Apple’s iPhone Makes The Call

Whoever has seen the iPhone wants one. After watching the iPhone the wow factor indicator just shoots off the scale. This tiny handheld device is what you’d expect to see if you somehow woke up 5 years later and looked at a cell phone. But it’s here now.

The iPhone is a melding of several cutting-edge technologies that produce a singular device that’s a quantum leap over anything available today- a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device.

It’s the world’s most advanced iPod, it’s an incredibly advanced cell phone and a full- blown Internet access device. I say full-blown because none of its Internet abilities such as email and browsing are watered down. That’s because the iPhone runs Apple’s OS X. So not only do you get X’s powerful housekeeping functions but you also get desktop quality applications. Take the web browser for example. It’s Apple’s Safari web browser but it actually does more than the one running on a Mac. This is the first handheld device that gives you full access to Internet applications in pretty much the same way as you would with your computer.

iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.
Multi-touch

iPhone features the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse. It’s an entirely new interface based on a large multi-touch display and innovative new software that lets you control everything using only your fingers. Just touch its widescreen multi-touch display with your finger to magnify any portion of the page or use a pinching gesture to zoom in and out. You can even have multiple pages open at the same time which you select with your finger. And when you tilt the iPhone on its side, the built-in accelerometer automatically re-orients the images from portrait to landscape and back when you hold it straight up. Don’t forget email because you have that as well.

So you can glide through albums with Cover Flow, flip through photos and email them with a touch, or zoom in and out on a section of a web page — all by simply using iPhone’s multi-touch display.

Intelligent Keyboard

iPhone’s full QWERTY soft keyboard lets you easily send and receive SMS messages in multiple sessions. And the keyboard is predictive, so it prevents and corrects mistakes, making it easier and more efficient to use than the small plastic keyboards on many smartphones.

There’s only one mechanical button on the face of the iPhone and that’s to bring you back to the home screen. Every other button or slider is virtual. To scroll up and down, just give the 3.5 inch color screen a flick of your finger in the corresponding direction and watch the images flow by with a balanced, liquid smooth animation. You could play all day with that one feature alone and you probably will. Navigation on the iPhone is in itself a thing of beauty.

Let’s not forget that this is also a cell phone. It uses quad-band GSM + EDGE to make your voice calls as well as SMS messaging in multiple sessions with the virtual, predictive keyboard. You can dial using a virtual dial pad but the iPhone really stands out when you use your built-in address book that syncs to the data on your computer. Watching a second caller being conferenced during the keynote demonstration is a real treat. Everything that’s taking place is literally spelled out for you on the screen.

As with the iPod, the iPhone comes with its own dock which you can use to both recharge, and synchronize it to a wide variety of data on your computer via Apple’s iTune application. Access to the iTunes store is there for you as well. As to its size, it’s 4.5 by 2.4 by a mere .46 inches thick and fits nicely in your hand. It weighs 4.8 ounces. It’s proximity detector senses when you hold it up to your ear and turns off the multi-touch screen when it’s touching your face. The ambient lighting sensor keeps the screen’s brightness at optimum and helps to save its 5 hour talk/video/browsing or 16 hour audio playback battery life.

And while it’s built-in 2 megapixel digital camera lets you capture images, it’s the iPhone’s video application that lets you manage and display them quickly and easily. You can play full motion videos such as popular TV shows and movies with on-screen navigation controls that appear when you need them and vanish when you’re done.

Other items around the iPhone’s edges include a built-in speaker and microphone, a headphone jack that uses any iPod earbuds, a ring/ silence button, SIM card slot and a sliding volume control. It even has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

It’s haven! And I want one.