Previous Thread
Next Thread
Print Thread
Page 1 of 2 1 2
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
Apple's iPhone Is Great iPod and Web Device, but Lousy Phone



Review: Apple's iPhone Is Great iPod and Web Device, but Lousy Phone
Tuesday , July 03, 2007

By Sascha Segan and Tim Gideon



When he announced the iPhone, Steve Jobs said to expect three things: "an incredibly great cell phone," "the best iPod we've ever made" and "the Internet in your pocket."

One out of three isn't bad. Yes, the iPhone is the best iPod ever — ironic for something not even called an iPod!

But it's just a plain lousy phone, and although it makes some exciting advances in handheld Web browsing, it's not the Internet in your pocket.

• Click here for FOXNews.com's Personal Technology Center.

Maybe nothing could have lived up to the "Jesus-phone" hype, but only Apple is to blame for pumping up expectations well beyond what any Version 1.0 product has delivered in the history of mankind, including "fire" and "the wheel."

The iPhone is just that — version 1.0. Even though it could be seen as Generation Six of the iPod, it's Apple's first phone.

Its interface innovations have already spurred the rest of the mobile phone industry into imitative action, and there's enough here to show that Apple will be a real leader with future products.

Let's celebrate the iPhone first: It's a marvelous iPod. No one will miss the scroll wheel, despite the fact that it was once the greatest tactile control panel ever designed.

Once you've messed around with the easiest-to-use, best-looking player interface currently available, your old iPod will seem like a quaint relic from a time when people expected less from their gadgets.

This is the best portable multimedia player we've seen — albeit with relatively low capacities of 4 GB or 8 GB of non-upgradeable flash memory.

The seamless integration of the Internet, iPod, maps, phone and e-mail functions flaunted in the commercials is no exaggeration.

The iPhone is intuitive, interconnected and impossible to get lost in — just hit the home button to get to the main screen.

The price tag may be ridiculously high, but it could be reasonably argued that this beauty may actually be worth every penny. Excellent technology isn't cheap.

But the iPhone isn't called the "iPod With Phone." It's the iPhone and, put simply, it isn't a very good phone.

Call quality was the worst we've heard on a high-end device in years. We're not going to put that on AT&T, either: our Blackberry Curve made much clearer calls at the same time in the same place.

Reception leaves something to be desired. It's complicated to dial, difficult to send text messages on and missing all sorts of features that are basically assumed to be in most high-end multimedia phones nowadays.

To be fair, the iPhone Internet experience is loads of fun. It's not quite "the Internet in your pocket," however.

It displays HTML pages gorgeously (even over EDGE!) but the Internet is now loaded up with Javascript, Java, Flash, streaming media and other plug-ins.

The iPhone can't hit many of these rich experiences — so while the browser is the best a phone has ever had, it's not desktop-quality and some sites are off-limits.

Luscious Design and Interface

The iPhone is a bit longer and narrower than the 30 GB iPod, but it is about the same thickness and the exact same weight.

So is it weird holding something resembling an iPod up to your face to talk?

Not really, but a caveat: It's a clear canvas for face and finger grease, showing off smudges in every direction. (It comes with a chamois cloth. Get used to using it.)

It's too bad, because the 3.5-inch, 480-by-320-pixel widescreen display is the best looking screen we've seen on a phone or portable media player. By packing in 160 dpi, the iPhone makes photos and videos look very sharp.

Below the screen is the only button, which serves one (very useful) function: It always returns to the main screen.

Inside there's a SIM card slot; you can pop out the SIM card with the end of a paperclip.

The scroll wheel of previous iPods is replaced by the multi-touch screen, and the payoff is huge. There's a built-in speaker that is mainly for phone use, but can be used for music and movies (though it sounds lousy); volume controls on the left-hand side; a ringer-off button above them; and the much-discussed recessed headphone jack on the top left of the player. (You'll need made-for-iPhone adaptors to use anything besides the included stereo headset — more on that later.)

On the top right side is the lock/power button (hold down to power down, press quickly to lock), and on the bottom, in between the mic and the speaker, is the good ol' proprietary iPod connection.

The face of the device is glass over what appears to be black plastic, and the sides and back have a silver metallic look not dissimilar to iPods, but with a more brushed texture.

There's a big Apple logo on the back, of course. And on the inside, there's the accelerometer that switches photos and videos to full-screen when you turn the player horizontally.

Some people can't get past the low capacity of the iPhone — what's the use of a huge screen if you can't store a bunch of movies on it (the iTunes-available film "High Fidelity, takes up 1.25 GB of space)? After all, an 8 GB player only has 7.27 GB of user-available space.

We hear your grumbling, but our advice is to get over it.

Why? You're going to be charging this thing every day — it's your phone.

When you charge, you sync files and playlists — it doesn't take very long to load a movie, much less time to load a TV show.

People who buy this phone should get used to the idea of file management. It's a quick process via iTunes, and watching videos on the player — or even scrolling through album covers — is a pure joy, regardless of how many fit on the device at once.

Using your fingers to zoom, skip, crop and edit is truly a joy. Pinching and sliding is as cool as the commercials make it seem, but the interface is more than just the multi-touch screen and a fun accelerometer.

The real joy of the iPhone is in how things work together — one function, like the YouTube browser, always seems to integrate with another, like e-mail and texting.

And the features cooperate!

What happens when you're listening to a song or watching a movie and a call comes in? The audio fades out and you're offered the opportunity to answer or ignore the call — compete with caller ID that interrupts the iPod's visuals.

Whether you talk or not, the iPhone switches back to the iPod screen and fades back in at the paused music point. If you are watching video, it remains paused waiting for you to hit play.

Either way, it's a seamless transition, and the iPhone does all the thinking for you.

Can you surf the web and listen to music simultaneously? Yes, indeed.

We happily rocked out to a track off Animal Collective's forthcoming LP, "Strawberry Jam," while reading about the Yankee's 2-1 glorious win over the Orioles at http://www.yankees.com.

The music never sputtered, the site never froze. Apple deserves kudos for making the best user interface on a portable media player or PDA that we've played with.

Setup Requirements and File Support

The iPhone is the first mobile phone we've seen that you activate at home. Mac users will need to download the latest version of iTunes (7.3) and the latest version of OS X (10.4.10).

PC users will need Windows Vista or Windows XP Service Pack 2, as well as the new iTunes update.

[Editor's note: Consistent Web reports indicated that iPhone activation will NOT work on 64-bit Windows XP or Windows Vista.]

When you first plug the iPhone in, you step through a bunch of screens in iTunes where you pick your plan (from $59.99/month to $219.99/month) and tie the phone to an iTunes account.

The iPhone is best used with one PC or Mac — if you connect it to a second computer, it will wipe out the iPhone's files and sync with the new computer.

We connected ours to five PCs and Macs, and it still works.

