Apple iPhone

[Mike]

Truphone is an iPhone and iTouch app that turns your wireless connected device into a VoiP internet phone. Wicked. Now the iTouch is becoming a phone almost by default! Only downside is a reliance on fast wireless connections that are widely spaced. I suppose it is like returning to the beginning days of Mobiles where you had to be very careful about the service coverage of the network you joined.

[stimpsonslostson]

having had the iphone for 2 weeks (and having decided that its worth keeping). I thought I'd do a quick update...

As I stated before the its a well devised gadget rather like carrying an 8gig itouch which happens to make calls. When based in my usual locations thats exactly how I treat it (wifi on my networks as needed and 3g off to preserve battery). I get 2days full use, which is acceptable... however, when roaming around (as I have done a couple of times in the last few days...) the iphone comes into its own! I got VERY lost in Chorley attempting to deliver my grandparents christmas presents- they live in a maze of unnamed streets, I used te maps and find me function to realise I was VERY close. I then used the same method to work out the most efficient route around the traffic. VERY cool.

So...
As a phone good call clarity, easy dialling and name finding etc. It EVEN gets some signal at my parents house, which I've very rarely had before! (turning off 3g boosts reception! it gives me an extra bar or two, very handy when in low signal areas).
as a web browser (lost a star for not liking some websites- I think its a flash support issue(??) and problems with SOME drop down menus. Minor stuff and infrequently encountered, but enough to deny the full 5)
as a GPS/mappy thing REALLY handy to have and a potential lifesaver if lost (as I was), but no tomtom style SatNav stuff going on. I hear that TomTom/Garmin?someone is going to produce an app to do this... but in the meantime its only really suitable for where am I map consultations rather than on the fly navigation.
Camera its OK, but no better than that.
ipod accomplished music/video player, I knocked .5 off because I'm not totally sold on the interface yet. Ideally I'd like a play/pause and skip fwd/back buttons somewhere so that i dont need to take it out of my pocket to change song (as I do with my classic)
battery not as methusahlithic as my samsung(MGH100) which could go 10-12days, but considering all the processing power and the use it gets, 2days is not too shabby!

overall
p

[Mike]

I knocked .5 off because I'm not totally sold on the interface yet. Ideally I'd like a play/pause and skip fwd/back buttons somewhere so that i dont need to take it out of my pocket to change song (as I do with my classic)

I know you don't like the iPhone ear phones but with the risk of being shot there is a play, pause, skip and answer call button on the microphone of the headphones supplied. . .

iPod mode 1 click = play / pause
iPod mode 2 click = skip
Phone rings 1 click = answer / hang up! Though not at the same time, that would be a bit of a flaw!

PS Nice and comprehensive review!

[johnriley1uk]

So for now I'm putting off the iPhone and have opted to restore to new condition my favourite phone design. This is the one you were using Mike and which was pretty well worn out:

I trashed one of these to find out the easy way to do it, but I'm very pleased with this one. Total cost of restoration: £5.99

[Mike]

It even comes in the latest darlek colours. Quality. I must get rid of my all singing all dancing phones and get me one of those!

[johnriley1uk]

Last night I was at a Christmas Party in Lymm and the quiz was helped along enormously with the aid of Lucy's iPhone. Our table still lost, but blame Wikipedia for that!

I quite fancy having an iPhone, but on the other hand I now have a phone with two batteries that would last me around a month without a recharge. That's the main reason for using this particular design. 17 days standby per charge is pretty impressive. And it also fits on the car hand-free system.

[Mike]

Such blatent cheating is shocking. You would not find me using a iphone in a pub quiz! erm well. You would not catch me anyway!

Here are a couple of handy typing shortcuts for the iPhone.
1) Double tap space to put a full stop after a sentence.
2) Press and hold the .?123 button and move your finger to the number or punctuation that you need then let go. This automatically takes you back to the keyboard instead of staying on the number screen.
3) Same principle as above but in Safari press an hold the .com button to bring up options like.org.
4) Press and hold the letters to get accented letters.

[stimpsonslostson]

caps lock? its the only thing I've not worked out yet.

[Mike]

No me neither. I wonder if the internet will help us. Will post if I find anything!

[Mike]

No new news for a while so try this one for size. CNet and Appleinsider are reporting that Apple have cleared Samsung out of their stocks of Flash Memory and Toshiba and Hynix have been asked to step up production. The 'experts' believe that this is a sign that a next generation iPhone will be on the horizon. Interesting. . . I don't think that this is going to be any time soon but I would not be surprised to see something here by June / July of 2009. I guess that Apple will need to ramp up production and stocks of the phone before it is released and they will want to wet appitites by releasing notes and other marketing events to the poeple who are hanging onto their every rumour (like me).

[Mike]

Worlds most tasteless iPhone is on sale for $2.5million. Now why would you take an elegant piece of engineering (screws at the base aside) and replace it with that thing below?! Not only that - who would have sufficient money to waste $2.5million on it?! The world is a crazy place.

[BarcelonAl]

Not only that - who would have sufficient money to waste $2.5million on it?!

The ex-chief of RBS maybe?

It is a hideous piece of work though.

[stimpsonslostson]

It manages to look not only tasteless, but WORSE than the original- wonder if those modifications void the warranty? (Not that you;d be bothered if you could afford the thing in the first place.)
p

[Mike]

Apple have sent out invitations to a advance preview of their iPhone 3.0 OS software for iPhone and iPod Touch hardware. The most interesting rumours about the new release are:

Push Notifications - lets your AIM / MSN / Fring push notifications to your phone when you don't have the application active
Copy / Paste - well, I don't know about this one. One of the wish list items since dot. May be disappointed!
A new dashboard way of navigating through apps.

[Mike]

A new iPhone? to coninside with a June / July release of the new software. This would match what the company did in 2008 with the OS 2.0 and developer kits being available in March. It would be good to have a slightly faster CPU and RAM on the phone. Make the performance slightly higher. The other nice to have would be the stability of the Desktop OS - The phone is not as stable as other Apple products, not really odd since it is only their second phone but a good area for improvement.

MacWorld Top Ten Wishlist. Much better than my brief list above.

Push Notifications - A way for developers to push information from Apple servers to each phone. Think of the advantages (disadvantages?) of IM being able to alert you when you get a new message. It could be rather disctracting at work but meh.

Adobe Flash Support - An elusive one. A much needed item to make web browsing more effective. Politically it may never happen but it does deserve a place.

Advanced Bluetooth - Sharing files etc - may be a problem with music but oh well.

Background Processing - Letting programmes run in the background. Apple were publically sniffy of a Task Manager at the launch on iPhone v1.0 but I don't think that they would go back on this if it suited their current technology. It may seriously effect the performance of the phone though.

Horizontal Keyboard - Whatever - get over it people. It is not a serious issue this one.

Video Conferencing - Meh. Not interested. Althouth iChat would be a good one to have on the phone.

Global Search - Think spotlight for the phone.

MMS messages.

Tethering of internet connection.