Introducing Apple iPhone or why mobile phones will never be the same again
January 14th, 2007 by Gerhard Rasocha
Apple finally announced their long awaited entry into the mobile phone market at MacWorldExpo 2007 in San Francisco. Steve Jobs started his keynote with the words: “Every once in a while a new revolutionary product comes along that changes everything … let me introduce the iPhone“. And I think he is right. The iPhone will change the mobile phone market the same way the iPod changed the market for MP3 players a couple of years ago.
Some of the features of the iPhone include:
- 3.5 inch touchscreen screen with 320×480 pixels
- GSM/EDGE/WiFi/Bluetooth
- Full iPod functionality
- Feature-rich Internet Browsing
- 4 or 8 GB RAM
- iPhone’s accelerometer detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display, so you immediately see the entire width of a web page or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio.
And this is just a short excerpt - the full specs with all “bells and whistles” can be found at Apple’s iPhone site.
One just has to look at the videos further below to see how this revolutionary device will change the way we interact with mobile phones.
Lets take the voicemail inbox. The iPhone lists all voicemails visually just the way you would see SMS and MMS messages on a standard phone. The user decides which message he wants to access/delete/store on the touchscreen. And all this without any “press 2 for next message / press 3 to save message …. etc” voice interaction as we are used to with all those “so much 20th century” mobile phones on the market today. So let me ask you: Why in the world did not any of the other mobile phone vendors come up with this feature a long time ago ? Why does it need Apple to enter the market in 2007 to finally bring usability to mobile phones ? And this is just one example - I could go on with many other innovations of the iPhone.
For me this is just another prove that Apple is by a long shot the best design company (ergonomic&usability) in the IT and consumer electronics environment. I think all other vendors (Nokia, Motorola, … can you hear me ?) can learn a lot from Apple. I am sure the market will prove me right on this one and the iPhone will definitely fly off the shelves. Steve Jobs’ prediction of 10 million units by 2008 should be easy to achieve.
But now for the really bad news: The iPhone will not launch before June 2007 in the US, and then only in cooperation with Cingular. Even worse, the launch on European markets will follow even later in the year.
More details on the iPhone:
Introducing iPhone (apple.com)
iPhone; Up Close and Personal (TUAW.com)
Apple iPhone up close (TUAW.com)
iPhone article collection (TUAW.com)
Interview with iPhone product manager & demo (video)
CBS coverage on iPhone (video)
David Pogue iPhone close up (video)