[shuttertalk]

There has been a lot of internet buzz generated over the last few days with the announcement of the iPhone from Apple. The all-in-one phone was made public by Steve Jobs at a keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo.

The looks awesome - less than 1cm thin, and the whole front surface dominated by a touchscreen (read - no hard buttons). Everything will be driven by touch, from dialing numbers, to scrolling through the phone book, to typing messages on the soft keyboard.

In terms of functionality, it looks to be a PDA killer with phone, camera, music widescreen video (iPod), internet and builtin wifi/bluetooth, and other yummy goodies. Photos will look mighty good on that nice glossy touchscreen, I bet...



It all sounds pretty good - the only thing I'm a bit skeptical about is the touchscreen functionality and lack of tactile response. There are a few touchscreen PDA phones out there that don't have hard buttons, namely the pocketpc / windows mobile ones. I have used them and I can say that it takes a lot of getting used to and is actually quite counter-productive because you have to look at it to press the buttons. With the hard buttons on most mobile phones, one can physically type a text message without having to look at the screen.


Availability is targeted at June 2007 in the US, and other countries - don't hold your breath.

Any thoughts peoples?

[Wedding Shooter]

It looks amazing. You have to hand it to Apple - they know how to design stuff. If you look at some of the movies of the new iPhone on the Apple web site it is very impressive.

I agree with ST on the lack of tactile feel - but when you see it in action it would seem impossible to get the same ease of use with buttons and still have that gorgeous screen with out the thing being too big. Mind you I always look at what I am trying to type as I am a hopeless texter. I don't think you would get tired f looking at that screnn though

[Petographer]

I'm one of those people that have a 20 minute a month phone plan. I hardly use my cell. For those that like the toys it's sounds very cool. To me it would sit and nevr get used.

[Wedding Shooter]

You have to think of it like a laptop in a phone - that is what it really is. It runs Mac OS X. Perfect for all your e-mail, web browsing, music, movies, word documents - oh and it also works as a phone

[shuttertalk]

Another bigscreen portable media player from Sandisk if (minus phone) if you're interested...

http://www.dcviews.com/press/SanDisk-Sansa-View.htm

4" screen, 8GB built in memory, SD expansion slot, integrated speaker, video and audio player, replaceable li-polymer battery (4 hours video playback, 10 hours audio).