iPhone

As a follow-on from my post yesterday about a possible widescreen iPod, I have to announce that Apple today introduced the much anticipated widescreen iPod just like I said they would.

No, wait, that's not quite right. They introduced the iPhone, a device that purports to combine a phone with a widescreen iPod with an internet device with a blender with a curling iron. They also introduced some other stuff.

I have yet to soak in the details of what looks like a pretty good device but I must say I do have some concerns.

• Storage: The memory is stated at 4GB or 8GB. This is comparable to the Nano but if the device is touted as a video iPod, this is a pretty slim memory footprint.


• Battery Life: One of my biggest concerns about any multi-phone device is battery life. I really relish the idea of having one handheld that handles both media and phone but the reality is the media features are battery intensive and I don't want to run into the situation where I am unable to place a call because I was listening to music or watching video. In my mind, the phone capability has to come first. One reason to have a phone with you at all times is you can contact someone in an emergency. If this capability is reduced due to the media features, then the overall usefulness of the device is decreased. The battery live is stated as 5 hours talk/video and 16 hours music. I would hope that the engineers behind this kill media features before the battery drains, thus keeping enough power for emergency calls even if the user is not watching his/her power level during the day.


• Network Support: I love the built-in Wifi and Bluetooth but the EDGE support leaves me a bit cold. In order for this to really "rock the data space" it needed to have HSDPA included. EDGE just doesn't cut it anymore. We want 3G support from our handhelds now. Ideally it would have dual-band HSDPA (for support in the US and Europe where HSDPA sits at a different frequency). I do applaud the choice for GSM over CDMA (and Verizon/Sprint) as it gives the device international market support.


• E-Mail: Great that it has push mail support from Yahoo. Even better would be push mail support for Exchange servers, either through Blackberry (my personal choice) or the Microsoft Push Mail in Exchange (not bloody likely). I live by my Blackberry push mail (and am using a Pearl for blogging from the CES show floor) so I would ideally want to see this feature for corporate mail services.

Overall, I am very excited (it cound be said that I am finding too many faults in the device just so I can go on and on about what I "really want" and that is a valid comment though neither here nor there) and look forward to the release in June but my reservations will be held until I get a chance to view it in person