Remove this Banner Ad

iPhone

  • Thread starter Thread starter 0497
  • Start date Start date
  • Tagged users Tagged users None

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

0

0497

All Australian
Veteran
Joined
Oct 5, 2004
Posts
814
Reaction score
11
Location
SYD
AFL Club
Sydney
Other Teams
Lions
NTimes have got their hands on one early. Not sure how it'll go in Australia since our telco infrastructure is so sh*t and we won't be able to fully appreciate it.

Video
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=caed76f16c6132710db58210df3940afb8a3f7c8

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/technology/circuits/27pogue.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
June 27, 2007
State of the Art
The iPhone Matches Most of Its Hype
By DAVID POGUE

Talk about hype. In the last six months, Apple’s iPhone has been the subject of 11,000 print articles, and it turns up about 69 million hits on Google. Cultists are camping out in front of Apple stores; bloggers call it the “Jesus phone.” All of this before a single consumer has even touched the thing.

So how is it?

As it turns out, much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones.

Unless you’ve been in a sensory-deprivation tank for six months, you already know what the iPhone is: a tiny, gorgeous hand-held computer whose screen is a slab of touch-sensitive glass.

The $500 and $600 models have 4 and 8 gigabytes of storage, respectively — room for about 825 or 1,825 songs. (In each case, 700 megabytes is occupied by the phone’s software.) That’s a lot of money; then again, the price includes a cellphone, video iPod, e-mail terminal, Web browser, camera, alarm clock, Palm-type organizer and one heck of a status symbol.

The phone is so sleek and thin, it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese. The glass gets smudgy—a sleeve wipes it clean—but it doesn’t scratch easily. I’ve walked around with an iPhone in my pocket for two weeks, naked and unprotected (the iPhone, that is, not me), and there’s not a mark on it.

But the bigger achievement is the software. It’s fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate. You can’t get lost, because the solitary physical button below the screen always opens the Home page, arrayed with icons for the iPhone’s 16 functions.

You’ve probably seen Apple’s ads, showing how things on the screen have a physics all their own. Lists scroll with a flick of your finger, CD covers flip over as you flick them, e-mail messages collapse down into a trash can. Sure, it’s eye candy. But it makes the phone fun to use, which is not something you can say about most cellphones.

Apple has chosen AT&T (formerly Cingular) to be the iPhone’s exclusive carrier for the next few years, in part because the company gave Apple carte blanche to revise everything people hate about cellphones.

For example, you don’t sign up for service in a phone store, under pressure from the sales staff. You peruse and choose a plan at your leisure, in the iTunes software on your computer.

Better yet, unlimited Internet service adds only $20 a month to AT&T’s voice-plan prices, about half what BlackBerry and Treo owners pay. For example, $60 gets you 450 talk minutes, 200 text messages and unlimited Internet; $80 doubles that talk time. The iPhone requires one of these voice-and-Internet plans and a two-year commitment.

On the iPhone, you don’t check your voice mail; it checks you. One button press reveals your waiting messages, listed like e-mail. There’s no dialing in, no password — and no sleepy robot intoning, “You...have...twenty...one...messages.”

To answer a call, you can tap Answer on the screen, or pinch the microscopic microphone bulge on the white earbud cord. Either way, music or video playback pauses until you hang up. (When you’re listening to music, that pinch pauses the song. A double-pinch advances to the next song.)

Making a call, though, can take as many as six steps: wake the phone, unlock its buttons, summon the Home screen, open the Phone program, view the Recent Calls or speed-dial list, and select a name. Call quality is only average, and depends on the strength of your AT&T signal.

E-mail is fantastic. Incoming messages are fully formatted, complete with graphics; you can even open (but not edit) Word, Excel and PDF documents.

The Web browser, though, is the real dazzler. This isn’t some stripped-down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all, shrunk to fit the screen. You scroll with a fingertip —much faster than scroll bars. You can double-tap to enlarge a block of text for reading, or rotate the screen 90 degrees, which rotates and magnifies the image to fill the wider view.

Finally, you can enlarge a Web page—or an e-mail message, or a photo—by spreading your thumb and forefinger on the glass. The image grows as though it’s on a sheet of latex.

The iPhone is also an iPod. When in its U.S.B. charging cradle, the iPhone slurps in music, videos and photos from your Mac or Windows PC. Photos, movies and even YouTube videos look spectacular on the bright 3.5-inch very-high-resolution screen.

The Google Maps module lets you view street maps or aerial photos for any address. It can provide driving directions, too. It’s not real G.P.S. — the iPhone doesn’t actually know where you are — so you tap the screen when you’re ready for the next driving instruction.

But how’s this for a consolation prize? Free live traffic reporting, indicated by color-coded roads on the map.

