The Apple iPhone is here

The Apple iPhone is here

Finally – June 29, 2007 has arrived and the Apple iPhone is available to the public. The Apple iPhone has a stunning display, a very sleek design, and a very innovative multitouch user interface including a virtual QWERTY keyboard. Its build-in Safari webbrowser provides a great Web surfing experience for the user. The build-in iPod (4 GB or 8 GB) works as advertised.

However, not everything is as great as one might think. The Apple iPhone has just average call quality and lacks some basic features found in many other (older) cell phones. An example would be missing stereo Bluetooth support and missing 3G compatibility. We’re also not sure if AT&T was the best partner to go with as other cell phone providers offer faster networks for data transfer. Unfortunately, the Phone does not have a battery that a user can replace. Since batteries are a main issue among so many different cell phones, one can only hope that the battery of the iPhone does not go bad.

The Display

With its generous 3.5 inch display a user can take full advantage of the phone's size. The 480x320 pixel resolution (160 dots per inch) translates into brilliant colors, extremely sharp graphics, and very fluid movements.

The Touchscreen

This was a concern mentioned in many places, but it seems like the touchscreen is very easy to use. We had no trouble tapping our fingers to activate the different phone functions and to interact with the main menu. The virtual QWERTY keyboards works as advertised, but if you are used to QWERTY keyboard on a Blackberry you might miss the “button down” feeling a little bit. As with any touch screen, the display attracts its share of smudges, but they never really distracted us from what we were viewing. Overall the touchscreen works great, but still leaves quite a few pieces to be desired. While the Blackberry has the “sym” key that allows you to jump down to the end or top of a page, you will have to tapp quite a bit to the bottom of a long playlist on your iPhone.

iPhone Specifications

Size and weight
Height: 4.5 inches (115 mm)
Width: 2.4 inches (61 mm)
Depth: 0.46 inch (11.6 mm)
Weight: 4.8 ounces (135 grams)

Capacity
4GB or 8GB flash drive1
Display
3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen multi-touch display
480-by-320-pixel resolution at 160 dpi
Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously
Operating system
OS X
GSM
Quad-band (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
Wireless data
Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
EDGE
Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Camera
2.0 megapixels
Audio
Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
Audio formats supported: AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 1, 2, and 3), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
Video
Video formats supported: H.264 video, up to 1.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 768 Kbps, 320 by 240 pixels, 30 frames per second, Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
Mac system requirements
Mac computer with USB 2.0 port
Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later
iTunes 7.3 or later
Windows system requirements
PC with USB 2.0 port
Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition; or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later
iTunes 7.3 or later
Environmental requirements
Operating temperature: 32° to 95° F (0° to 35° C)
Nonoperating temperature: -4° to 113° F (-20° to 45° C)
Relative humidity: 5% to 95% noncondensing
Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet (3000 m)