Apple packs all kinds of high-tech goodies into iPhone
With its long-anticipated iPhone, Apple is hoping to do to the wireless industry what it has already done to the music business: Rock it.
The iPhone is certainly a looker: super thin, touch-screen, closer in appearance to a Nano than a Treo. It combines a mobile phone, widescreen iPod and Internet capabilities.
At $499 for a 4-gigabyte version and $599 for 8 GB, the devices won't be cheap. You'll be able to buy them online or at retail stores through Apple and Cingular, the wireless carrier for the phone. Service plans will be announced before the phone is available in June.
The details:
- As an iPod. Using your finger, you can navigate the device's 3.5-inch display. You can watch podcasts, TV shows, movies — and, of course, listen to music and audiobooks. You can also rapidly scroll through album covers using the clever Cover Flow feature on iTunes. But you cannot wirelessly download music purchased off iTunes. Instead, you connect or dock the device as with any iPod.
- As a phone. Touch a name or number in your address book to dial the phone. Or you can use a virtual onscreen keypad. You can synchronize contacts from a PC or Mac and create a favorites list of the folks you frequently call. A nifty visual voice-mail feature lets you jump to the messages you most care about and ignore others. And you can send short text messages using a virtual touch-screen "qwerty" keyboard.
The phone works exclusively over Cingular's so-called GSM and Edge wireless networks -- speedy but not the fastest of the emerging third-generation, or 3G, networks. It has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless capabilities.
Battery life could be a concern. Apple claims up to five hours of talk time, including watching video or browsing the Web. Apple says you'll get up to 16 hours if you use it just for audio.
- Connectivity. Included is a full-blown version of Apple's Safari Web browser. You can sync bookmarks from your computer. E-mail can be automatically delivered, or "pushed," for free to you through Yahoo Mail; iPhone also works with Microsoft Exchange as well as other industry standard e-mail services. You can download e-mails in the background while surfing the Web.
The iPhone also includes an icon for Google Maps, plus the light applications (found on a Mac) known as Widgets, for checking stock prices, the weather and other data you want at a glance in real time.
- Other goodies. The phone includes sensors that detect when you rotate it from portrait to landscape mode; the onscreen controls are oriented accordingly. Lift the phone to your ear, and the sensor turns off the display to save power and prevent you from accidentally hitting the wrong controls when on a call. Also on board is a 2-megapixel still digital camera.
Set-top box:
Tuesday, Apple also showed off the new Apple TV multimedia device. You'll have to wait only until next month for its arrival in stores. The $299 box, which resembles a Mac Mini, lets you wirelessly move iTunes content off a PC or Mac to your TV. You hook it up to the TV (it has HDMI connector, among other connectors.) You can stream content from up to five additional computers, sans wires.
Apple TV's 40-GB hard drive can store up to 50 hours of video, 9,000 songs, 25,000 photos or some combination and can deliver high-definition content. You can control your media through Apple's wireless remote.
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