Apple iPhone Announced …Finally!

Apple has just announced their iPhone at MacWorld. Following relentless speculation, the iPhone has bowed with some amazing features including: a 3.5-inch wide touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the sensor when it’s close to your head, a 2 MegaPixel camera, 4/8 GB of Flash storage, Bluetooth with EDR, WiFi that automatically engages when in range of a wireless network, quadband GSM radio with EDGE, and an ultra thin size, 11.6 millimeter thick. Cingular is the announced provider, although there’s nothing on their site yet.


The iPhone runs a modified version of OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, Safari, and iTunes. For rich HTML email, Apple has enlisted the help of Yahoo! for free push IMAP; can do POP email too. Jobs stated that it’s a phone first with iTunes and internet capabilities second. It took a company like Apple to drop this super-sexy button-less touch screen mobile, something we’ve all been waiting for from the major mobile manufacturers, but has never been achieved. The special screen ignores unintentional touches and supports multi-finger gestures for flying around the apps at top speed – Blackberry Clickwheel be damned! The iPhone has two very cool sensors: 1) Proximity sensor, When you bring it to your ear, it automatically turns off display and sound, 2) Portrait/Landscape sensor, understands how you are holding it and changes the display accordingly.

The full on iTunes 7 support is incredible with full color album art and rich media. And Jobs made a special point of touting the device’s audio quality. However, it could be that the iPhone’s Jedi Power is the enhanced Contacts app with tons of features for including “Lots-O-Data” about your peers.

Jobs claimed battery life to be 5 hours of talk time and 16 hours of iTunes playback. This, and Cingular, are clearly the iPhone’s Achilles Heel.

Apple dropped a couple of accessories for the iPhone including a Bluetooth Headset and some iPhone headphones that let you switch from iTunes to an incoming call.

The Apple iPhone will be available in the US in June of 2007 from Cingular Wireless. It will be available in Europe by the end of the year, and Asia in the beginning of 2008. The 4 GB version will sell for $499 and the 8 GB for $599. Both versions come with a Charging Cradle/Docking Station.

Author: FutureMusic

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