For music, we successfully loaded and played: AAC (128, 256 — both ripped and iTunes Plus, and 320 Kbps), AIFF, Apple Lossless, MP3 variable bitrate, MP3 (192, 256, and 320 Kbps), MP3 64, Audible and WAV files.

We had no luck loading a MIDI ringtone, no luck with Ogg, and — surprise! — no WMA support, either.

Video support was similarly predictable: MPEG-4 up to 640 by 480 and 30 fps and H.264 up to 640 by 480 and 30 fps with AAC at 160 Kbps.

No luck with XVID, Divx, or WMV files — people will have to rip their videos for iTunes, as always.

Photo file support was a pleasant surprise. Our test suite of JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG and TIFF files all loaded without issue — only a RAW file was incompatible.

The iPhone as a Phone

Device interfaces always start from somewhere. If you look at most multimedia phones, they're basically phones with multimedia functions tacked on.

BlackBerrys, for ages, were e-mail pagers with phones piled on top; one of Palm's greatest triumphs with the first Treos was figuring out how to properly balance PDA and phone.

Well, the iPhone is a multimedia-iPod-thing with a phone tacked on. Call quality on this thing is surprisingly bad, until you remember it's Apple's first stab at a phone.

Remember: the first BlackBerrys with phone capability were awful phones. Making a great voice phone is a complex, black art.

To dial a number with the iPhone, you have to click at least four, but usually six times: power button, unlock swipe, phone icon and then, if you're lucky, both on your "favorites" screen and the name one of your favorites.

Otherwise, you have to tap "keypad" and start dialing. The virtual keypad's buttons are huge, so it's easy to type on.

We'd still like to have seen some sort of force feedback on the keys, which we've seen on several Asian phones with immersion haptics technology. You can't dial it without looking.

The earpiece volume is a bit understated and the speakerphone is downright quiet. Voices through the earpiece are a bit muffled, but comprehensible.

Transmission, on the other hand, is vile. We got static in our in-ear feedback (an annoying first on any phone), and calls made with the iPhone sounded hideously compressed on the other end.

We had two dropped calls, and significant audio wobble. At one point (and we're trying to figure out how this happened) we got the "dit-dit-dit" of GSM RFI interference over our own call.

Tested in a weak signal area against a BlackBerry Curve, the iPhone did poorly — it couldn't connect two out of three calls, where the Curve could connect all three.

Voice dialing is a really useful feature for an all-touchscreen phone; pity iPhone doesn't offer it.

Want ringtones? You're stuck with Apple's 25 lovely tones (including the always-popular "old phone ringer") — there's no way to construct, download, or even buy new tones.

There's a vibrate mode, although it is pretty weak, and a useful physical mute switch on the side of the phone.

The iPhone supports both customized wired headsets (using its unusual new jack) and mono Bluetooth headsets.

We connected Plantronics Pulsar 590 (in mono mode), Voyager 510 and Motorola H800 headsets without a problem, though we did get some pops and clicks in the headset.

As a quad-band world phone, the iPhone will also work across most of the globe, though at AT&T's very high per-minute roaming rates.

Simple Camera, Maybe Too Simple

Is it Cameraphone For Dummies, or a dummy camera? The iPhone's 2-megapixel camera has no options. The interface has one button; touch it and the iPhone will quickly take a 2-megapixel, 1200 by 1600 picture.

There's no white balance, scene modes, burst mode, autofocus, video recording, multiple resolutions or compression levels ... nothing. It's like the Wal-Mart disposable camera of digicams.

That said, photos taken in our labs were very sharp, with a strong blue cast to the white balance. Outdoor photos were also very sharp, though the iPhone has an exposure issue where it prefers bright areas to dark ones in the same shot.

Low-light photos have the usual blur problems if you don't hold the camera very still, but that's true of all camera phones, and the iPhone wasn't worse than most there.

When you plug the iPhone into a Mac or PC, you'll get the option to download your photos — either in iPhoto on the Mac, the Camera Wizard on XP or Internet Explorer on Vista. (In Vista's Windows Explorer, the iPhone appears as a read-only drive.)

That's it for data transfer: there's no direct printing or Bluetooth file transfer support.

One interesting note: we tried connecting the iPhone to a PC that wasn't updated to iTunes 7.3. The device wasn't recognized in iTunes, but did appear in the My Computer section as a camera — so if your buddy's too lazy to upgrade iTunes, you can still dump photos onto his computer.

Is That the Internet in Your Pocket?

The iPhone is a great device for consuming information, but its dastardly on-screen keyboard makes it trouble for inputting information.

The virtual keys on the virtual keyboard are just too small to hit easily and accurately.

Apple's smart software largely fixes this problem when you're typing words, by auto-correcting for nearby missed keypresses. But it's completely helpless if you're entering URLs, passwords, e-mail addresses, or anything else that isn't in the dictionary.

Rotating the screen into landscape mode helps, at least in the Web browser: It makes the keyboard wider.

But the keyboard only rotates in the Web browser, making things like entering new contacts in the address book or typing SMS messages infuriating. It makes you wish the phone supported Bluetooth keyboards, which it doesn't.

The iPhone connects to two kinds of networks, EDGE and Wi-Fi.

AT&T has been pumping up EDGE speeds recently, and we got speeds from 68 kbps up to 180 kbps — the latter being very good, though it's still only a quarter of what you'd get on the new 3G HSDPA network used by phones like the Motorola RAZR V3xx.

The iPhone connects to open, WEP and WPA-enabled 802.11g Wi-Fi networks, though when we connected it to a D-Link 802.11n router, it took three tries to connect successfully in WPA mode. (You pick your favored network from a very readable list.)

The iPhone connected at 48 Mbps, according to the router.

Apple delivered the best handheld Web browser, just as promised: Safari, here, is gorgeous.

It loads pages relatively quickly — even over AT&T's supposedly slow EDGE network — and then lets you drag around and zoom into them.

Styles, tables, and even pop-up windows (yes, ads too) render just as they do on the desktop. Even the animations, backgrounds and hideous table coding on MySpace came through well.

For a phone that is supposedly Web 2.0-oriented, though, the lack of multimedia browsing support is unfortunate. Javascript popdowns on Expedia.com didn't work. And Flash video and Java applets both appear just as sad little holes in Web pages.

The SMS client is witty, wise, and wonderful, collecting your texts into conversations made up of little speech bubbles. If you get a text message while you're doing something else, a transparent window pops up asking if you want to jump back into the conversation. Nice.

E-mail is a mixed bag. For what it does — basic POP/IMAP email, including multiple accounts, embedded images and links, and very limited DOC, XLS and graphics-attachment support — it looks great. You can check accounts manually, or poll them up to every 15 minutes.

