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Apple and AT&T's plans for the iPhone – the full details
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Kansas City Star, MO, 14th July 2007
The Apple iPhone is a really good beta product.
That’s not a statement I make lightly, especially since the tech world has pretty much fallen all over itself to adore Apple’s entry into the cell phone market.
And after spending a few days with an iPhone, I found there is a lot to like.
There’s also a lot to think, “If only…”
First off, for those who have been locked in a sensory deprivation chamber for the last six months, the iPhone is part cell phone, part digital music player, part Internet device.
It comes in one very nicely designed — although somewhat heavy — candy-bar-form package slathered with sleek Apple styling.
The iPhone’s most innovative feature is a touchscreen, which takes that technology to a whole new level — at least for a consumer product.
As you’d expect, its iPod features are terrific.
As a phone, it’s a bit bulky to hold to the ear, but it comes with an effective wired headset.
It connects to the Internet through either AT&T’s second-generation Edge network or a Wi-Fi network. It pulls up actual Web pages, not pages repackaged for mobile phones.
The touchscreen, which allows users to zoom in and out on photos and Internet pages by “squeezing” their fingers on the screen, is one of the most eye-catching features I’ve seen on a consumer technology device in years.
However, there are plenty of not-so-cool issues to match.
Battery life is not great. The one I borrowed from AT&T died less than six hours after a full charge. Admittedly, I was playing videos most of that time.
The touchscreen keypad that’s required to type in Web addresses or to write e-mails is tricky to use and takes some concentration.
And the touchscreen shows fingerprints and smudges to a point where it’s downright annoying. I find myself wiping the screen five or six times a day.
In its advertising, Apple contends that its competitors bring a weak version of the Internet to their phones. It’s a valid criticism.
“This is not a … kinda sorta looks like the Internet, Internet. It’s just the Internet … on your phone,” the ad boasts.
Well, yes and no. Although you can watch YouTube videos on the iPhone, you can’t watch movie trailers from Yahoo’s Web site or videos from Google Video.
And Internet browsing on the AT&T Edge network is often so dreadfully slow it’s practically worthless. For instance, it took more than two minutes to pull up the Apple iPhone Web page. I felt like I’d been transported back to the ’90s and dial-up Internet, complete with a 14.4K modem.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said the company selected AT&T’s slower Edge network for data access instead of the company’s faster 3G network because 3G required more processing and battery power.
However, in an article last week, a BusinessWeek columnist brought up a good point, noting that the iPhone also worked on Wi-Fi networks, which cut into battery life dramatically.
The magazine suggested Jobs selected the Edge network because AT&T’s 3G network wasn’t available in many parts of the United States.
So anyway, here’s the rub.
If the iPhone had been launched by a small startup instead of Apple, it would have gotten some good reviews, some bad. It would have generated some serious buzz, but not all-out mania. The company might have sold 10,000 or so of the phones to the technologically adventurous.
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