iPhone

The iPhone is a multimedia, Internet-enabled mobile phone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It has a multi-touch screen with virtual keyboard and buttons. The iPhone's functions include those of a camera phone and a portable media player ("iPod"), in addition to text messaging and visual voicemail. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. It is a quad-band mobile phone that uses the GSM standard, hence has international capability. It supports the Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) technology for higher speed and reliability.

Following the success of iPod, Apple first introduced the iPhone on June 29, 2007 in the United States with much media frenzy. The introduction was preceded by month-long rumors and speculations. It was named Time magazine's "Invention Of the Year" in 2007. [5]

History

The genesis of the iPhone began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs's direction that Apple engineers investigate touch-screens. At the time he had been considering having Apple work on tablet PCs.[6]

Comments made by Jobs in April 2003 at the "D: All Things Digital" executive conference expressed his belief that tablet PCs and traditional PDAs were not good choices as high-demand markets for Apple to enter, despite many requests made to him that Apple create another PDA. He did believe that cell phones were going to become important devices for portable information access.

On January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the iPhone at the Macworld convention, receiving substantial media attention,[7] and on June 11, 2007 announced at the Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference that the iPhone would support third-party applications using the Safari engine on the device. Third-parties would create the Web 2.0 applications and users would access them via the Internet.[8] On October 17, 2007 Apple announced that an iPhone software development kit would be made available in February 2008.[9][10]

Spanish mobile operator Telefónica announced on their technology blog that they expect to be shipping 3G iPhones by May 2008.[11]

The iPhone normally prevents access to its media player and web features unless it has also been activated as a phone with an authorized carrier. On July 3, 2007, Jon Lech Johansen reported on his blog that he had successfully bypassed this requirement and unlocked the iPhone's other features with a combination of custom software and modification of the iTunes binary. He published the software and offsets for others to use.[12]

On November 21, 2007, T-Mobile announced that in Germany, it will sell the phone "unlocked" and without a T-Mobile contract for €999 (US$1,478) at its stores. This is due to litigation commenced against T-Mobile by their competitor Vodafone, which resulted in a preliminary injunction preventing T-Mobile from locking the SIM card to itself in Germany. The sale of the iPhone in this configuration will last until the court renders a decision.[13]

Apple announced in their 2007 Q3 sales report and conference call that they sold 270,000 iPhones in the first 30 hours on launch weekend.[14] AT&T reported 146,000 iPhones activated in the same time period.[15] Apple anticipated selling their millionth iPhone in the first full quarter of availability,[16] and 10 million by the end of fiscal 2008.[17] On September 10, 2007, Apple announced sales of 1 million iPhones.[18] This was followed by Apple's Q4 announcement on October 22, 2007 which put total iPhone sales at 1.39 million (Apple having sold 1.12 million in their 4th Quarter).[19]

Features

The iPhone allows conferencing, call holding, call merging, caller ID, and integration with other cellular network features and iPhone functions. For example, a playing song fades out when the user receives a call. Once the call is ended the music fades back in. Voice dialing is not supported by the iPhone.

The iPhone includes a Visual Voicemail feature allowing users to view a list of current voicemail messages on-screen without having to call into their voicemail. Unlike most other systems, messages can be listened to and deleted in a non-chronological order by choosing any message from an on-screen list. AT&T modified their voicemail infrastructure to accommodate this new feature designed by Apple.

A ringtone feature, introduced in the United States on September 5, 2007, but not yet available in all countries where the iPhone has been released, allows users to create custom ringtones from their purchased iTunes music for an additional fee, the same price of a song. The ringtones can be from 3 to 30 seconds in length of any part of a song, can include fading in and out, can pause from half a second to five seconds when looped, and never expire. All customizing can be done in iTunes, and the synced ringtones can also be used for alarms on the iPhone.

Apple has released a video explaining many of iPhone's features through a series of demonstrations.[20]

Multimedia
When music is played on the iPhone, album art is shown on most of the screen, with play controls beneath.
When music is played on the iPhone, album art is shown on most of the screen, with play controls beneath.

The layout of the music library differs from previous iPods, with the sections divided more clearly alphabetically, and with a larger font. Similar to previous iPods, the iPhone can sort its media library by songs, artists, albums, videos, playlists, genres, composers, podcasts, audiobooks, and compilations. Cover Flow, like that on iTunes, shows the different album covers in a scroll-through photo library. Scrolling is achieved by swiping a finger across the screen.

Like the fifth generation iPods introduced in 2005, the iPhone can play video, allowing users to watch TV shows and films. Unlike other image-related content, video on the iPhone plays only in the landscape orientation, when the phone is turned sideways. Double tapping switches between wide-screen and fullscreen video playback.

The iPhone allows users to purchase and download songs from the iTunes Store directly to their iPhone over Wi-Fi, but not over the cellular data network.[21]

Web connectivity
Wikipedia on the iPhone's Safari web browser.
Wikipedia on the iPhone's Safari web browser.

The iPhone is able to access the World Wide Web via a modified version of the Safari web browser when connected to a Wi-Fi or an EDGE network. It is not able to utilize AT&T's 3G or AT&T's HSDPA network. Steve Jobs has stated 3G would need to become more widespread and much more energy efficient before it's included in the iPhone.[22][23] By default, the iPhone will ask to join newly discovered Wi-Fi networks and prompt for the password when required, while also supporting manually joining closed Wi-Fi networks.[24] When Wi-Fi is active, it will automatically switch from the EDGE network to any nearby previously approved Wi-Fi network.[25]

Before the launch, some reviewers found the EDGE network "excruciatingly slow," with the iPhone taking as long as 100 seconds to download the Yahoo! home page for the first time.[26] Immediately before the launch the observed speed of the network increased to almost 200 kbit/s.[27] This is probably due to the new "Fine EDGE" upgrades AT&T has been making to their network prior to the launch.[28] The EDGE network does benefit iPhone users by providing greater availability than 3G, as 3G continues its expansion to most major cities in the United States.[29]

Some countries other than the U.S. have very little EDGE infrastructure in place. For example, the United Kingdom's EDGE infrastructure amount to less that 30-percent. As a result, many users outside major cities will have to browse the Internet on GPRS.