We tried it with Yahoo!, Gmail, dot-Mac and generic IMAP accounts, and all worked. (Apple said it "pushes" e-mail from Yahoo! accounts, but we didn't see that happening.)

Highly formatted HTML e-mails look beautiful. But GMail users will be depressed by the very basic POP3 implementation — it drops all of your folders into one Inbox, and loses flags and other fripperies.

The iPhone read relatively simple DOC and XLS attachments (including multiple worksheets) without a problem. It even handled an extremely graphical PDF.

It would not, however, open Excel charts, very large documents or PowerPoint, music or video file attachments. And you can't save e-mail attachments at all. (So forget about using that e-mailed JPEG as a wallpaper.)

The iPhone is an utter dud for other forms of messaging. Both MMS picture messaging (necessary if you're sending pics to a lot of other, dumber cell phones) and IM are AWOL. Meebo.com's Web-based IM client, alas, doesn't work either.

Better get used to texting and e-mailing.

PIM, Syncing and Other Smartphone Features

There's a lot more going on here, too. On a Mac, the iPhone's contacts and calendar applications will sync with Apple's Address Book and iCal, but not Microsoft Entourage or the over-the-air dot-Mac system.

On the PC, you can use Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo! Address Book, or Windows Address Book. PC calendars come from Outlook only. Syncing support for contacts and calendars is excellent, including multiple addresses, notes, photos, all-day events and alarms, though not meeting attendees.

You can also sync bookmarks with Internet Explorer on the PC and Safari on both PCs and Macs — Firefox support is conspicuously absent. The iPhone doesn't sync tasks, notes, to-do's or any of that sort of stuff.

The iPhone comes with loaded mini-applications, so-called "widgets," that show weather, stock info and Google Maps. There is also a Notes widget that lets you type notes that you can then e-mail, but not sync to anything. An on-screen clock app includes a stopwatch, timer and multiple alarms.

They're all beautiful and easy to use, but alas they're all you get. Unlike every other phone on Earth, the iPhone comes with no games and no way to buy them.

Third-party developers have been forbidden from writing programs for the device. That's why we don't consider it a true smartphone.

The iPhone likes to hide a lot of specs, too: there's no way to find out how much free memory you have, for instance.

Music, Podcasts and Audiobooks

The iPhone must be synced with an iTunes account. Movies can be chosen individually, but not songs — you have to choose entire playlists.

This may initially seem like a drawback, but creative management of your iTunes playlists will quickly reveal this is a minor hurdle. It would be nice to drag and drop files like you can with iPods, but no such luck.

That said, the file transfer times are very similar to those of an iPod — perhaps even faster.

You can receive calls while you are syncing, too — the sync process will pause for the duration of the call. You cannot make calls or play media, however, while syncing.

Clicking on the iPod button on the lower bar of the main screen brings up a list of Artists, Songs, or Movies, depending on what you were last listening to or viewing.

The bottom bar can house four different icons of your choosing — Albums, Podcasts, Audiobooks, Genres, Composers, Compilations, Playlists, Artists, Songs, and Videos are the options.

You get to the other options by clicking "More." In the "More" screen, you can choose to edit, and then drag and drop whatever icons — Artists? Genre? — you wish. Your choices are easily switched; nothing's set in stone.

If you select an artist, click on a song, and press play, the album art (if you have any) will show up when the iPhone is held vertically.

Touch the screen and a bar will appear above the art displaying time passage and letting you to pick playmode (shuffle, repeat all, repeat one, or all off).

So far, it's looking good, but fairly standard.

Now, let's flip the iPhone horizontally — whoa!

Welcome to Cover Flow, Apple's familiar graphic display of album covers that most people have been familiarized with via iTunes updates and Apple TV.

This isn't just graphics, though. Touch an album cover and it flips over, displaying all the album's tracks (with running times) that are loaded.

Each album gets its own cover, but things are listed alphabetically, so if you have seven Dylan albums, they'll all line up in a row.

Podcasts and Audiobooks appear in Cover Flow, as well.

Is anything better than this? It's the best interface on a player we've seen: easy, beautiful and searchable in two very different ways by merely turning the player sideways.

Podcasts and Audiobooks get their own icons, but they are also included under Artist and in Cover Flow.

A Gearlog Radio podcast appears in the Podcast menu, but Dan Costa and Jen DeLeo appear in the Artists menu for the same file — as does David Sedaris for his Audible files.

Now, what about that recessed headphone jack? Well, you're going to need an adapter or a made-for-iPhone headset if you don't want to use the lousy one that comes with the unit.

Shure is making an adapter for its current earphone line, while Plantronics is designing new earphones with jacks specifically made for iPhones.

We tried both the Plantronics earphones and Shure's adapter-with-mic for their SE210 earphones — in both cases, our musical experience improved dramatically.

The audio quality of the iPhone is fantastic, provided you upgrade your cheap earphones.

As always, we advise you to keep the equalization turned off — the iPod has never offered the graphic five-band EQ that has made other players' settings worth fiddling with. The preset settings offered by Apple are generally annoying adjustments to the sound that are better off bypassed.

Movies, Photos and YouTube

Videos aren't invited to the Cover Flow party. The video menu looks very similar to the YouTube menu: thumbnail images sit to the left of titles — touch them and they play.

Turn the player horizontally, and videos fill the whole glorious screen.

The resolution is quite impressive — just small enough for YouTube to not look awful and for an iTunes movie download like "High Fidelity" to look amazing.

The iPhone made a 30 GB iPod playing video look puny and less sharp — no small feat.

Press the screen during playback and a navigation bar appears with play/pause, skip functions and chapter and time displays.

Press the arrows in the upper left-hand corner to get rid of the widescreen black strips above and below the picture and fill the whole display. This is a kind of control iPodders have never known..

To lock the iPhone, you press the button on the top right of the player. The screen subsequently goes black until you press it again, and then a "slide to unlock" bar appears at the bottom of the screen.

The fact that locking the iPhone means killing the screen is a bit of a bummer — what if you want to lock while watching video? Sorry! Pressing that button pauses the video playback.

The lack of a video out will certainly turn some folks off — it's an omission that rules out watching your iPhone's videos on your television. But that is what the Apple TV is for, anyway.

As mentioned above, the iPhone can open and view just about any type of image file you can throw at it — JPG, PNG, TIFF, whatever.

You can search them via a thumbnail menu that looks similar to the video and YouTube menus. Its options are Camera Roll (pics snapped from the iPhone's internal camera), Photo Library (all images), Last Roll and Last 12 months — very much like the iPod.

When you click on a folder, a play button appears to start a slideshow, and if you flip the player horizontally, your images will also flip and fill more of the screen.

Want to zoom? Use the same pinch and expand method used for the Internet browser.

The same is true of dragging the picture around to focus on specific spots after you've zoomed — just use your finger.

