly blithely but the fat finger syndrome is a major problem when designing touch screen based interaction. Basically, your finger covers an area of approximately 1/2" x 1/2" which means this is your minimum selection area. This greatly impoverishes the interface because it places a limit on the density of interaction elements you can cram onto the screen. If you want a dedicated scroll bar, it’s going to have to be a big fat scroll bar, taking up probably 10% of the screen real estate.
Lack of tactile feedback: Phones tend to be used surprisingly often in situations when you aren’t looking at the actual phone. One big advantage of having actual buttons is that you can navigate through everything by touch alone.
Text entry: As much as Steve believes otherwise, I foresee text entry as being a major PITA on this thing. This goes back to the fat finger syndrome before. There is a screenshot of a proposed text entry application here but the buttons look way to small to do anything useful. I have a Dell Axim x51v 3.5" touch screen which is the same size screen with twice as many pixels and typing with your fingers on that thing is impossible. You can do a semi-reasonable job typing with your fingernails but it’s still about half the speed of a stylus.
Either way, I’m incredibly excited about this and I am really looking forward to seeing how this rolls out.
It looks freakin’ awesome. I’d want one except A) It’s locked to Cingular despite being a GSM phone, so unless a way turns up to unlock it, it doen’t look like I’ll get one.
They plan to release in Europe – does that mean they will eventually be releasing an unlocked version? I hope so. Gadget geek that I am, I’ll probably want one, despite the fact that it may conflict with my possible plans to look seriously into the forthcoming O2 XDA Flame.
Aside from the Cingular-only issue, another problem with it is the price; either $500 or $600. That’s too expensive for me.
And I like the Apple TV device, but why only a 40GB hard drive?
Yes, well, they’re not known for specifying an accurate real-life battery life, either.
Not that I don’t doubt it’s possible. I’m just treading cautiously as far as believing that kind of claim.
But yeah - I might get one to review, but I won’t be using it if it’s tied to Cingular. I have Sprint and they’ve never done me wrong, wheras my sister has nothing but problems with Cingular.
~Tasha