Apple says one battery charge is enough for 8 hours of calls, 7 hours of video or 24 hours of audio. My results weren’t quite as impressive: I got 5 hours of video and 23 hours of audio, probably because I didn’t turn off the phone, Wi-Fi and other features, as Apple did in its tests. In practice, you’ll probably wind up recharging about every other day.

So yes, the iPhone is amazing. But no, it’s not perfect.

There’s no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialing. You can’t install new programs from anyone but Apple; other companies can create only iPhone-tailored mini-programs on the Web. The browser can’t handle Java or Flash, which deprives you of millions of Web videos.

The two-megapixel camera takes great photos, provided the subject is motionless and well lighted (samples are here). But it can’t capture video. And you can’t send picture messages (called MMS) to other cellphones.

Apple says that the battery starts to lose capacity after 300 or 400 charges. Eventually, you’ll have to send the phone to Apple for battery replacement, much as you do now with an iPod, for a fee.

Then there’s the small matter of typing. Tapping the skinny little virtual keys on the screen is frustrating, especially at first.

Two things make the job tolerable. First, some very smart software offers to complete words for you, and, when you tap the wrong letter, figures out what word you intended. In both cases, tapping the Space bar accepts its suggestion.

Second, the instructional leaflet encourages you to “trust” the keyboard (or, as a product manager jokingly put it, to “use the Force”). It sounds like new-age baloney, but it works; once you stop stressing about each individual letter and just plow ahead, speed and accuracy pick up considerably.

Even so, text entry is not the iPhone’s strong suit. The BlackBerry won’t be going away anytime soon.

The bigger problem is the AT&T network. In a Consumer Reports study, AT&T’s signal ranked either last or second to last in 19 out of 20 major cities. My tests in five states bear this out. If Verizon’s slogan is, “Can you hear me now?” AT&T’s should be, “I’m losing you.”

Then there’s the Internet problem. When you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot, going online is fast and satisfying.

But otherwise, you have to use AT&T’s ancient EDGE cellular network, which is excruciatingly slow. The New York Times’s home page takes 55 seconds to appear; Amazon.com, 100 seconds; Yahoo, two minutes. You almost ache for a dial-up modem.

These drawbacks may be deal-killers for some people. On the other hand, both the iPhone and its network will improve. Apple points out that unlike other cellphones, this one can and will be enhanced with free software updates. That’s good, because I encountered a couple of tiny bugs and one freeze. (There’s also a tantalizing empty space for a row of new icons on the Home screen.) A future iPhone model will be able to exploit AT&T’s newer, much faster data network, which is now available in 160 cities.

But even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years. It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles.

In other words, maybe all the iPhone hype isn’t hype at all. As the ball player Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t bragging if you done it.”
Click to expand...
 
I am normally the big Apple advocate here; but in the case of the iPhone I think Apple bombed!

Will Jobs sell a bunch of iPhones? You bet! He has the tech faithful by the shorthairs now and he could glaze a cowflap and call it iCow and sell it for a grand! Most of these iGuys are lemmings who came about the Apple bandwagon recently when they finally saw a anternative to CTL-ALT-DEL! I'll bet dollars to donuts none of the newbies ever used OS 9.0 or OS 8.0 and the only reason they will stand in line for hours to buy an iPhone is style!

Let's examine this newest "must have" => The cheapest barebone model retails here in the States for $499.00 for 4GB size (that's right the iPhone is the same size as the Nano!). Buying ATT Plan minimum is $59.99 + $35.00 connection fee! After that you can download about 1/10 of your iTunes library to it and get a second job to pay for it! Approx. $600 for the barebones model iPhone? No thanks.

I love Apple... I love their software and I love my new MacBook (remember those?). By focusing on telephones (iPhone) and music (iTunes) Apple has taken its eye off computers (even its latest OS Leopard is now delayed until October)! Apple stock is doing well and the company is making money by the truckload. But in terms of computing technology, Apple is out to lunch lately!

Want an iPhone for half-price? Check the Want ad classifieds next week, went folks realize that in addition to the $600 cost buyers will also receive a P.T. Barnum button with their style status symbol: There's a sucker born every minute!
 
Guy I work with has one on order. He should be getting it on Friday. It cost him $1700!!.
 

Log in to remove this Banner Ad

viccles said:
Hows he going to get it to work? He lives in Australia right? I'm pretty sure they are sim locked to that american mobile phone network
Click to expand...

Yeah, you do, but...to make it even more expensive you can have AT&T to turn on international roaming. I don't think it's worth it.

Rumors suggest today a little that Apple may go directly 3G phone in europe. (and hopefully Australia) getting rid of the iPhones main complaints. That the GSM + Edge network is too slow for an Internet device.
 
