By Allen Tsai | Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:58 pm |
Apple today unveiled the iPhone, a device that combine three products - a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and an Internet communication device with email, web browsing, searching and maps - into one small and lightweight handheld.
The iPhone is a new phone that allows users to make calls by simply pointing at a name or number. It syncs all contacts from a PC, Mac or Internet service such as Yahoo!, so that users always have their full list of up-to-date contacts with them. In addition, consumers can easily construct a favorites list for their most frequently made calls, and easily merge calls together to create conference calls.Its Visual Voicemail, an industry first, lets users look at a listing of their voicemails, decide which messages to listen to, then go directly to those messages without listening to the prior messages. Just like email, Visual Voicemail enables users to immediately randomly access those messages that interest them most. Visual Voice Mail was co-developed by Apple and Cingular. The iPhone includes an SMS application with a full QWERTY soft keyboard to send and receive SMS messages in multiple sessions. When users need to type, the iPhone presents them with a touch keyboard which is predictive to prevent and correct mistakes, making it much easier and more efficient to use than the small plastic keyboards on many smartphones. The iPhone also includes a calendar application that allows calendars to be automatically synced with a PC or Mac. The iPhone features a 2.0-megapixel camera and a photo management application. Users can browse their photo library, which can be easily synced from their PC or Mac, with just a flick of a finger and easily choose a photo for their wallpaper or to include in an email. The iPhone is a quad-band GSM phone which also features EDGE and Wi-Fi wireless technologies for data networking. Apple and Cingular are working together to provide innovative new features to mobile phone users. The iPhone is a widescreen iPod with touch controls that lets music lovers "touch" their music by easily scrolling through entire lists of songs, artists, albums and playlists with just a flick of a finger. Album artwork is presented on the iPhone's display. The iPhone also features Cover Flow, Apple's way to browse the music library by album cover artwork on an iPod. When navigating the music library, consumers are automatically switched into Cover Flow by rotating it into its landscape position. The iPhone's 3.5-inch widescreen display offers a way to watch TV shows and movies on a pocketable device, with touch controls for play-pause, chapter forward-backward and volume. The iPhone plays the same videos purchased from the online iTunes Store that users enjoy watching on their computers and iPods. The iTunes Store now offers over 350 television shows, over 250 feature films and over 5,000 music videos. The iPhone lets users enjoy their iPod content, including music, audiobooks, audio podcasts, video podcasts, music videos, television shows and movies. The iPhone syncs content from a user's iTunes library on their PC or Mac, and can play any music or video content they have purchased from the online iTunes store. The iPhone features an HTML email client which fetches email in the background from most POP3 or IMAP mail services and displays photos and graphics right along with the text. The iPhone is fully multi-tasking, so consumers can be reading a web page while downloading their email in the background. Yahoo! Mail is also offering a new free "push" IMAP email service to all iPhone users that automatically pushes new email to a user's iPhone, and can be set up by simply entering your Yahoo! name and password. The iPhone will also work with most industry standard IMAP and POP based email services, such as Microsoft Exchange, Apple .Mac Mail, AOL Mail, Google Gmail and most ISP mail services. The iPhone also features Safari web browser. Users can see any web page the way it was designed to be seen, and then easily zoom in to expand any section by tapping on its multi-touch display with their finger. Users can surf the web over Wi-Fi or EDGE, and can automatically sync their bookmarks from their PC or Mac. The iPhone's Safari web browser also includes built-in Google Search and Yahoo! Search. The iPhone also includes Google Maps, featuring Google's maps service and maps application. Users can view maps, satellite images, traffic information and get directions, all from iPhone's remarkable and easy-to-use touch interface. The iPhone employs advanced built-in sensors - an accelerometer, a proximity sensor and an ambient light sensor - that automatically enhance the user experience and extend battery life. Its built-in accelerometer detects when the user has rotated the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display accordingly, with users immediately seeing the entire width of a web page, or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio. The iPhone's built-in proximity sensor detects when users lift it to their ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches until it is moved away. Its built-in ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the display's brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light, thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time. The iPhone will be available in the US in June 2007, Europe in late 2007, and Asia in 2008, in a 4GB model for $499 (US) and an 8GB model for $599 (US), and will work with either a PC or Mac. It will be sold in the US through Apple's retail and online stores, and through Cingular's retail and online stores. The iPhone includes support for quad-band GSM, EDGE, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR wireless technologies. - Apple iPhone Specs
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