“One of the single best potential features of the iPhone is that won’t be tied to a specific mobile phone carrier,” Jason D. O’Grady blogs for ZDNet. “One of the commenters yesterday said it best: Even the best and most popular phones on the US market are always a political compromise between makers and carriers. Everyone pulls in their direction; carriers want features that will squeeze more money (sending pictures and videos; text messaging, etc); makers want more and more features, so that they can charge more. Ordinary users are ignored.”
“Locked phones are heavily subsidized by the carrier so that they can be sold for almost nothing – with a two year contract and significant early termination fee. The best part of a carrier-free (also called ‘unlocked’) mobile phone is that Apple doesn’t have to cripple its features because the greedy carriers want to charge for every picture, text and ring tone,” O’Grady writes.
“A perfect example of this is how Verizon Wireless forces handset manufacturers to disable all but the Bluetooth headset profile. Another example of carrier compromise is the Motorola ROKR’s artificial 100 song limitation and inability to purchase and download tracks from iTunes Over The Air (OTA). Hopefully Apple’s carrier divorce will mean that the iPhone has features that users want, like BT syncing,” O’Grady writes.
O’Grady writes, “Another iPhone issue that came up in the comments is how many GSM bands (if any) it will support and whether or not it and will ship with Cingular 3G from the get go. I agree with the commenter, I would like to see it ship as a quad band phone and not have different phones for different countries.”
O’Grady covers more potential iPhone features (button-less modular design, battery partitioning) and includes a wish list (light version of Mac OS X and Mac apps) in the full article here.
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I want 2 iphones.
one candy bar type a little bigger than the nano complete with ichat video capabilities
and one pda style also with ichat video capabilities
I want the iPhone/iPod to crush the Zune completely!
As long as i get one with a built in HD instead of a little bit of flash…
I’m mainly concerned about sleek style and keypad. Camera, bluetooth and maybe 1000 song capacity is all I want
My wish list? More market share for Apple. More Mac users. I’m so damn tired of waiting and hoping. I’ma prolly drop dead just from waiting if they don’t or can’t get the dang show on the road pretty quick here. heh.
An interface that doesn’t suck out loud.
A decent camera.
a stylus and touch screen to replace my Palm
version without a camera – not everybody cares
keypad that doesn’t suck (I looked at a razor and laughed – what a cheap peice of junk)
a decent headset – not this one eared – don’t know which end is what crap there is now-a-days
Two versions:
1) Keep it simple and cheap – iPod that’s a phone.
2) Smartphone, powered by Mobile Darwin OS X.
The Apple iChat will be the only piece of kit in my pocket.
c’mon ichat video!
OMG ichat AV would be the shit.
People People!!!
Let’s think here! If you can hook into a network with a phone think about the possibilities! I was running last night and I thought about this and it brought a smile to my face. Please tell me if this is a farce or just too hard to do.
1. Mobile iChat. Viedo on cellular service seems to be the new rage. Why not a direct conversation iChat style? That would be insane and also fit into somehting that apple would do for sure.
2. With having that why not also have your songs stream to you from the iTunes servers? They have your purchase info. Screw loading your phone. Why not just be able to stream the songs that you have purchased already no matter what ther amount. It just hits the server for the song that is playing and maybe buffers that 1 song as it plays. So you can carry your entire music collection anywhere ( purchased, a big selling point for apple and a huge leap ahead of any competition )
3. Of course home sync. for all your calendar and bookmarks, and contacts.
4. Oh, and my realistic want is it to be a flip phone for damage and scratch reasons.
The Pi has thought, the Pi has spoken!
-Pi
What I do need to have to have: iPod functionality
What I do want: iCal, WLAN for iChat etc, 2 MP Digicam with HDTV resolution of 1920×1080, a GPS receiver with digital maps.
Top few items on my list?
1) Seamless syncing with my mac. For a short period of time a few years ago all the stars aligned with me. I had a bluetooth capable phone that was compatible with isync, and isync had the automatic syncing feature still. So whenever I would enter a contact on my phone it would at some point be automatically and wirelessly synced with my computer.(or vice versa) That was sweet. I want that again.
