iPhones

iPhone is one of the most incredible handheld devices. Of course, the iPhone is one heck of a wireless telephone, but it’s actually four awesome handheld devices in one. In addition to being a killer cell phone, it’s a gorgeous widescreen video iPod, a decent 2-megapixel digital camera (original iPhone and iPhone 3G) or 3-megapixel camera/camcorder (iPhone 3GS), as well as the smallest, most powerful Internet communication device yet.

The iPhone has many best-of-class features, but perhaps its most unusual feature is the lack of a physical keyboard or stylus. Instead, it has a 3.5-inch super-high-resolution touchscreen (160 pixels per inch if you care about such things) that you operate using a pointing device you’re already intimately familiar with: your finger. And what a display it is. We venture that you’ve never seen a more beautiful screen on a handhelf device in your life.

iPhone has another feature that can knock your socks off – built-in sensors. An accelerometer detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape mode and adjusts what’s on the display accordingly. A proximity sensor detects when the iPhone gets near your face, so it can turn off the display to save power and prevent accidental touches by your check. And a light sensor adjusts the display’s brightness in response to the current ambient lighing situation.

The iPhone as a phone and digital camera/camcorder
On the phone side, the iPhone synchronizes with the contacts and calendars on your Mac or PC. It includes a full featured QWERTY soft, or virtual, keyboard, which makes typing text easier than ever before – for some folks.

Granted, the virtual keyboard takes a bit of time to get used to. But we think that many of you eventually will be whizzing along at a much faster pace than you thought possible on a mobile keyboard of this type.

The 2-megapixel (iPhone and iPhone 3G) or 3-megapixel (iPhone 3GS) digital camera is accompanied by a decent photo management applications, so taking and managing digital photos (and videos on iPhone 3GS) is a pleasure rather than the nightmare it can be on other phones. Plus, you can automatically synchronize iPhone photos and videos with the digital photo library on your Mac or PC. Okay, we still wish the iPhone camera took better photos and shot better video but it is still much better than most other phone cameras.

Finally, one of our favorite phone accountrements is visual voicemail. This feature lets you see a list of voicemail messages and choose which ones to listen to or delete without being forced to deal with every message in your voice mailbox in sequential order. Now, that’s handy!

The iPhone as an iPod We agree with Steve Jobs on this one: The iPhone is a better iPod than almost any that Apple has ever made. (Okay, we can quibble about the iPod Touch or wanting more storage.) You can enjoy all your existing iPod content – music, audiobooks, audio and video podcasts, music videos, television shows, and movies – on the iPhone’s gorgeous high-resolution color display, which is bigger, brighter, and richer than any iPod display that came before it.

Bottom line: If you can get the content – be it video, audio, or whatever – into iTunes on your Mac or PC, you can synchronize it and watch or listen to it on you iPhone.

The iPhone as an Internet communications device
But wait – there’s more! Not only is the iPhone a great phone and a stellar iPod, but it’s also a full-featured Internet communications device with – we’re about to drop a bit of industry jargon on you – a rich HTML, e-mail client that’s compatible with most POP and IMAP mail services, with support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. Also on board is a world-class Web browser (Safari) that, unlike on other phones, makes Web surfing fun and easy.

Another cool Internet feature is Maps, a killer mapping application based on Google Maps. By using GPS (3G or 3GS hardware) or triangulation (on the original iPhone), it can determine your location, let you view maps and satellite imagery, and obtain driving directions and traffic information regardless of where in the United States you happen to be. You can also find businesses such as gas stations, pizza restaurants, hospitals, and Apple stores with just a few taps. And the Compass application (3GS only) not only displays your current GPS co-ordinates but also orients Maps to show the direction you’re facing. Let’s see your Nokia do that!

You might also enjoy using Stocks, a built-in application that delivers near real-time stock quotes and charts any time and any place, or Weather, another built-in app that obtains and displays the weather forecast for as many cities as you like.

The Internet experience on an iPhone is far superior to the Internet experience on any other handheld device.

Technical specifications
Here’s a list of everthing you need before you can actually use your iPhone:

• An original iPhone, iPhone 3G, or the new iPhone 3GS
• A wireless contract with AT&T (formerly Cingular) in the US
• An iTunes Store account
• Internet access (required) – broadband wireless Internet access recommended

Plus you need one of the following

• A Mac with a USB 2.0 port; Mac OS X version 10.4.11 or later; and iTunes 8.2 or later
• A PC with a USB 2.0 port; Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later; and iTunes 8.2 or later