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Thoughts on the iPhone

Fred Oliveira on January 10, 2007

You’d have to be under a rock or away from a connected computer not to read or hear about how people are excited about the Apple iPhone - I know I am. The truth is, if things are as good as they seem, they’ve done it again, and I may have found what I was looking for.

Why Apple read my mind

I have been looking for the smart smartphone for a long time, and the reason why I didn’t buy one before was because all existing solutions presented me with a scary mix of bad interface and frustrating feature/pricing combinations. The iPhone seems to deal with both just fine.

Now, this doesn’t mean the iPhone is cheap (it isn’t), and it sure isn’t going to be for everyone, but for $499 (or $599, depending on your storage requirements) you get a pretty compelling solution to be connected. And you get the fantastic user experience Apple’s gotten us used to to boot. In fact, I highly recommend looking at the phone demos just to get a taste of what Interaction Design really means.

Apple iPhone

Wishes and concerns

As I said in my “ultimate connected device” post a while ago - where I hinted on the real need we have for something like this -, a phone like this can become a platform for just about anything if developers are given the right tools. From what I’ve seen in the iPhone demos, the phone will support widgets like the OSX dashboard already does.

But I’d love it if Apple took the next step of allowing people to actually build fully functional applications based on the software and hardware platform they built. Widgets are fine, but if there’s direct access to the full capabilities of the phone the possibilities become virtually endless.

All this being said, I only have one concern about the phone - the battery life. I would need to have real test data to confirm my worries, but 5 hours of active use may be a little too short for some people. Ah, we’ll see. Truth is, I’m excited as hell about this product - Apple’s designers and engineering teams need a round of applause.

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Comments on this post

TIago Macedo

Without the ability to run user-developed applications, Apple seems to have missed a bit. This way it’s only targeting corporate users.

Matt Robin

My current phone, the very reasonable Sony Ericsson K750i is close to the end of it’s life and I’m about to replace it…I was considering the Sony Ericsson P990i…but then this news has sort of changed things a bit.
I want one..right now, OH YES, but the trouble is that it probably won’t be launched here in the UK until the 3rd Quarter 2007…(which seems like AAAAaaaagggGGGGesss away). I might just groan like an oversized child until I get my hands on one then! Also - no news yet which companies will supply the iPhone in the UK…and that’s going to be a factor too.

dandan

I agree - the battery life is way too short.

I don’t think it’s 3g either?!

Alex

We’re still in the “information gathering” phase for this device and it’s prototypes, but I thought I heard that the thing ran OS X?!

If that’s so, isn’t Apple giving us a mobile platform with BSD, Cocoa, Obj C, etc…?

Alex

Ah, just saw the article where it says no 3rd party apps. That *is* silly.

PELF

Ok, the phone is really quite impressive as far as the interface is concerned, but personally i think they aimed the wrong way. They sould be targeting the critical mass of mobile users, and they’d do exactly that with a small (think nano small) light, usable and cheap mobile phone.

Picture your ipod nano with a keypad, gsm and sms capabilities, for something like 300$. I would buy it sooo much! ;)

Paul Browne - Technology in Plain English

Not so much excited about the iPhone , as to the reaction of the other handset manufacturers - the phone market is going to be a different place in 9 months time when this reaches us (in Ireland).

I wonder what Nokia is going to come up with in response …

Paul

Webreakstuff » iPhone, on the thin line between love and hate

[...] Like many others, I did a post about the iPhone after the Macworld Keynote. Why? Because I was excited about the possibilities a device like the iPhone could bring, particularly when coming from a company I share so many values with, Apple. After reading through everything that’s been said and written, however, I’m not as excited as I was, the reasons being outlined below. [...]

Mario

By the time this thing is launched in Asia it will be an outdated machine. The other players on the market just waited for the first one to launch a touch screen only based machine, slik look and some good marketing potential and so to open their way to launch their own machines. Let do the other the trick and walk away with it. I’ve seen already some sleek looking machines out there on the net and it would surprise me to see Iphone look alikes in a very short time (Bang & Olufsen maybe?) but with much better specs as the Iphone. You must have a loose wire in your mind to spend so much money on the IPhone with such a limited range of facilities. An eye candy it is however.

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