Want to set the picture as your wallpaper, a photo ID for a friend, or email it to someone? The left-hand arrow icon on the lower bar when the player sits vertically takes care of that — again, performing these tasks is incredibly simple.

Some may scoff at the inclusion of YouTube on the iPhone, but we certainly had fun with it. Arguably, using it is more fun than visiting the Web site on a PC.

One click on the YouTube icon takes you to a menu with three options: Most Recent, Top Rated and History, which keeps all past viewings in finger's reach.

Videos are listed, much like on the Web site, with video stills as the icon next to titles, ratings and clip length.

At the bottom of the screen, are tabs for Featured, Most Viewed, Bookmarks and Search.

We clicked on Search, (slowly) typed in "sharks" and in no time were watching a shark devour a seal.

When the clip played, the screen immediately flipped to widescreen, and when it finished, a screen popped up with options to Bookmark and/or Share the movie.

Sharing is caring, so we immediately added PC Magazine's Dan Costa into the phone number field — it took about two seconds. Dan then received a text with a link to the gruesome video.

Like most of the iPhone's other functions, the YouTube feature is so integrated with everything else on the phone, it's hard not to have fun with it.

It works over both Wi-Fi and EDGE, though EDGE videos show more compression artifacts.

Docks and Battery Life

What about iPod docks? Well, you can still use them, but immediately a warning appears on the screen that tells you that the device doesn't work with iPhone and the unit needs to switch into airplane mode (in other words, turn off the phone) in order to work as an iPod.

When you pull the iPhone out of the speaker dock, the phone automatically switches out of airplane mode and searches for the AT&T network.

This is a nice touch, but most iPod dock owners will be bummed that using their dock means turning off their expensive new phone's communication abilities.

Still, when we plugged the iPhone into our Editors' Choice dock, the Chestnut Hill Sound George, we forgot about anyone who might want to call us.

If you have this thing anywhere near stereo speakers while not in airplane mode, prepare for some of the loudest GSM buzz you've ever heard.

Generally, GSM buzz is the sound of interference that occurs when an transmitting GSM phone is in close proximity to a audio speaker.

It happens with most phones, but most phones are not designed to be used so close to audio devices.

Interestingly, Apple's own Hi-Fi had no buzz, so it must be shielded.

Of course, if Apple had gone with a real 3G data network, there would be no buzz. And, as usual with Apple, there's no FM radio and no voice recording.

Those who were hoping for Apple TV to work with iPhone will be disappointed: Our devices couldn't see each other.

We have a sneaking suspicion, however, that down the road, the empty row on the main iPhone screen will be filled with new icons.

Will Apple TV be one of them? Our money's on yes.

Fans of Bluetooth receivers and transmitters for iPod can use them with iPhone, but, just as with the iPod docks, the phone will go into airplane mode and then automatically search for the AT&T network when the accessories are disconnected.

We tested out the new iSkin Cerulean RX/TX Blue Tooth transmitter/receiver combo and it worked perfectly (except for the no-phone-service thing.)

Currently, however, there is no stereo Bluetooth transmission directly from the iPhone — you'll need accessories to pull it off.

Battery Tests

Apple rates the iPhone's talk time at 8 hours per charge and standby time at 250 hours. Internet use is rated at 6 hours.

As for iPod functions, video playback is rated at 7 hours and audio playback at 24 hours. We are currently testing these claims and will post our results as they come in.

The iPhone Bottom Line

The Apple iPhone is a great first try from Apple. We don't want to underplay the importance of its groundbreaking new interface: You literally fly across the device, pinching, swiping and pulling. This is the most fun we've ever had using a handheld.

The bottom line? If your priority is owning a first-rate phone and messaging device, the iPhone isn't for you.

Call quality isn't up to par, key messaging features are missing and that virtual keyboard is really frustrating.

If it's fun you want to have, however, this is basically an iPod with Internet, YouTube, beautiful graphics, a camera and a huge screen — it can also make calls and check e-mail.

When Apple eventually releases an iPod with these features and no phone, it will blow away the competition, as iPods traditionally have. As it is right now, it's an amazing (and expensive) toy.

Apple's smart, though, and this is just the beginning. Think of this as the 128K Mac of the 21st century — a vanguard product, maybe not perfect or the most usable machine ever (remember the "disk-swap polka?") but heralding some insanely great products to come.

Let's hope that the next one will be a Mac Plus.

BOTTOM LINE: It's the best portable media player ever. It's possibly the most fun we've ever had with a handheld device. It browses the Web like a champ. Yet as a voice phone and a messaging device, it's a loser. The iPhone is full of contradictions.

PROS: Fun new interface for navigating multimedia. Huge screen looks amazing. Terrific Web browser. Syncs well with PCs and Macs. YouTube function is great. Functions flow seamlessly into each other. Built-in speaker for voice calling and music.

CONS: Poor business e-mail and PIM connectivity. Bad audio quality on phone calls. Tons of "GSM buzz" on nearby speakers. Virtual keyboard hard to type on. No phone functionality with iPod speaker docks. No FM radio.

COMPANY: Apple Inc.

SPEC DATA

Price: $499.00
Music Playback Formats: AAC, AIFF, Apple Lossless, Audible, MP3, WAV
Megapixels: 2
Storage Capacity: 8 GB
Video Formats: MPEG-4
Video Recording: No
Audio Battery Life: 24 Hrs
Dimensions: 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches
Player Type: Flash MP3 Player
Radio: No
Recording, Line In: No
Bluetooth: Yes
Bands: 850, 900, 1800, 1900
Camera: Yes
High-Speed Data: GPRS, EDGE
Operating System: Mac OS X
Network: GSM
Service Provider: AT&T Wireless
Web Browser: Yes
Screen Details: 160 dpi LCD display
Screen Resolution: 480 x 320 pixels
Screen Size: 3.5 inches
Special Features: Music
Video Battery Life: 2.8 Hrs
Weight: 4.8 oz

EDITOR RATING: Four out of five stars

Copyright © 2007 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Media Inc. is prohibited.



Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
years ago I had AT&T/cingular service and it was the most horrible thing you could ever imagine.....I honestly saw this coming. They fucked up by not giving into a few of Verizon's requests.

Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618
Your death will make me king!
15000+ posts
Offline
Your death will make me king!
15000+ posts
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618
This is the new Razor. Eventually, like all iStuff, it'll be replaced by something much nicer and people won't care about the original anymore. Doesn't help that this iPhone is missing stuff people have come to think of as essentials.

I'll stick to my 8300 and Verizon. They've both been good to me and I'm not a "new gadget" sorta guy.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
Verizon service is by far and away the best.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Offline
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
At least one review says its not a very good internet device/organizer either:

  • Calling the iPhone's on-screen keyboard the device's Achilles' heel would be to incorrectly insinuate that the rest of device is bullet proof. But I'll leave it to other pundits to point out the iPhone's inability to sync with Microsoft Exchange server and lack of support for third party software, which marries users to Apple's handful of unsophisticated built-in programs.

