Comments on: Apple’s iPhone: Fiction From Fact

By: Roger Smith

Roger Smith — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 11:16:04 +0000

iPhone is available with Cingular ONLY!? And what if I am stuck under contract with a carrier OTHER than Cingular but still want a iPhone?

Well, the only solution I could fine was http://www.Cellswapper.com – they get you out of any cell phone contract!

By: Geurtr

Geurtr — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 21:21:30 +0000

Most important will the screen be scratch proof ?

By: mobile dude

mobile dude — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:32:13 +0000

No doubt the reason they did a deal with Cingular is because the phone is GSM, not CDMA. In the US, there’s only 2 GSM carriers: Cingular with almost 60M subs, and T-Mobile with 24M.

Since the vast majority of users worldwide are GSM, this makes perfect sense. Plus, they don’t get screwed by Qualcomm on CDMA/BREW licensing fees.

By: Matt Hickey

Matt Hickey — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 19:07:11 +0000

Goodo: about the photos, you’re right. Good call.

By: NW Guy

NW Guy — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:52:26 +0000

Sascha, external antennas are ugly but they do improve overall reception. They are only removed from devices due to the size/form factor limitation; I bet that all the engineers would love to have customers have devices with the extended antenna – less support calls to answer!

Tom, exclusive to a smaller market may help them negotiate a better subsidy from Cingular?

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:12:26 +0000

Why on earth would Apple agree to a seemingly-unending exclusive contract with Cingular, effectively limiting their potential sales to less than 1/3 of all U.S. wireless subscribers?

By: Goodo

Goodo — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:53:20 +0000

What’s missing from your blog is mention of the 1,001 purported photos of the device. I don’t recall any that resemble the reality shown yesterday.

In addition, there were plenty of rumors about a future iPhone and a full screen iPod with no buttons (a la Multi-Touch), but I don’t recall many, if any, predictions that it would end up being a single device.

By: Sascha

Sascha — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:34:03 +0000

Let’s not be foolish here. Everybody KNOWS that Steve-O did most definitely not overlook any 3G technology out there, and I keep wondering why there is always so much superficial bashing going on without ever looking at the actual reasons.

When developing a handheld device, there are four things you have to keep in mind:
1. Price
2. Size
3. Processing power
4. Battery lifetime

Looking at the iPhone, price and size are definitely at the upper end, processing power seems fine for now, but battery life time seems to be rather moderate. Now let’s imagine what adding 3G to the phone would do to it: It would be more expensive, the necessary circuits might have required a bigger phone or something as ugly as an external antenna (which I don’t get why we still see so many phones with them out there), and it definitely might have affected the battery lifetime.

Sure, you could have kicked the Wifi or something else out to make up for it, but obviously these guys took a good look at the market and made a business decision here. Not a technology decision, a BUSINESS decision. Sure, 95% of the geeks and geekesses (I made that up) reading this blog would prefer a phone that comes with a nice broadband network connection, but let’s face it: The majority of those 957 million cell phone users won’t miss the lack of 3G functionality.

The only people I know who have data plans with their phones are people that got their phone from their company. I don’t have a data plan now and depending on what Cingular comes up with I might not get a data plan with the iPhone, either, but instead use Wifi, which (at least where I live) you can get pretty much around any corner.

So please everybody stop saying Apple “forgot” 3G or that they were out of their minds when not integrating it into the iPhone. We all know that it won’t make the iPhone any less successful, and from all the people I know who will buy one maybe one will actually come back and say ‘I wish it had faster internet connection’.

Feel free to prove me wrong!