Mind blowing

Thats what the iPhone is.
Check out Steve Jobs’ keynote.
iPod, phone and PDA all roled into 1 device.

• 4GB @ US$499 / 8GB @ US$599 (both with 2 year phone contract)
• Widescreen 3.5″ with resolution of 320 by 480 at 160ppi
• Multi-touch screen
• Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
• Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0
• 2.0 megapixels
• Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing
  Up to 16 hours Audio playback
• 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches / 115 x 61 x 11.6mm
• 4.8 ounces / 135 grams
• Runs OS X
• Inbuilt proximity sensor, Ambient light sensor, accelerometer
• 200+ patents

If you are not sure what multi touch is check out this. See how they resize images? Thats in the iPhone.

10:14am – I can just take my fingers and I can move them together and further apart, and make the photo bigger or smaller.” HUGE applause — touch gesturing apparently really hit a chord with these people.

Notice the word ‘fingers’. No stylus to use or lose for that matter. Good thing is everybody has fingers. On screen buttons are good in the sense that you can add new buttons but the bad thing is no tactile feedback which is something I don’t like. Can’t touch type with the onscreen keyboard which seems a bit crammed to me but seems to work fine for Steve during the demo.

About the sensors…

9:54am – We’ve also got some stuff you can’t see — 3 advanced sensors. It’s got a proximity sensor, bring the iPhone to your ear and your display shuts off and toushccreen shuts down. Ambient light sensor — adjusts brightness, saves power. Third thing is an accellerometer, it can tell whether you’re in landscape and portraid. Let’s turn it on.”

Isn’t that cool? So seamless. So simple. So cool.

Running OS X it syncs with iTunes to even get your media (audio + video + photos), contacts, calendar, notes, bookmarks, etc. So all your contacts will be in your iPhone and to call them just find their contact then just touch their number and you’re calling them. Message features saves sessions so you get to see your recent messages to and from your friends. Nothing that phenomenal though.

IMAP / POP3 email: rich text email that that too. Safari web browser with multipage support. Google maps! Widgets! Seamless wireless management. Thank you OS X. Without which I doubt it would be possible. Since it’s running OS X browser plugins shouldn’t pose as much a problem as other mobile phone / PDA options. Open Google maps on iPhone, find a place, view the details and if the contact details are display you can just call it from there! Simply amazing.

Worried about the size? Comparison between iPhone, Motorola SLVR, iPod 30GB and iPod nano. Mockup iPhone with Nokia 7610, 5G iPod and others. Honestly it doesn’t seem to be big at all. How the heck did they fit it all in there?!?!?! Kudos to the hardware engineers because it’s simply mind blowing. iPod, phone, wifi, camera, multi-touch screen, sensors, 16 hours audio playback and running OS X all in that space! I would never thought I would be so enthusiastic about an Apple product but like the title of this post is, it’s just simply “MIND BLOWING”. I’m not saying I’m going to buy it but it is indeed a true innovation by Apple. Kudos and props to the guys at Apple.

It’ll be out June 2007 in US, 4th quarter of this year in Europe and 2008 in Asia =( I’m sure people will ship some in from US though. In other news the more Apple TV to ship in February for US$299 and Apple drops the word ‘computer’ in their name so it’s officially Apple Inc now. What a day. Mind blowing