    The real problem is that you can't type a simple e-mail, text message or calendar appointment without suffering the maddening frustration of a carnival game that can't be won, and without getting the screen oily with sweaty thumb dirt. It's the loop toss of data entry -- you will never win the big bear.

    The device has "predictive text," meaning it guesses at what you are trying to type. But unlike the remarkably accurate predictive text on RIM devices, Apple's software frequently misses the mark. Typing is so frustrating that you find yourself watching the predicted text hopefully, and reaching for the return key as soon as possible to paste it in. The problem is that you are as likely to paste the wrong predicted text as you are to mistype a character.

    ...will there be a backlash? I think so. The difference between an iPhone and Treo is similar to the difference between Apple's defunct Newton and the original Palm Pilot-- data entry is why Apple's product flopped and Palm's succeeded.

    Perhaps the amount of backlash will depend on exactly how tasteless consumers are. The device looks pretty, and it plays music. The interface is cool. But anyone who wishes to edit Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, type text quickly and communicate it over a high speed network, or enjoy third party programs, would be well advised to save the considerable expense and go with a Palm OS or Windows Mobile device instead.


I think the artist former known as Wednesday nailed it. This is the gateway device for early adopters and in a year or two something much better will be out anyway.

Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618
Your death will make me king!
15000+ posts
Offline
Your death will make me king!
15000+ posts
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618
 Originally Posted By: PJP
Verizon service is by far and away the best.

Agreed.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Offline
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
Yep. I pay for my own phone at work simply because the agency I work for has a contract with ATT/Cingular and I found Verizon so clearly superior.

Speaking of ATT:

  • AT&T is hoping to reinvent itself as a cutting edge wireless company with the help of Apple's new iPhone, but service problems already have some customers complaining that Apple picked the wrong partner.

    AT&T was the fourth-ranked major cell phone carrier - behind Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint - in a customer survey conducted earlier this year by New York consulting firm Brand Keys.

    Customers who called AT&T to address problems were subjected to lengthy wait times and told that due to "high call volume" they would need to call back later.

    It didn't help that in some cases AT&T and Apple had their wires crossed, with the two companies passing blame for problems back and forth between calls.

    Megan Crudele, a 23-year-old from Manhattan wasn't able to use her iPhone because AT&T was having problems carrying over her old number from Verizon Wireless. She called at least four times but was forced to hang up yesterday after more than an hour on hold.

    "I thought getting the phone would be the hard part," she said.

    Analysts said big rollouts almost always have issues and AT&T deserved to be cut some slack considering all the scrutiny surrounding the launch. Still, the company is under pressure to get the issues worked out - and soon.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
 Originally Posted By: the G-man
At least one review says its not a very good internet device/organizer either:

  • Calling the iPhone's on-screen keyboard the device's Achilles' heel would be to incorrectly insinuate that the rest of device is bullet proof. But I'll leave it to other pundits to point out the iPhone's inability to sync with Microsoft Exchange server and lack of support for third party software, which marries users to Apple's handful of unsophisticated built-in programs.

    The real problem is that you can't type a simple e-mail, text message or calendar appointment without suffering the maddening frustration of a carnival game that can't be won, and without getting the screen oily with sweaty thumb dirt. It's the loop toss of data entry -- you will never win the big bear.

    The device has "predictive text," meaning it guesses at what you are trying to type. But unlike the remarkably accurate predictive text on RIM devices, Apple's software frequently misses the mark. Typing is so frustrating that you find yourself watching the predicted text hopefully, and reaching for the return key as soon as possible to paste it in. The problem is that you are as likely to paste the wrong predicted text as you are to mistype a character.

    ...will there be a backlash? I think so. The difference between an iPhone and Treo is similar to the difference between Apple's defunct Newton and the original Palm Pilot-- data entry is why Apple's product flopped and Palm's succeeded.

    Perhaps the amount of backlash will depend on exactly how tasteless consumers are. The device looks pretty, and it plays music. The interface is cool. But anyone who wishes to edit Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, type text quickly and communicate it over a high speed network, or enjoy third party programs, would be well advised to save the considerable expense and go with a Palm OS or Windows Mobile device instead.


I think the artist former known as Wednesday nailed it. This is the gateway device for early adopters and in a year or two something much better will be out anyway.
yup...in fact most companies that deal with Verizon are already working on it and by late fall we will have our choices of phones to pick from. My current contract with them runs out in Spetember so I can get a new phone from them on the cheap....but I will probably wait till december to see what kind of cool gadgets are out there.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Offline
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
For my part, I have a nice iPod (60 gb) with about 7000 songs loaded on it, which I use mostly in my car, fed through my stereo. So I don't need a phone that plays MP3s.

I really like my current Palm Treo 700wx, it syncs effortlessly with my email/calendar/contacts, allows me to surf the net and the phone is also very good.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
I hear ya....plus using your phone to play music only drains the battery. Is your Palm better than the similar Blackberry version they have out now? I was looking at both of them over the weekend.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
one of the biggest things that I don't like about the iPhone is that even the people that love the phone are saying the keyboard works for shit and it is very hard to text and dial numbers.

here is a demo by someone who likes the phone...


iPhone demo

Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 4,205
fudge
4000+ posts
Offline
fudge
4000+ posts
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 4,205
Won't take long for Nokia to come up with something that'll blow the Iphone out of the water methinks




Racks be to MisterJLA
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
I'm not a big fan of Nokia.

Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618
Your death will make me king!
15000+ posts
Offline
Your death will make me king!
15000+ posts
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618
Chant likes the Nokia cuz he's a Ragtag villain.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
I thought I was a villain too.....or you just told me that to appease me.

Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618
Your death will make me king!
15000+ posts
Offline
Your death will make me king!
15000+ posts
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 22,618
 Originally Posted By: the G-man

I really like my current Palm Treo 700wx, it syncs effortlessly with my email/calendar/contacts, allows me to surf the net and the phone is also very good.

Looks good, actually.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
it's not too big either.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Offline
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
That's what she said.

Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Offline
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
 Originally Posted By: PJP
I'm not a big fan of Nokia.

Thats probably because you guys always get the Nokia tech way after we've already moved on.

I wont get any phone other than Nokia since I got my first one about 7 or 8 years ago.

Ok, it aint got 8gb capacity, but with the memory card, it can store quite a few MP3s, mpeg videos, jpegs and surf the net, as well as being a shit hot phone!

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Offline
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
Until I got my Treo I always had Motorola cell phones. They always got a better signal, regardless of carrier, than did Nokia.

When they first came out, I really wanted a Razor but, like the iPhone, they were exclusive to ATT/Cingular. That's what led to the my first Treo a few years ago and, since then, I've never gone back.

