So recently apple released details about the iphone. Available in June in the USA with Cingular, and Europe in "Q4" so anytime until the end of the year.

This thread is for comments or questions about the iphone.

and I have one question myself.... how do you think the iphone will be released in switzerland? will it be through swisscom do you think, or one of the other carriers?

im with swisscom already, but i have found them somewhat behind in releasing the latest phones (im told that they spend more time checking and testing them before release). lets hope that whoever gets to release the iphone does it a) properly and b) in a timely fashion!

krlock3

I'm hoping for the option of buying the iPhone without a phone contract. I just want the device as an iPod, photo viewer, and wiFi web browser - basically, everything but the cell phone (I have virtually no use for a cell phone). Unfortunately, I expect that I'll be out of luck.

Yeah, I know that there are somewhat similar products out there that do these things without being a phone, but none appear to be nearly as good as Apple's (although I obviously need to see someone other than Steve Jobs using it before passing final judgment on that).

EDIT: The iPod Touch is the product that I was looking for, see this post.

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for those living in the dark ages, there is an embedded video on this page: http://www.20min.ch/digital/webpage/story/24351900

My wife has said that she wants one and "it'll be more intuitive than her Nokia phone". How does she know that - just 'cause it's Apple?

I want one too by the way...

You'll certainly be able to buy it off-contract.


edit: keynote in English but needs Apple <spit> QT <double-spit>
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/j47d52oo/event/

The shocker will be the off-contract sticker price. I gather Cingular subsidises the US price by about 300 USD.

projected off-contract price in the US is $499 which makes it (with exchange and rounding) 1000 francs or so. Which is more than a video iPod but less than the unhooked price of many HTC/Qtek devices.

Plus there is time and supply and demand.....oooerrrrr....

My Tech analyst next door says that the on-contract price in the US right now is 499 / 599 USD. Off-contract about 300 extra. Definitely not 499 off-contract.

Hi

It is incredible once the Apple hype machine kicks in everyone thinks that is the product they must own. Now everyone thinks they want an iPhone( (c) Cisco)

I have to be honest I just don't get it. I have a Windows Mobile 5 phone which has a touch screen, a removable battery, a slide out QWERTY keyboard, 3G, wirlesss, push email, plays videos and music. So the only thing which is different from the Apple phone is that the interface is not as pretty and I don't have a multitouch screen. Also I can increase the storage on the phone using a minSD. Interestingly someone has already skined the windows mobile to look like the Apple phone----the good old Apple lawyers have forced the removal of the software from the internet.

Sorry if I have not that interested in the Apple phone but it really does not seem that important. Also if the kids can't use T9 to write SMS messages they will be frustrated. A lot of kids touchtype T9 and don't even need to look at the keyboard. I can't seem them doing that on a touchscreen.

Have fun

Martin

Here's an article nicked from elsewhere:

Reality Bytes: Why Apple’s iPhone is likely to be European flop
Sunday, January 14, 2007 -
iPhone? iFlop, more like.

Apple’s latest gadget looks set to be a big disappointment in Europe.

The reason is blindingly obvious: the gadget’s touchscreen.

Who wants to make calls using a wipeable touchscreen? Even worse, who’ll text on a touchscreen?

It’s unbelievable that Apple didn’t think this through more carefully.

Texting is the main use for mobiles today.

It’s more important to most users (and operators) than making phone calls.

Incredibly, though, amid all the pomp about internet connectivity and iTunes functionality, Apple has made this basic SMS activity a massive chore on the iPhone.

For a start, it requires two hands. Worse, it requires the use of your forefinger rather than your thumb.

Anathema! It doesn’t even offer the familiar keypad layout, opting instead for a computer-style Qwerty full key layout.

How badly can you miscalculate the world’s most important mobile phone market?

So it is quite amazing to hear Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, declaring that the iPhone ‘‘is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone’’.

No Steve, that may be true in the States, where they still pull aerials out of their 2G ‘‘cellphones’’, but in Europe, the centre of mobile phone technology, your iPhone has just taken a trip back to the 1990s.

Back to the world of the old PDA, fumbling with styluses and trying not to brush over the wrong part of the screen for fear that you may hit the wrong letter or symbol.

Apple could, of course, fix this by attaching a simple keypad onto the gadget.

But it didn’t. And this one facet will ensure the iPhone’s failure to penetrate a mass market in Europe.

This texting blunder can hardly be comforting to mobile operators.

They’re unlikely to appreciate a device which makes it harder for people to pay ludicrously inflated sums to send SMS messages.

Not that they are likely to take much comfort from the iPhone’s nice-looking internet browser.

Because the phone has no 3G. This means that connecting to websites via a network operator will be so slow as to discourage punters from doing it.

In fairness to the iPhone, it has some obvious strengths.

From a niche-market tech-lover’s point of view, it is simply gorgeous.

Its 3.5 inch screen is nothing short of splendid.

Its iPod/iTunes music management system is undoubtedly a big plus on any mobile phone.

Its 4GB to 8GB hard drive (depending on which model you buy) isn’t remarkable, but is nice to have for storing music and videos.

It has wi-fi, a two-megapixel camera and looks pretty, too.

But pretty won’t send texts. And that is what mobiles are all about.