The web browser displays full web pages as opposed to simplified pages as on most non-smartphones. The iPhone does not support Flash or Java technology.[30][31] Web pages may be viewed in portrait or landscape mode and supports automatic zooming by pinching together or spreading apart fingertips on the screen, or by double-tapping text or images.[32]

Apple developed an iPhone application for accessing Google's maps service in map or satellite form, a list of search results, or directions between two locations, while providing optional real-time traffic information. During the product's announcement, Jobs demonstrated this feature by searching for nearby Starbucks locations and then placing a prank call to one with a single tap.[6][33] Though Flash isn't supported in Safari on the iPhone, Apple also developed a separate application to view YouTube videos on the iPhone.

E-mail

The iPhone also features an e-mail program that supports HTML e-mail, which enables the user to embed photos in an e-mail message. PDF, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel attachments to mail messages can be viewed on the phone.[34] Yahoo! is currently the only e-mail provider offering a free Push-IMAP e-mail service similar to that on a BlackBerry for the iPhone; IMAP and POP3 mail standards are also supported, including Microsoft Exchange[35] and Kerio MailServer.[36] However, there is currently no search support. The iPhone will sync e-mail account settings over from Apple's own Mail application, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Entourage, or can be manually configured using the device's Settings tool. With the correct settings, the e-mail program can check many IMAP or POP3-enabled web based accounts such as Gmail, .Mac mail, and AOL.[37]

Others

The iPhone features a built in 2.0 megapixel camera, without a flash, located on the back for still digital photos, but does not support video recording. It also includes software that allows the user to upload, view, and e-mail photos. The user zooms in and out of photos by "unpinching" and "pinching" them through the multi-touch interface. The software interacts with iPhoto on the Mac and Photoshop in Windows.

The built-in Bluetooth 2.x+EDR supports wireless earpieces (which requires the HSP profile), but notably does not support stereo audio (requires A2DP), laptop tethering (requires DUN and SPP), or the OBEX file transfer protocol (requires FTP, GOEP, and OPP).

Text messages are presented chronologically in a mailbox format similar to Mail, which places all text from recipients together with replies. Text messages are displayed in speech bubbles (similar to iChat) under each recipient's name. The iPhone does not support message forwarding, drafts, delivery reports, instant messaging, MMS, multi-recipient SMS, or copy/cut/paste capability.[38]

Hardware

According to The Wall Street Journal, the iPhone is manufactured on contract in the Shenzhen factory of the Taiwanese company Hon Hai.[41]

Touch screen

The 3.5 in liquid crystal display (320×480 px at 160 ppi) HVGA touch screen topped with optical-quality, scratch-resistant glass[42] is specifically created for use with a finger, or multiple fingers for multi-touch sensing. Because the screen is a capacitive touch screen, no stylus is needed, nor can one be used.[43][22] Bare skin is a requirement; users wearing gloves would have to remove them to use the touchpad,[44] unless they are wearing electrically conductive gloves.[45]

The user interface also features other visual effects, such as horizontally sliding sub-selections and co-selections from right and left, vertically sliding system menus from the bottom (e.g. favorites, keyboard), and menus and widgets that turn around to allow settings to be configured on their back sides.

Audio

The iPhone's headphones are similar to those of current iPods, but also incorporate a microphone. Calls can be answered and ended by squeezing a bud, toggling the microphone. The 3.5 mm TRS connector for the headphones is located on the top left corner (as seen from front upright). Wireless earpieces that use Bluetooth technology to communicate with the iPhone are sold separately.

The loudspeaker is used both for handsfree operations and media playback, but does not support voice recording.

With the iPhone firmware update 1.1.1, released in late September 2007, video can be output from the headset jack using a three-way jack plug. Component video at up to 576i and stereo audio can also be output from the dock connector using the Apple Component AV Cable.[46]

Battery

The iPhone features a built-in rechargeable battery that is not intended to be user-replaceable, similar to existing iPods. If the battery prematurely reaches the end of its life time, the phone can be returned to Apple and replaced for free while still in warranty,[47] one year at purchase and extended to two years with AppleCare. The cost of having Apple provide a new battery and replace it when the iPhone is out of warranty is US$79 and US$6.95 for shipping.[48]

The battery is stated to be capable of providing up to seven hours of video, six hours of web browsing, or eight hours of talk time (depending on configuration). The battery life for music playing is stated to be 24 hours.[42] The battery also allows for up to 250 hours of standby time. Apple's site says that the battery life "is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity after 400 full charge and discharge cycles,"[49] which turns out to be the same as for the iPod batteries. When the battery reaches only 80% capacity, it would be providing approximately 5.6 hours of video, 4.8 hours of web browsing, 6.4 hours of talk time, or 19.2 hours of music playing, depending on configuration.

The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, a consumer advocate group, has sent a complaint to Apple and AT&T over the fee that consumers have to pay to get the battery replaced.[50] Though the battery replacement service and its pricing was not made known to buyers until the day the product was launched,[50][51] a similar service had been well established for the iPods by Apple and various third party service providers.
The iPhone's SIM card slot having been ejected.
The iPhone's SIM card slot having been ejected.

SIM card

The SIM card is located in a slot at the top of the device,[20] and the device is activated through iTunes.[52] The iPhone does not contain a memory card slot.