Maybe the phone companies ought to rethink their "exclusives".

the G-man #829087 2007-07-03 5:40 PM
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Offline
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
Strange.
Nokias are widely regarded as superior in Europe.
Razors are considered to be one of the worst phones you can buy.

Also, we dont have exclusives over here.
You have a contract or pay as you go phone, and buy whatever phone you want.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Offline
Officially "too old for this shit"
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 43,951
Likes: 6
 Originally Posted By: Nowhereman
Strange.
Nokias are widely regarded as superior in Europe.
Razors are considered to be one of the worst phones you can buy.


As noted above, I never actually got one so, for all I know, they were shit. However, prior to that, every Motorola I had was damn near indestructible and had great sound quality.

Maybe its a difference between Euro and US cellular systems. Who knows?

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 19,633
I walk in eternity
15000+ posts
Offline
I walk in eternity
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 19,633
 Originally Posted By: PJP
years ago I had AT&T/cingular service and it was the most horrible thing you could ever imagine.....I honestly saw this coming. They fucked up by not giving into a few of Verizon's requests.


I've had Cingular -ATT for over nine years now... at first, their service sucked
but now it has gotten pretty damn good.

Who needs an expensive phone that plays music and stuff? I just want to talk on the phone, is all.


"I offer you a Vulcan prayer, Mr Suder. May your

death bring you the peace you never found in

life." - Tuvok.

the G-man #829144 2007-07-03 9:00 PM
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 19,633
I walk in eternity
15000+ posts
Offline
I walk in eternity
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 19,633
 Originally Posted By: the G-man
 Originally Posted By: Nowhereman
Strange.
Nokias are widely regarded as superior in Europe.
Razors are considered to be one of the worst phones you can buy.


As noted above, I never actually got one so, for all I know, they were shit. However, prior to that, every Motorola I had was damn near indestructible and had great sound quality.

Maybe its a difference between Euro and US cellular systems. Who knows?



I have had a Motorola phone for a few years. I'm happy with it.


"I offer you a Vulcan prayer, Mr Suder. May your

death bring you the peace you never found in

life." - Tuvok.

the G-man #829384 2007-07-04 6:36 PM
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
 Originally Posted By: the G-man
 Originally Posted By: Nowhereman
Strange.
Nokias are widely regarded as superior in Europe.
Razors are considered to be one of the worst phones you can buy.


As noted above, I never actually got one so, for all I know, they were shit. However, prior to that, every Motorola I had was damn near indestructible and had great sound quality.

Maybe its a difference between Euro and US cellular systems. Who knows?

The Razors are complete and utter shit....my wife and sister have one. Bunch of friends too and they all hate them. Motorola is usually a decent phone (excluding the razor) but I have always like Audiovox and LG. My next phone will eithe be another LG or Treo or Blackberry.

PJP #829405 2007-07-04 7:29 PM
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 7,025
graemlin protector
6000+ posts
Offline
graemlin protector
6000+ posts
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 7,025
i'm using an lg, i like it well enough for what i use it for. my gf has a razor, iono if the pink ones are newer or older, but she likes it. i think it's crap, but then it isn't my phone.

Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
my wife has the pink one too...she said it looks nice but that's about it.

PJP #829410 2007-07-04 7:33 PM
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Offline
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
Only women buy razors........kinda says it all!

PJP #829412 2007-07-04 7:34 PM
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 7,025
graemlin protector
6000+ posts
Offline
graemlin protector
6000+ posts
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 7,025
\:lol\:

yeah..... even the picture quality sucks, compared to mine. i don't think her phone can match mine in any area...cept again i have no idea how old the pink ones are. only things i really worry bout in a phone, it has to be a flip phone ( i always feel like i should move it from my ear to my mouth when talking on it otherwise) good pic quality, at least 15 seconds of video, and decent phone quality. long as it can do those 3 things i generally am happy

Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 78
25+ posts
Offline
25+ posts
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 78
So much for Apple Iphone

ifixit manage to open Iphone without brute force.

Link: http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone

Some thing you could read of the operation is:

-Aplle have final glued the wire together now.
- The Battery core is huge, connect direct into the eletronic
- The camera is a normal 2 megapixels camera.
- The only "air" is just behind the antenna. The Antenne is about 2cm high
- Its Samsung flashram, gving about 8 gigabytes storage.

Think secret, had to use hard crack to open it

Link: http://thinksecret.com/archives/iphonetakeapart/index.html


Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. Ernest Hemingway
Battlekruse #830725 2007-07-07 12:38 AM
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
PJP Offline OP
We already are
15000+ posts
OP Offline
We already are
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 32,001
Likes: 1
iPhone Battery-Replacement Plan Draws Flak



IPhone Battery-Replacement Plan Draws Flak
Friday , July 06, 2007



MENLO PARK, Calif. —

A consumer advocacy group has expressed outrage over Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) battery replacement program for the iPhone, while developers and hackers are trying to figure out ways they could expand the capabilities of the hot new gadget.

The hybrid cell phone, iPod media player and wireless Web-browsing device launched to much fanfare on June 29.

On the same day, the Foundation for Consumer and Taxpayer Rights fired off a letter to Apple and AT&T Inc. (T), the cell phone's exclusive carrier, complaining that customers were being left in the dark about the procedure and cost of replacing the gadget's battery.

• Click here for FOXNews.com's Personal Technology Center.

The iPhone's battery is apparently soldered on inside the device and cannot be swapped out by the owner like most other cell phones.

Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Hakes said Thursday the company posted the battery replacement details on its Web site last Friday after the product went on sale.

Users would have to submit their iPhone to Apple for battery service. The service will cost users $79, plus $6.95 for shipping, and will take three business days.

The procedure is similar to the one it has for the company's best-selling iPod players, but because some users will not want to live without their cell phones, Apple is also offering a loaner iPhone for $29 while the gadget is under repair.

Harvey Rosenfield, founder of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based consumer watchdog group that wrote the letter last week, contends the iPhone's battery and repair costs should have been clearly disclosed earlier.

The company outlined its cellular service rates and many other features of the iPhone in advance of its launch, which drew snaking lines around stores across the country.

"Some of them might be waking up now," Rosenfield said, "wondering who they got in bed with."

Apple did not have an immediate comment on the consumer group's concerns.

Rosenfield said he didn't detect the battery information, which is located under several layers of links on Apple's support page on its Web site, until earlier this week.

Technology blogs also started reporting their discoveries of it this week while one of the questions Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg fielded Thursday from his readers was about what happens when the iPhone battery dies.

"The cell phone industry is notorious for not being consumer-friendly while Apple has a fairly good reputation, so for Apple to stand on a technicality of a hidden disclosure that's going to cost the user as much as 20 percent of the purchase price I think will prove to be a colossal mistake," Rosenfield said.

