David Pogue, who’s had an Apple iPhone for a couple of weeks now in preparation for his New York Times review (see related articles below), has answered an excellent of oft-asked iPhone questions in his NY Times blog.
The questions, with a few answers, include:
Phone
• Does the touch screen work if you’re wearing gloves? Will a stylus or pen tip work?
• Can I dial without looking? Can I dial one-handed?
• Can I use a SIM card from another phone? The iPhone comes with an installed SIM card, the tiny circuit board that stores your account information and phone number. Apple says that you should be able to replace it with any recent AT&T card, once you activate it at iTunes. No other company’s SIM card works in the iPhone.
• Will the iPhone work overseas?
• How about voice memos, voice dialing or call recording?
• Do I need an AT&T account?
• What iPod features does the iPhone have?
• What iPod features does it lack?
• Does the iPhone work with iPod accessories?
• Can you use your iTunes songs as ring tones? Can you download new ones?
Wireless
• Does the iPhone work with Bluetooth computers, printers, stereo headsets or keyboards?
• Does the iPhone alert you when it detects a wireless Internet hot spot?
• Can the iPhone serve as a wireless modem for my laptop?
• Can the iPhone receive songs, files, calendar appointments, contacts or software updates wirelessly?
Internet
• Can you make phone calls while you’re on the Internet?
• Why didn’t Apple use AT&T’s faster 3G Internet network? Apple says that today’s relatively unpolished 3G (third generation) radio chips would drain the battery too fast — and at this point, wouldn’t provide enough of a speed boost to justify that trade-off. Apple will release a 3G iPhone model when the time seems right.
• How snappy is the real iPhone, compared with Apple’s ads?
• What kind of e-mail can it get?
• Is there instant messaging, like AIM or MSN Messenger?
Software
• Does the iPhone synchronize bookmarks with your computer?
• What does the Web browser have?
• What does the Web browser lack?
• What about V.P.N. (virtual private networking)?
• Does the iPhone synchronize with my computer’s calendar and address book?
• Do To Do items show up on the iPhone? Do memos in the iPhone’s Notes program show up on the computer?
• Does the keyboard rotate when you rotate the iPhone? Only in the Web browser. That’s a shame, because the rotated keyboard, stretching the full length of the screen, is much bigger and easier to use than the narrow version.
• Can you type with two thumbs?
• Without cursor keys, how do I edit something I’ve written?
• Can the iPhone replace a BlackBerry?
Hardware
• Is there an ambient light sensor?
• Does the camera have a flash? Zoom? Self-portrait mirror?
• Are there any secret features?
Pogue writes, “A note about the ‘Does it have…?’ questions. Apple has indicated that it intends to add features through free software updates, so the real, secret answer to some of the ‘no’ answers is actually, ‘Coming soon.'”
Full article with all of the answers here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Isabelle” for the heads up.]
