iPhone

[Chris Edwards]

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live ... bs-keynote

So, what do you think?

I like it. It'd be a good replacement for an iPod in the car. iPod connector and all.

I wonder if we'll see it in Canada at all...

[Presto]

Yep. Looks pretty awesome. Might be the first Apple product I buy. My current phone contract expires in April.

Too bad I'd have to figure out how to rebuild all of my games to get them to work on it though.

I'd been thinking about getting an i-Mate SPL, but this totally blows away all the current smartphones on the market.

-John

[sponge]

iCostTooMuch.

[Dan East]

Hardware-wise, it's sweet. However I wouldn't dream of paying that for a closed phone. It would have to be every bit as open as a PDA for me to consider it. Judging by some of Jobs' comments, that is not very likely:

Mr. Jobs would not say how open the phone would be to other developers, but added: “I don’t want people to think of this as a computer. I think of it as reinventing the phone.”

He also said he was anxious to help protect the Cingular network from the kind of viruses and worms that bedevil the PC world today.

So it's probably going to be one of those deals where every last app you can install must be purchased, digitally signed and obtained through Cingular's network. Now if that's the case for media (music and movies) too then the phone doesn't stand a chance. Of course that would be in Cingular's best interest, because they could get a cut of the sales, and at the very least they would collect the data / airtime fees. However I know Jobs is smarter than that.

Dan East

[Dan East]

Oh, and it will suck for most types of gaming. First off, obviously all controls will be onscreen. That will drastically limit what genres will really work well on the phone. Anything requiring a D-Pad and fire buttons will have to use precious screen real-estate for the controls. Considering those areas of the screen will be covered by the player's thumbs, the actual gameplay area will be reduced. However a much larger factor is tactile feedback. It would be easy to drift off of the control locations, and the tactile response indicating when a button has been pressed would be missing.

Obviously there will be a successful game market for the device, as many games exist that can be controlled completely by mouse. The hardware will undoubtedly have Bluetooth, thus an external controller (Wii, anyone?) would solve the input problem for all game genres.

Dan East

[NYIllustrator]

Ok Dan so how long before you can port Wolf3D to this?

[Caesar]

Seems they're going to get sued over the iPhone name.

[Dan East]

Yep. Why do you think Cisco hurried yet another run-of-the-mill Vonage / Skype VOIP phone to market with the name iPhone? Just so they could say to a judge "See, we're even using that name!".

Dan East

[Dan East]

Dead in the water.

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/01/10/apple-vp ... hone-apps/

I'm not going to pay $5.99 plus bandwidth for every tiny app I might need in the future. That type of lock-in is why I hate cell phones and carriers in the first place. I have a RAZR that is practically useless (aside from being just a phone) because our carrier's firmware does not include a java run time environment. So only BREW apps can be executed and those have to be signed, thus I can only use apps on the phone that I purchase through my carrier's service (EasyEdge). No ROM has been leaked yet for the V3C RAZR that has a JRE. I'm not going through that crap again, and I most certainly am not paying 3 times as much for a phone that is just as locked down.

Now, maybe Apple will do with the iPhone as they did with OSX x86 - "It will only run on Apple hardware. Really!" while hackers release patches to allow the OS to run on any x86 box. So "officially", to keep Cingular happy, the phone would only run signed apps. However they would leave a backdoor open with java apps allowing a large 3rd party scene to develop.

Also, it does not run OSX, which is something I seriously doubted when that statement was made in the press release. It runs some proprietary OS that resembles OSX. Much like Windows CE looks like x86 Windows, but is really entirely different binary (obviously - it runs on a completely different CPU). In this case I doubt their pseudo-OSX is as robust and close to the real OSX as Windows CE is to the Windows NT family.

Dan East

[RedruM]

Ouch, just when I was thinking finally someone getting it, making a convergance cellphone nice to look at, powerful, as well as easy and convienent to use. Thing is this phone is sure to get hacked like crazy I would assume from the shear user base bound to buy it alone.

I love the user interface, small size, appearance, technical features like proximity, light, and orentation sensors, large internal storage, and most of all a next generation touch screen that can accept multiple touches. If done right I believe this could emulate a joystick/mouse and buttons, not as responsive but perhaps more accurate. I've been waiting for someone to finally utilize this feature so I'm glad they have finally taken the next step, hopefully the PDA/Phone market will take a swift kick in the ass, and try to improve their products as well.

I have a Qtek S100/Imate JAM and I'm quite dissapointed in its ease of use, for some everyday things its more inconvient than it should be. I dont have the time nowadays to wade through all the pda software to find what suits my needs, which in turn just adds more programs to complicate things.

I personally never thought twice about macs or apple, but this phone is something that is needed in this market I think, hopefully someone will make a PDA similar to it, otherwise I am strongly concidering buying one when the time comes.

[Brig]

I will buy one because it is trendy.

[RICoder]

I wanted one for about a day...then I remembered why I dislike apple. Dan's Comment ++

I'll wait for the HTC devices to catch up and be happy.

[sponge]

RICoder with the triple gravedigging on a dead forum!

[Jaybot]

Grave Diggers are sexy.

[Presto]

I decided not to wait for the iPhone and went with an HTC P3600 instead.

It's by far the coolest PDA device I've owned. Here's a quick rundown:
802.11b/g
bluetooth
2MP camera + second camera on front
3G wireless broadband
internal GPS (need to flash the rom to enable this)
1500mah battery
2.8in QVGA screen
mini-SD
very sleek design
great audio quality

Just a couple of downsides:
D-Pad doesn't do diagonals
No 3.5mm audio jack (uses mini-USB port for headphones)

You can get it unlocked, without contract, plus screen protector and car charger for the same price as the iPhone. Plus it's easy to develop for.

-John