The iPhone costs $499 or $599, depending on the model, and requires a minimum two-year $60-a-month service plan with AT&T.

The consumer and taxpayer organization has gone to court over these kinds of issues in the past.

It is embroiled in a pending lawsuit against Cingular, now part of AT&T, over its service termination fees, and is also one of the plaintiffs in a pending lawsuit against Apple over an early model iPod Nano that was allegedly defective because it scratched easily.

In addition, Rosenfield said, replacing the iPhone battery should be free to begin with while the product is under its one-year warranty.

He also questioned why Apple chose to go against the norm of what cell phone users are accustomed to — swapping out their own batteries and generally at a cost that is less than half of what Apple is charging now for the iPhone.

"I'm just surprised at Apple's decision to defy the common practice of allowing people to purchase replacement batteries," he said. "And the fact that the information is buried is just not appropriate."

Apple has not disclosed how many iPhones were available at launch, though analysts have speculated the amount was 500,000 or more.

AT&T said the gadget had sold out at most of its stores on the night of the launch while many Apple stores ran out of stock by early this week.

Those ordering the iPhone online through Apple's Web site on Thursday were being promised delivery would be in two to four weeks.

Meanwhile, software developers anxious to find ways they could introduce applications tailored for the iPhone's Web browser were preparing to get together in Silicon Valley this weekend at an ad hoc conference called iPhoneDevCamp.

Also, a tech-savvy audience cheered the latest work this week of a hacker known for cracking copy-protection technology and creating workarounds of Apple products.

Jon Lech Johansen, also known as "DVD Jon," posted on his blog Tuesday a method for people to turn on the iPod and Wi-Fi features — but not the cell phone functions — of the iPhone without going through the required activation process and service fees of AT&T.

Johansen did not respond Thursday to e-mails seeking comment.

PJP #831335 2007-07-08 1:09 AM
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Offline
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
The iPhone sounds as shitty as the iPod!
Apple is fucking clown shoes!
Fuck Apple, fuck it in its stupid ass!

Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 24,593
Timelord. Drunkard.
15000+ posts
Offline
Timelord. Drunkard.
15000+ posts
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 24,593
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070824/ap_on_hi_te/iphone_unlocked
 Quote:
Armed with a soldering iron and a large supply of energy drinks, a slight, curly haired teenager has developed a way to make the iPhone, arguably the gadget of the year, available to a much wider audience.

George Hotz of Glen Rock, N.J., spent his last summer before college figuring out how to "unlock" the iPhone, freeing it from being restricted to a single carrier, AT&T Inc.

The procedure, which the 17-year-old laid out on his blog Thursday, raises the possibility of a cottage industry springing up to buy iPhones, unlocking them and then selling them to people who don't want AT&T service or can't get it, particularly overseas.

The phone, which combines an innovative touch-screen interface with the media-playing abilities of the iPod, is currently sold only in the U.S.

In a video post, Hotz demonstrated an iPhone running on T-Mobile's network, the only major U.S. carrier apart from AT&T that is compatible with the iPhone's cellular technology.

The hack is complicated and requires skill with both soldering and software, and missteps may result in the iPhone becoming useless, so it's unlikely to become a household procedure.

"But that's the simplest I could make them," Hotz said in a phone interview. The next step, he said, would be for someone to develop a way to unlock the phone using only software.

AT&T Inc. spokesman Mark Siegel and Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock said their companies had no comment. Hotz said the companies had not been in touch with him.

....

The iPhone has already been made to work on overseas networks using another method, which involves copying information from the Subscriber Identity Module, a small card with a chip that identifies a subscriber to the cell-phone network.

The SIM-chip method does not involve any soldering, but does require special equipment, and it doesn't unlock the phone — each new SIM chip has to be reprogrammed for use on a particular iPhone.

Both hacks leave intact the iPhone's many functions, including a built-in camera and the ability to access Wi-Fi networks. The only thing that won't work is the "visual voicemail" feature, which lists voice messages as if they were incoming e-mail.

Since the details of both hacks are public, Apple may be able to modify the iPhone production line to make new phones invulnerable. The company has said it plans to introduce the phone in Europe this year, but it hasn't set a date or identified carriers.

There is apparently no U.S. law against unlocking cell phones. Last year, the Library of Congress specifically excluded cell-phone unlocking from coverage under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Among other things, the law has been used to prosecute people who modify game consoles to play a wider variety of games.

Hotz collaborated online with four other people, two of them in Russia, to develop the unlocking process.

"Then there are two guys who I think are somewhere U.S.-side," Hotz said. He knows them only by their online handles.

Hotz himself spent about 500 hours on the project since the iPhone went on sale. On Thursday, he put the unlocked iPhone up for sale on eBay, where the high bid was above $3,000 on Friday afternoon. The model, with 4 gigabytes of memory, sells for $499 new.

"Some of my friends think I wasted my summer but I think it was worth it," he told The Record of Bergen County, which reported Hotz's hack Friday.

Hotz heads for college on Saturday. He plans to major in neuroscience — or "hacking the brain!" as he put it to the newspaper — at the Rochester Institute of Technology.


whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules.
It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness.
This is true both in politics and on the internet."

Our Friendly Neighborhood Ray-man said: "no, the doctor's right. besides, he has seniority."
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 19,633
I walk in eternity
15000+ posts
Offline
I walk in eternity
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 19,633
Heh, $3000.00 plus for a $499.00 phone.. way to go, kid!


"I offer you a Vulcan prayer, Mr Suder. May your

death bring you the peace you never found in

life." - Tuvok.

Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 24,593
Timelord. Drunkard.
15000+ posts
Offline
Timelord. Drunkard.
15000+ posts
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 24,593
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070828/ap_on_re_us/odd_iphone_unlocked
  • George Hotz, of Glen Rock, N.J., said he had reached the deal with CertiCell, a Louisville, Ky.-based mobile phone repair company.

    Hotz posted on his blog that he traded his modified iPhone for "a sweet Nissan 350Z and 3 8GB iPhones."

    "This has been a great end to a great summer," Hotz wrote.

    The 17-year-old Hotz said he will be sending the three new iPhones to the three online collaborators who helped him divorce Apple Inc's popular product from AT&T's network. The job took 500 hours, or about 8 hours a day since the iPhone's June 29 launch.

    Hotz made the deal with Terry Daidone, co-founder of CertiCell, who also promised the teen a paid consulting job.

    "We do not have any plans on the table right now to commercialize Mr. Hotz' discovery," Daidone said in a statement.


whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules.
It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness.
This is true both in politics and on the internet."