DonsRule said:
Yeah, you do, but...to make it even more expensive you can have AT&T to turn on international roaming. I don't think it's worth it.

Rumors suggest today a little that Apple may go directly 3G phone in europe. (and hopefully Australia) getting rid of the iPhones main complaints. That the GSM + Edge network is too slow for an Internet device.
Click to expand...

He must really want the Iphone!
 
I have a reasonably similar phone at the moment.

Does anyone know how big the hard drives for the ipods are? I will buy one if you can get an 80+gig version.

Also is the notepad or whatever compatible with Microsoft Word?

cheers in advance
 
Looks nice, but I wonder if they'll be problems because it has no buttons.

Anyone see the Yanks lining up to buy it? One guy was offering to sell his seat in line for $1000, one guy bought a spot for $260. Then they came out of the shop celebrating and everyone was giving them a round of applause.

God Bless America.
 
Its a nice looking device but the Nokia N95 has better specs (3g HSPD, removable memory up to 4gig, gps, 5mp camera) and it is a phone. There will be more phones on the market with better specs before the end of the year. I think US cellular network is currently inferior to ours hence the lack of 3g or HSPD.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

After many years of persisting with a basic mobile phone, I recently obtained (company phone) a fancy new, can do everything phone.

Well I have had it for 4mnths and I have taken so much advantage of it and managed to......wait for it.............it's coming.......................PHONE CALLS:eek::eek::eek::eek:

Things like this iphone will prove to be just another gimmick but hey, there's a lot of young gullible people out there with wealthy parents:cool:
 
Alphanumeric said:
Guy I work with has one on order. He should be getting it on Friday. It cost him $1700!!.
Click to expand...
Full of it.

1 Apple will not sell to Australian's from the US store.
2 He will not get it to work, to sign up to AT&T you must be living in the states
3 its unlockable


How do i know all this? I for for a apple reseller and have been through all this with 30 custy's a day for the last 6 months.
The phone will be here sometime next year and on the Telstra network.

You can however pre-order it for $99 if you don't mind waiting.

BTW it's crap from what we've heard from our apple reps.
 
Im The Gun said:
Full of it.

1 Apple will not sell to Australian's from the US store.
2 He will not get it to work, to sign up to AT&T you must be living in the states
3 its unlockable


How do i know all this? I for for a apple reseller and have been through all this with 30 custy's a day for the last 6 months.
The phone will be here sometime next year and on the Telstra network.

You can however pre-order it for $99 if you don't mind waiting.

BTW it's crap from what we've heard from our apple reps.
Click to expand...

The Hack to unlock it has nearly there

http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipod-itunes/news/index.cfm?newsid=18545

Probably the worlds greatest product launch

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=18539
 
Chief said:
Word back from a friend in the US - It's awesome.
Click to expand...

Complaints already about the small size...

Most folks I know bought the lesser iPhone ($499.00 US). At 4GB even a Nano is bigger... Large playlists don't fit on iPhone and nobody's entire libtrary will fit! At $499.00 certainly a larger drive should be provided. AT&T plan is not good either for the telephone element. And overall, a rather slippery device that is hard to hold on to... Almost as much as laptop for a phone and a small iPod? No...
 
My main beef with it is that it looks massive.

Personally i prefer a slim light phone i can slip in a pocket. The iPhone looks like a brick. Multifunction it may be, but carrying something that size around looks like a pain in the a....

I have to admit i tend to drop phones a bit too, and going by the resilience of iPods...or lack thereof, when treated as such, means i'll probably skip this one...
 

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

DamianBis said:
What a waste of money. really you have to be an apple fan boy to buy one of these. Sony Erricson or nokia, lg ETC are just as good for cheaper..

ALSO. alot of owners won't admit it isn't worth the money. because then they'll feel like suckers
Click to expand...


Mate, if you are going to attack it, at least give reasons. Like no third party software, no replaceable battery, no 3/3.5G, no custom ringtones, no MMS, no video recording, no IM, crap onscreen keyboard, no expandable storage (yes...I do like to have 3 or 4 4GB microSD cards), no copy/paste text, no document editing, very expensive for what you get etc etc etc.....

POS. But meh...it makes a great ipod...
 
I am waiting until they are officially being released here, I want 3G and fingers crossed for GPS.

The iPhone just keeps getting better and better with the patches, and once the official SDK comes out, it should be awesome.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

Similar threads

BigFootyNews
News & Events Russian government iPhone purchases rise despite security concerns -
Replies
0
Views
192
BigFootyNews
BigFootyNews

Remove this Banner Ad

🥰 Love BigFooty? Join now for free.

Back
Top Bottom