Apple iPhone
January 9, 2007 by Glenn
Cash posted in December the Must Have Gadgets for 2007. I think all of them have just been trumped by Apple.
As the resident Apple fanboy at Urban Monarch, let’s take a quick look at the iPhone.
Yes, we all expected a hybrid phone + iPod. But Apple’s gone beyond that with the innovative touch screen interface.
For one great example, take a look at how you navigate and zoom in/out with pictures on the iPhone. I first saw this kind of seamless interface on Jeff Han’s TED presentation — but it’s great to see it move out of the research lab and into the mainstream.
The other thing we expect from Apple is a high level of fit and finish in their products. Check out how they’ve integrated Google Maps to see how slick this thing is. I’ve got Google Mobile on my Samsung A900, but it pales in comparison to the level of polish Apple put on their implementation.
I admit I was skeptical whether Apple could pull off a cellphone (and the jury’s still out if the onscreen keyboard works well for SMS). But it looks like they have a winner here. I can’t wait to play with one of these at the store.
In the meantime, I suppose I can settle for watching Steve Jobs play with it at the Apple Keynote.
Apple’s iPhone will be available in June from Cingular. Pricing with a 2 year contract is $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB.
Glenn’s not the only Apple fan boy here @ UM.. I was reading the entire transcript (at macrumorslive.com - which by the way had far better coverage than engadget, which apparently can’t handle the traffic) as live-blogged this morning during his address. With each additional feature mentioned, my jaw dropped a little bit further.
The auto switch to wide screen when the phone is flipped into ‘landscape’ orientation, the GPS integration into google (equal parts awesome and creepy) and the ability to choose, visually, which order you listen to voice mails was outragous.
Don’t even get me started on the smart SMS implementation, whereas texts are grouped into IM like ‘conversations’ which can be easily scrolled through.
An evolution of technology, there is no other way to describe this thing.
I am drooling.
$500 cellphone? Wow…
Cellphone, video iPod and *TRUE* mobile internet browsing (none of this stripped down PDA ‘html’ nonsense), in addition to email and widgets.
Cheap? No.
Outrageous? No.