Our Friendly Neighborhood Ray-man said: "no, the doctor's right. besides, he has seniority."
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 24,593
Timelord. Drunkard.
15000+ posts
Offline
Timelord. Drunkard.
15000+ posts
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 24,593
http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/4903
 Quote:
After a rash of reports over the weekend of hackers who managed to unlock the iPhone—ranging from the iPhoneSIMFree.com team to a 17-year-old kid in New Jersey—AT&T has unsurprisingly decided to rain on the parade, with a little help from its legal team.
Gizmodo is reporting that AT&T has fired off a warning to a group that was planning to sell its iPhone unlocking software. In a press release, a spokesman for iphoneunlocking.com said that AT&T contacted the site early Saturday, warning that the group would run afoul of copyright laws if it went ahead with its planned sale of the software package. The site has decided to hold off releasing the iPhone-unlocking app for now, the spokesman said.

So, all this begs the question: is it legal to unlock the iPhone? Engadget asked a copyright lawyer that very question, and got a rather nuanced answer. According to the attorney, iPhone unlockers are most likely protected by an exception in the DMCA (a law that prohibits the cracking of DRM schemes) that lets you unlock your own phone for the "sole purpose" of using it "lawfully" on a cellular network. However, you can't unlock a phone (including the iPhone) and then sell it; also, Apple and AT&T are free to sue you on the basis of other laws besides the DMCA (and they certainly have the resources—and the incentive—to do so). Bottom line? The lawyer seems to believe that you're probably in the clear as long as you're just unlocking your own iPhone and not selling it on Craigslist; then again, there's no telling what Apple and AT&T have up their legal sleeves. Also, on a practical note, keep in mind that unlocking the phone will probably violate your warranty, so if anything goes wrong, don't look for sympathy from the Apple Genius Bar.


whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules.
It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness.
This is true both in politics and on the internet."

Our Friendly Neighborhood Ray-man said: "no, the doctor's right. besides, he has seniority."
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 19,633
I walk in eternity
15000+ posts
Offline
I walk in eternity
15000+ posts
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 19,633
 Originally Posted By: thedoctor
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070828/ap_on_re_us/odd_iphone_unlocked
  • George Hotz, of Glen Rock, N.J., said he had reached the deal with CertiCell, a Louisville, Ky.-based mobile phone repair company.

    Hotz posted on his blog that he traded his modified iPhone for "a sweet Nissan 350Z and 3 8GB iPhones."

    "This has been a great end to a great summer," Hotz wrote.

    The 17-year-old Hotz said he will be sending the three new iPhones to the three online collaborators who helped him divorce Apple Inc's popular product from AT&T's network. The job took 500 hours, or about 8 hours a day since the iPhone's June 29 launch.

    Hotz made the deal with Terry Daidone, co-founder of CertiCell, who also promised the teen a paid consulting job.

    "We do not have any plans on the table right now to commercialize Mr. Hotz' discovery," Daidone said in a statement.


That's a damn good deal! A new car for a phone!


"I offer you a Vulcan prayer, Mr Suder. May your

death bring you the peace you never found in

life." - Tuvok.

Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Offline
Hip To Be Square
15000+ posts
Joined: Oct 2001
Posts: 47,810
Likes: 2
But he still looks like he has AIDS!

Joined: May 2005
Posts: 12,912
Kneel!
10000+ posts
Offline
Kneel!
10000+ posts
Joined: May 2005
Posts: 12,912
hes been to roboken...


big_pimp_tim-made it cool to roll in the first damn place!
Mon Jun 11 2007 09:27 PM-harley finally rolled with me
"I'm working with him...he's young but, there is much potential. He can apprentice with me and then he's yours for final training. He will remember the face of his father...

Some day, Knutreturns just may be the greatest of us all...."-THE bastard
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 24,593
Timelord. Drunkard.
15000+ posts
Offline
Timelord. Drunkard.
15000+ posts
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 24,593
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071017/ap_on_hi_te/apple_iphone
 Quote:
In an apparent about-face, Apple Inc. will allow third-party applications to work directly on the iPhone, Chief Executive Steve Jobs said in a posting on the company's Web site Wednesday.

Apple infuriated developers and some iPhone users when it issued a software update Sept. 27 that disabled unofficial programs installed on the handsets.

Until Wednesday, Apple had tried to control which applications consumers had on their iPhones.

Now, Jobs said the company intends to release a software development kit in February that will let coders create applications to work directly on the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The Touch is the new iPod portable player that resembles the iPhone but lacks the function of a cell phone.

"We are excited about creating a vibrant third-party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users," Jobs said in the posting.

It is easy to find many unofficial programs for the iPhone on the Internet; users just had to take the risk of installing them, knowing that any damage to the iPhone stemming from unofficial programs was not covered by Apple's warranty.

"I'm thrilled," said Erica Sadun, a Denver computer programmer. "I hope it is exactly as they say, full third-party development."

A Mac enthusiast and blogger — and a critic of Apple's decision to restrict the iPhone to carrier AT&T Inc. in the United States — Sadun predicted Apple's change of heart will ultimately help the company sell more iPods and iPhones.

An unknown number of users have "unlocked" their handsets to work on other carrier networks. The Sept. 27 software update reportedly disabled those phones.

It was not clear from Jobs' statement whether the move was a response to the growing discontent around Apple's iron grip over its portable gadgets.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to say why Apple made the change, noting instead that Jobs said the process of opening the iPhone to third-party programs will take time.

Apple's change does not affect the Cupertino-based company's position on keeping the iPhone compatible only with AT&T's network in the United States, Kerris said.

Two lawsuits were filed against Apple on Oct. 5, accusing the company of engaging in monopolistic behavior and unlawfully restricting consumer choice by preventing users from "unlocking" their iPhones.

....

Apple had allowed developers to build applications that run on the iPhone's Safari Web browser but didn't let programs work directly on the iPhone software platform, which could make them easier to create and make them work more smoothly.

Palm Inc. has always welcomed third-party developers to create applications for its handheld computers, or personal digital assistants. They have created hundreds of programs ranging from medical dictionaries to astrology predictions.

Even without Apple's blessing, developers created workarounds to install applications onto the iPhone this summer. Some did it for sport, others in order to add capabilities to the device, such as to-do-lists or games.

Jobs said it will take until February to release the software kit because the company wants to give developers an open platform and also protect iPhone users from viruses, malware and privacy attacks.

"There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network," he wrote.

Jobs noted that rival Nokia Corp. also does not allow third-party applications to be loaded onto some of its new phones unless the applications have a digital signature that can be traced to a known developer.

"While this makes such a phone less than 'totally open,' we believe it is a step in the right direction," Jobs wrote of Nokia's stance.

Apple shares rose 20 cents to $169.78 in afternoon trading.


whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules.
It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness.
This is true both in politics and on the internet."

Our Friendly Neighborhood Ray-man said: "no, the doctor's right. besides, he has seniority."
Page 1 of 2 1 2

Link Copied to Clipboard
Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5