iPhone
I’ve known that the iPhone was coming since my trip to Cupertino in January last year (didn’t know any details though) and now it’s finally announced.
Cons:
- Battery is not removable (AFAIK).
- No 3G. It’s being released in June 2007 and no 3G… Web browsing over EDGE is not a pleasant experience.
- Closed – no SDK for 3rd party development.
- In the US, a 2 year Cingular contract will be required.
- No access to the iTunes Store from the phone and no syncing over WiFi.
- Camera is only 2 megapixels.
Other than that, I can’t wait to try one. Hopefully the lack of tactile feedback is not going to be an issue.
January 11th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
It should be noted that the amount of Megapixels hardly says anything about the actual resulting photos. A 2 Megapixel camera with a good lens can easily beat a 5 Megapixel one with a mediocre lens.
I really hope they’ll reconsider on the lack of SDK.
January 11th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
although courrently i am not using it currently, my next (smart-)phone should have umts. afaik iPhone is not a umts device
January 11th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
apple can’t develop a phone that everyone would wish for. no one can.
there is no perfect phone or device.
i don’t think the internetdevice part is meant to be used with edge. i think therefore you should use the built in wifi.
to send mail with photos in it is not quite funny either over gsm or edge.
and yes i can’t wait to get my hand on one either. and i have to wait untill the end of the year.
greets from austria
January 11th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Also, no built-in GPS. And uses Apple’s proprietary cable. A usb cable would be able to charge and connect to a computer just fine.
It does have a standard headphone jack which is cool though.
When a later version comes with 3G, I hope you can stream your media from the appleTV. Also, it would be nice if it had an isight on the front to make video calls.
January 11th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I was just looking forward to buy that phone. Darn! I guess I wont be wanting it any more!
January 11th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
So there’s no iTunes store? Well, with only EDGE, downloading songs would be a pain anyway. But just thinking about this, couldn’t FairPlay be ported to Windows Mobile? That would effectively make any WM phone an instant iPhone too.
January 11th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
The UI looks like (and will probably be) impressive.
However, I detest closed platforms, and when it comes to my personal communications, a closed platform is pure poison.
The lack of UMTS doesn’t bother me that much. Data plans are ridiculous anyway, so I’d much rather condition myself on only using data-intensive apps when in WiFi coverage. On the other hand, on board GPS is sweet, so the phone I’m really waiting for is the OpenMoko (or, more likely, the WiFi-enabled model that’s sure to follow). Fully open Linux phone, that’s more like it. I can live without Jobs’ and Cingular’s eye-candy-shaped shackles.
January 12th, 2007 at 1:37 am
Add “no GPS support” to that list.
January 12th, 2007 at 8:26 am
I wouldn’t so much mind if they required third party apps to live in a sandbox. But no third-party apps whatsoever? Pfffft.
The whole touchscreen-with-precision thing looks like an HCI marvel, but I’m not going to shell out $500 USD for something that won’t run my code if I want it to. Granted, most phone SDKs only run on Windows, which is a big hassle.
No Wi-Fi syncing? What the hell CAN you do with it’s Wi-Fi, then?
January 14th, 2007 at 3:09 am
Well as it runs OSX I would expect that one can (eventually) run small aps on it.
I haven’t seen any good phones recently that don’t require a contract. The Cingular exclusive may be more of a bore than the contract length for some. (I really couldn’t care less.)
Thats fine for a phone. My present (1 year old) phone only has 0.8 Megapixels which is ok for snapshots. Unless you are seriously thinking of having a phone replace a camera?
The other points are valid.