The iPhone
January 11, 2007
The biggest announcement at Macworld was the iPhone without a doubt, since Tuesday the iPhone has appeared everywhere on the web, newspapers and TV. It’s a credit to Apple that they can generate this kind of buzz.
I’ll mention some of the tech specs briefly here:
- 3.5’ Multi-touch screen with 320×480 160ppi resolution
- Battery – 5 hours for Talk/Video/Browsing or 16 hours for just audio playback.
- WIFI, EDGE and Bluetooth support
- Weighs just 4.8 ounces
- 4Gb or 8Gb of storage
This device is really 3 devices in one and Steve made sure to announce these individually before revealing they were really all in one device.
In terms of design, it looks fantastic. Jonathan Ive has pulled out all the stops yet again and the result is a sleek, professional and overall very clean look. Of course looks aren’t everything, it needs to be useable and the iPhone delivers here too with a well conceived UI that really is revolutionary.
The iPhone is powered by OS X, leveraging Core Animation (Leopard anyone?), something which immediately got me thinking about the potential for mac apps to be developed on this phone. (Sadly this won’t be the case according to some reports but at least widgets can still be created.) Despite being a portable movie/music player, phone and internet communications device, the multi-touch screen and well crafted UI means anyone can make use of all the phones features.
Speaking of features what about the iPhones browser? It uses Safari and it loads up “real” sites, not mobile versions or text only WAP, the same websites you would see if you were on your desktop computer. You simply tap on various parts of the page to zoom and scroll over the content. It’s a fantastic implementation of the web on a phone and has far reaching implications in the web design industry. If this sort of thing becomes more widespread it will certainly make a web designers life easier not having to code a specific design just for mobile phones.
The price for the 4Gb model is $499 and for the 8Gb it’s $599, both including a 2 year contract with Cingular. At a first glance I thought it seemed a expensive (after doing some currency conversion and adding a bit on), but having watched the keynote and seeing what the iPhone offers I think it’s about right. You’re getting something special and undoubtedly revolutionary, hell this might be good enough to make me use the mobile internet which is something I detest in it’s current form on most devices.
It isn’t released until June and I bet that the likes of Nokia, Motorola and mobile carriers that don’t have an iPhone contract will be scrambling over each other to try and come up with something to match it. Might be tricky given that Apple filed 200 patents or some crazy figure, although looking at the device I think they can be forgiven for wanting to keep some that to themselves.
If the iPhone is well received over the coming year I think we’ll see Apple releasing a range of phones, much like they did with the iPod. There will be the top of the line iPhone boasting large storage capacities and video and then a smaller capacity music only version maybe.
Lastly… a couple of niggles or things I’d like to see:
- No 3G… why oh why…
- Would be nice if they could let you pull music from the iTunes store while on the move.
- Sync without having to use a dock, it’s got WiFi built in after all.
- Get that battery life up a few more hours.
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