Apple unveils the iPhone
January 9th, 2007 by Scott Janousek
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If you haven’t heard, “Cat’s out of the bag”, so to speak … Jobs announced the iPhone during his keynote just minutes ago. Interested in what they came up with? Watch the recorded keynote.
“iPhone combines three products — 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. 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.”
Check out the iPhone page over at the Apple site.
The display on the device looks beautiful (but not as spectacular as this) … this is definately going to be one of those mobile devices you don’t want to sling around (I smell an AppleCare “plot” for sure) … especially given the inital price tag (between $499 and $599).
Here are some of the specs and what you get for your technology “investment”:
Apple iPhone
Screen size: 3.5 inches
Screen resolution: 320 by 480 at 160 ppi
Input method: Multi-touch
Operating system: OS X (OSX … now does that mean OSX Mobile Edition, perhaps.)
Storage: 4GB or 8GB
GSM Quad-band: (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
Wireless data: Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0
Camera: 2.0 megapixels
Battery: Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing
Up to 16 hours Audio playback
Dimensions: 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm
Weight: 4.8 ounces / 135 grams
… what about Flash player support? … no word yet.
However, Rob Hall was pointing out that during the keynote, Flash content was not being displayed during a demo (could be for a number of reasons as Jesse Warden pointed out a few).
Does this mean no love for the Flash Player? Not until we hear something from Adobe.
Some have been speculating about a move to Flash Player 9 … I think they’d have to reveal more of the specs (memory and cpu wise) for anyone to even consider that notion … just cause it’s got an Apple logo stamped on it doesn’t neccessarily mean it’s going to run magically like a desktop in terms of performance! “OSX” could mean a “mobile edition” of the OS, thus certain limitations would no doubt apply.
Surely in time, it’ll probably make sense for them to have some Flash player support, but I think Apple’s thinking in terms of hardware here for this year (they want to sell actual devices, with a few cool software features to start with).
Having said that, Flash on the device *would* be a great addition, but not neccessarily a major selling point for them (yet) … perhaps we (the Flash community) should help (Adobe) educate them on the possibilities … whether it be a standalone player installed on the device (iTunes delivering down Flash content would be killer), or a suitable Flash player in Safari (the later is a much more likely scenario in my opinion, since one could just create OSX widgets. Flash would be an easier approach, though, for some certain kinds of content!). Either way I think many reading this blog via MXNA would think it to be a win situation for Apple (and Adobe).
But again, nothing has been said officially about there being Flash support for the iPhone yet. We must wait. I reserve hope for semblance of Flash on the iPhone before rollout. However, I’m not holding out for it or anything. There are plenty of other cool (mobile) devices out there with Flash (Lite)!
Will I buy it? You bet … as long as the touchscreen has that magic “Apple touch”, “so it just works”. 
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January 9th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
It’s a cool design, and I’m sure they’ll sell like crazy. However, there are a couple of missing features that I think are quite important:
- 3G, especially HSDPA. This is almost a must for “smart” phones coming out in 2007.
- No GPS. Again, many Pocket PCs that came out recently and phones have built-in GPS.
- With that gorgeous screen, the battery life suffers. Not even sure if the battery is user-replaceable.
- They didn’t talk about the camera much, and there’s no mention of flash for the camera. I assume the quality is standard 2 mega-pixel, which is much less than highend phones coming out this year (5 mega-pixel with auto-focus and flash). No mention of video capture either.
- No mention of VoIP phone software. Probably have something to do with Cingular. Wireless providers don’t like people talk for free.
- Better get a screen protector for that screen, I can see it scratched easily from day one.
- No face-to-face video call (well, no 3G so it’s not going to be very useful).
January 9th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Dave, you raise a lot of good points.
Personally, I don’t think it’s the end-all-be-all of mobile devices, nor should it be.
Will it sell? Yes. Is it innovative? Yes, it has some unique features …
Did Apple get their first official hardware design for a phone+PMP, “right”? I don’t know. I think we all need to give it a spin come later this year.
January 9th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Oh, if and when Flash is made available for the iPhone, we’d need new API to detect multiple clicks/presses simultaneously for multi-input gestures. So a customized Flash Player is really needed for working well with this device.
January 10th, 2007 at 7:52 am
It’s not just about iPhone. If apple has implemented multi-touch technologies in iPhone, its possible that there will be more devices come out with multi-touch, so Adobe has to look at that anyways