2) Built in bluetooth headset. It doesn’t even have to be the best headset… right now I carry around a $90 ear plug. Why? Because I always forget to charge the stupid thing. Or sometime I just forget to bring it. Or I lose it because it’s so small. I want something built in to the phone that will always be with the phone, and charge with the phone so it’s always ready. Heck even if it were not wireless it would be an improvement over my current situation.
3) kick ass reception. I am sick of owning phones with incedible features but horrible reception. Remember that nokia phone that came out about 8 years ago. Everyone had one? It’s was on the largeish bricky side but I could get a signal in the subway.
thats pretty much it..
I dont care too much about how good the camera or music player are. I’m sure, knowing apple, that it will be great. There are all sorts of other features that owuld be nice… like WiFi and iChat video chatting built in. But that would just be icing…
Seamless integration with any version of OS X and hardware configuration, and, VERIZON COMPATABILITY, locked, unlocked, whatever, just make it compatible with more than just T-Mobile and Cingular – PLEASE.
Remember, I despise Verizon as much as the next person, but that’s not the issue. Verizon is the only cellular provider that I can reliably use in the entire southern part of the state I live in.
Uh, how about good reception and a loud enough speaker so you don’t have to turn on the speaker-phone to hear the other person?
I couldn’t care less about a camera. I have a digicam for quality photos. How many people have printed out a 5×7 of their camera-phone pics? Almost nobody.
How about less buttons? I think the iPhone will be just like a lot of other phones if it does not have some dramatically different UI, or uses the iPod click-wheel design. The click wheel would be cool. Or perhaps an almost completely voice-driven interface?
What’s on your Apple ‘iPhone’ wish list?
It should be a PDA with all the great features of a laptop, Firewire 400 and 800, USB2. No cd. iTunes purchases “over the air”. GPS w/navigation software, 8 mega pixel zoom camera. iSight/ichat integrated.
It should have some sort of customizable autobackup to a .Mac account. So one doesn’t need to clog their hard drive, err make that plenty of flash instead.
Great battery life, easy to plug into wall.
I could sorely use a device like this, a laptop is just too big.
Imagine iChating on a mobile phone.
Hey jason! Where’s the Apple big screen TV?
That it vibrates so I can stick it up my bum!
I hate my Zune!!! It keeps freezing when I try to transfer songs!!! Plus, there’s no one to use the WiFi with. I was on the bus this morning with it on hoping that someone else would be there with a Zune. 🙁
Has anyone else experienced the freezing? I have to power it off and start over each time. Any suggestions?
The number one without-a-doubt item on my iPhone wishlist is mobile broadband connectivity—something that is basically unavailable to Mac users who subscribe to the main cellular carriers in the US unless they are willing to figure everything out themselves with no tech support whatsoever.
I realize that an unlocked, full-price iPhone will not be tied to any mobile carrier. This is not a benefit if none of the major carriers support mobile broadband on a Mac!!!
Oh
It should have optical digital outputs too and definatly flash based drive.
Hard drives are just to fragile and really obsolete.
I just want to make and receive calls. If it can do that, that’s good enough.
How about:
1. Something that works great as a phone.
2. An interface that lets me put the features I want, not the feature the phone company wants to push, in my base screen.
3. Easy syncing between my phone’s contact list and Address Book.
4. No limit on the size of the contact list, other than memory/storage.
5. No limits on music, number of songs, other than memory/storage.
6. ITap input that makes sense.
7. The ability to put shortcuts where I need them.
8. A 2mp camera.
9. The ability to Sync everything: pix, music, video, addresses, calendar events, text messages, call lists, etc. with my computer.
10. Stereo sound.
11. Choice of wired or Bluetooth headphones/syncing so I can determine for myself whether battery life or convenience is more important.
12. Standard USB connector so I can use my current accessories.
13. USB 2.0 so I can sync quickly.
14. Ability to check email.
15. Useful web browser.
16. I hate candy bars and like flip phones. I know other people feel the opposite. How about making both form factors so we can all be satisfied.
17. At least iPod Nano functionality.