Apple today introduced its long awaited mobile phone and contrary to the latest speculations, it's indeed called iPhone - a device combining three products in one: a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls and a Internet communications device with desktop-class E-Mail, web browsing, searching and maps-into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting users control iPhone with just their fingers. iPhone also ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, which completely redefines what users can do on their mobile phones.

"iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We are all born with the ultimate pointing device - our fingers - and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse."

iPhone is a revolutionary new mobile phone that allows users to make calls by simply pointing at a name or number. iPhone syncs all of your contacts from your PC, Mac or Internet service such as Yahoo!, so that you always have your full list of up-to-date contacts with you. In addition, you can easily construct a favorites list for your most frequently made calls and easily merge calls together to create conference calls.

iPhone's pioneering 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 E-Mail, iPhone's Visual voicemail enables users to immediately randomly access those messages that interest them most.

iPhone includes an SMS application with a full QWERTY soft keyboard to easily send and receive SMS messages in multiple sessions. When users need to type, iPhone presents them with an elegant 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. iPhone also includes a calendar application that allows calendars to be automatically synced with your PC or Mac.

iPhone features a 2 megapixel camera and a photo management application that is far beyond anything on a phone today. 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 E-Mail.

iPhone isn't a UMTS/HSDPA phone but a quad-band GSM phone only which also features EDGE and Wi-Fi wireless technologies for data networking. Apple has chosen Cingular, the best and most popular carrier in the US with over 58 million subscribers, to be Apple's exclusive carrier partner for iPhone in the US.

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 stunningly presented on iPhone's large and vibrant display.

iPhone also features Cover Flow, Apple's amazing way to browse your music library by album cover artwork, for the first time on an iPod. When navigating your music library on iPhone, you are automatically switched into Cover Flow by simply rotating iPhone into its landscape position.

iPhone's stunning 3.5-inch widescreen display offers the ultimate way to watch TV shows and movies on a pocketable device, with touch controls for play-pause, chapter forward-backward and volume. iPhone plays the same videos purchased from the online iTunes Store that users enjoy watching on their computers and iPods and will soon enjoy watching on their widescreen televisions using the new Apple TV. The iTunes Store now offers over 350 television shows, over 250 feature films and over 5,000 music videos.

iPhone lets users enjoy all their iPod content, including music, audiobooks, audio podcasts, video podcasts, music videos, television shows and movies. 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.

iPhone features a rich HTML E-Mail client which fetches your E-Mail in the background from most POP3 or IMAP mail services and displays photos and graphics right along with the text. iPhone is fully multi-tasking, so you can be reading a web page while downloading your E-Mail in the background.

Yahoo! Mail, the world's largest E-Mail service with over 250 million users, is offering a new free "push" IMAP E-Mail service to all iPhone users that automatically pushes new E-Mail to a user's iPhone and can be set up by simply entering your Yahoo! name and password. iPhone will also work with most industry standard IMAP and POP based E-Mail services, such as Microsoft Exchange, Apple .Mac Mail, AOL Mail, Google Gmail and most ISP mail services.

iPhone also features the most advanced and fun-to-use web browser on a portable device with a version of its award-winning Safari web browser for iPhone. Users can see any web page the way it was designed to be seen and then easily zoom in to expand any section by simply tapping on iPhone's multi- touch display with their finger. Users can surf the web from just about anywhere over Wi-Fi or EDGE and can automatically sync their bookmarks from their PC or Mac. iPhone's Safari web browser also includes built-in Google Search and Yahoo! Search so users can instantly search for information on their iPhone just like they do on their computer.

iPhone also includes Google Maps, featuring Google's groundbreaking maps service and iPhone's amazing maps application, offering the best maps experience by far on any pocket device. Users can view maps, satellite images, traffic information and get directions, all from iPhone's remarkable and easy- to-use touch interface.

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. iPhone's 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.

iPhone's built-in proximity sensor detects when you lift iPhone to your ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches until iPhone is moved away. iPhone's 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 Apple iPhone will be available in the US in June 2007, Europe in Q4 2007 and Asia in 2008, in a 4GB model for US$ 499 and an 8GB model for US$ 599 (both prices with a 24 month Cingular contract) and will work with either a PC or Mac.
iPhone will be sold in the US through Apple's retail and online stores and through Cingular's retail and online stores. Several iPhone accessories will also be available in June, including Apple's new remarkably compact Bluetooth headset. iPhone includes support for quad-band GSM, EDGE, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR wireless technologies.

iPhone requires a Mac with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS X v10.4.8 or later and iTunes 7; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4), Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 2). Internet access is required and a broadband connection is recommended.

Apple and Cingular will announce service plans for iPhone before it begins shipping in June.

Cheers ~ Arne

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This should be a nice wakeup-and-smell-the-coffee call for Microsoft and HTC who have sit on the sidelines with innovations over the past several years. Cookie cutter devices by the droves, same old problems with buggy radio stacks, soft resets, poor memory management, same old interfaces year after year have stifled the real potential of what Windows Mobile could have become. I'm not saying the iPhone will not be without issues, but the innovations are a step in the right direction over what we've seen from the HTC camp over the last several years (i.e XDA I - > now). If anything, the new competition from Apple will help drive Microsoft, HTC, Samsung and others to more innovations in the OS and hardware or Apple is going to end up taking over some of the market share that WM has build up over the years..

I don't think this device supports installing 3rd party apps from what I read at other review sites. So it would not classify as a smartphone. While I agree with exchguy's comments that HTC in conjunction with MS produce nothing but cookie cutter devices, with maybe one break through every year or two, I don't think this poses a serious threat to WM or RIM and here's why. Beyond a large storage capacity for music the only other unique feature is multitouch and that's not that earth shaking of a development. I consistenly see and hear people complain about needing 2 hands for WM PDA and smartphones like the TyTN and Blackjack and multitouch requires the use of two hands, one to hold the phone and one free hand so two fingers can move independently across the screen. As for the browser, I've seen alternative browsers do the zooming thing for WM smartphone and PDA already. I think the only people who will buy this are gagdet geeks who need the newest latest toy, Apple fanboys/girls, and people who always have an iPod earbud in one ear (these are the people who lament having to carry a cell phone, they want a convergence of their basic non-business phone with their iPod)

In my humble opinion we can call it a smartphone. I mean, put it this way -- folks also call Blackberrys a smartphone and is a Blackberry smarter because it can receive push emails?
At the end of the day it doesn't matter what geeks think about the name, for John Doe it's a smartphone, doesn't matter how we call it. What else should it be? A simple mobile phone? An enhanced feature phone?

will it sync with both the MAC OS outlook and WINDOWS OS outlook?

Will this be the outstanding step thatthe Newton was?
What I saw and read, it has the chance ...

totally userfriendly, with all the features build in that you ... really need ...

I´m exited to seeing and playing with this gadget.

12/2007 ...

Well... I found a list of features this phone doesn't support... Well, will you call it a Smartphone without access to Blackberry or Exchange? With a read-only calendar? Have a look here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=390

Thomas

Regarding the read-only calendar - the ZDNet Blog got an update:

In his NYT blog David Pogue notes: "Calendar program isn’t finished yet, but I did see an "add new event" icon on the placeholder graphic." It appears that Apple is moving toward allowing real data entry into the iPhone (at least in the calendar app.) Let's hope that they do the same thing for both Address Book and iTunes.

Looks like you can manage your calendar from your phone as well and hell, for sure this is the minimum. Even the dumbest PAYG phone can manage calendar entries...