Steve Jobs has predicted that Apple will sell more than ten million iPhones (1 per cent of the world’s mobile phone market) in 2008.

Don’t expect many of them to be in Europe, Steve.
www.yourtechstuff.com

http://telecomskorea.com/images/stories/news_07_1/apple_iphone_1.jpg

That article is great, it says that everything is great on the iPhone except for the phone features. Perfect, I don't want the phone, so people like me will still buy it. Now we just have to convince Apple to make a version that replaces the phone components with an extra 20GB of memory - far more useful.

Well I won't be getting one anytime soon. I've just taken delivery of my new Sony Ericsson P990i. It has a sharp autofocus camera, video calling, fast web, push email, a scanner, streaming video, wireless LAN, video capability and best of all, I can write text messages directly on the touch screen with the stylus. It has 60 Mb memory built in and can be expanded via Memorystick to 8 Gigabytes

It also reads PDF's, Word Doc's, Excel files and powerpoints.

More here:

http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?...=10336&zone=pp

BTW I quite lked this IPhone joke.

http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech...hives/910.html

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the electronics critics are missing one point. this is not a telephone with a jukebox, regardless the name "iphone" for me (and for many i know) it's an ipod you can make calls with. and i 'm sure that millions of people in europe will look at it in the same fashion. another difference between the "jukebox-pentaband-wifi-internet-have-it-all" phones and the iphone, is that the firsts are plain UGLY, and the iphone is the contrary. and a lot of people in the world love beautiful objects. another issue is that my first ipod is about 7 years old and still works flawlesly (the battery still last for 5 hours!), in the same time i've burned 7 phones included a CHF. 700.– TREO. from my point of view, they will sell way more than 10 million! the critics will be using the iphone in three years, as it happened with the ipod:-)))

I have to say that I would absolutely consider this as a phone and mobile entertainment device. Absolutely. Absolutely. Look at the videos.... the UI is fabulous. Who needs hard keys?

My phone now is an SPV-C600 with WM5. Yes, I can watch videos, play music. Yes, it expands with miniSD cards. But to have that screen and watch movies (and yes I would, I have 200Gb of movies on my portable movie player) makes the iPhone (or whatever they will call it after FCC[?] approval and the wrangle with Cisco) looks great. EDGE not UMTS is perhaps the only letdown (but maybe for Europe, we get proper 3G). And 802.11g built-in? Yahoo!!

you're talking brother.

thats right.

another implication is that apple have been working in partnership with cingular to bring carrier specific features... eg the visual voicemail feature which shows you visually the caller id´s of your voicemails in order, so you can check whichever one you want first, rather than listening to them in order.....

the point being... getting an unlocked iphone will mean that you cant use the whole feature set of the phone.

krlock3

Its true that your phone probably does most of what the iphone will do when it arrives, but I think that the user interface and the way that you perform tasks will make it a superbly functional and practical product. To see what I mean, i just suggest that you to to apple.com and search out and watch the keynote address which can be downloaded there (or as a video podcast if you have a video ipod).

Have a look at what the phone can actually do and how it actually does it.

It is my opinion that there is simply no comparison to be made between current tech and the iphone. When apple say that the tech in the iphone is 5 years ahead of other phones, i couldnt agree more.

btw the iphone will be a premium priced product at the beginning of its lifecycle, and unless rich daddy is paying for his kids to have only the best, i dont think you have to worry so much about whether kids will buy this because it can or cant t9.

krlock

what piffle.

you could have said in 2000 "Who wants to carry a whirring hard drive around in their pocket to listen to music".

Its also worth considering that the original ipod has come a long way in a short time to the current gen ipod. If this is the first gen iphone, then all i can say is wow!!!! the multitouch tech alone is staggering.

It makes me laugh. Apple shows us technology a long long way agead of whats currently available, and its a race in some quarters to trash it as cleverly as possible. "How can apple be so stubborn"... hahaha. Anathema my arse.

krlock3

Im fairly sure that you will get your wish sooner or later.

Im happy that you are happy but your phone is not just not in the same league as the iphone, its not even in the same town or state.

Im kinda a fan of sony products. but sorry. it makes me angry to see how complete rubbish the development of the mobile phone market has been of late.

Hello moto? hahahah. wonderful. Case in point. Motorola develops the RAZR and starts selling it, what, 5 years ago? and back then it was surely a cool product. in fact its still a nice looking phone in its way. but what have they done since then? bugger all. sat back and got fat on the RAZR. eventually, you could get it in black, then pink, then blue, then with a slightly better screen and camera, then in candybar form, then in slider format. Hello moto?

is that all that they can do? no new UI? no other innovations? rubbish.

At the recent CES show, i laughed when i heard about the motorola presentation. The CEO or someone rode around the stage on a little yellow bike to demonstrate "that content moves with you". Super. Bill Gates was somewhere else talking about what schools might look like in 50 years. Wonderful. Meanwhile, over at the Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs wasnt just talking about the future, he was showing it to us. Give the man a little credit!!


krlock3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L64U...related&search=

Video on youtube that shows another side of the touchscreen capabilities...

Apple lovers will enjoy this video.

Wow. I do so enjoy that video!!!

krlock3