“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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My wish list: One in my pocket!
MDN: I want to “meet” one in person!
Why do all Mac users have this 8ft stick perpetually up their asses?
If the iPhone does have a mobile version of OSX installed (and I hope it does.) I think it would be in Apple’s best interest to call it something other than mobile OSX. Only because I think it may turn off the majority of Windows users and could potentially hurt sales.
Quad-band.
Airport built-in.
VoIP capabilities, so I can use it with Skype seamlessly.
UNLOCKED!
Candy bar form factor.
Swiveling camera, like the old Sony Clié Palm OS PDA. Use it to take pictures or swing it around to use as a Skype/iChat video phone.
Standard phone mic/ear jack so I can use standard headsets when the battery dies on my Bluetooth headset. Love those little Jabra boom headsets, with the jelly ear insert! I put one on my Jabra JX10 Bluetooth headset. No ear clip! Cool!
Monitor covers entire unit, so I can use either a virtual numeric keypad or virtual full keyboard for text messaging, which I don’t use now, because it’s such a pain in the ass.
@Just Long
Because they can pick their teeth with it.
I’d like a phone to be a phone.
What’s the deal with Mobile Operators in the US? I’m in the UK, so it’s completely different, ie: you can buy any phone and use it with any network. What do the US carriers do to disable this?
Just a curious Brit looking for answers…
A Pony! I want a Pony!
I’m gay.
It needs a keyboard. A real honest-to-God Treo/old-Blackberry keyboard. Or I’ll look at it lustingly and stick with my Treo. Sad but true.
When Asked about what the best thing Apple had ever developed that it had never released, Steve Jobs said a PDA. When asked why, he said hat the market just was not there. That could all change if Apple steps into the smart phone space.
I can see Apple going one of 2 ways, should they decide to plunge in.
1- Market the device directly as an iPod. Brand extension rather than a new product. Instead of marketing it as a Phone with iTunes capabilities, market it as an iPod with a phone built-in.
2- Go after the high-end PDA/Smartphone market with a built-in mobile version of OS X running on an ARM or similar processor.
One thing is for sure- MWSF 2007 should be interesting, although they might wish to wait for a separate ‘Special Event’.
1. Easy to use
2. Easier for my PARENTS to use
3. Great Connections, clear communications
4. Easy to use
5. No so hard to use as the phone I have now
6. Bluetooth
7. USB
8. Easy to use
9. Nothing should be more than 3 clicks away
10. Did I metion easy to use?
11. Intutive, so you can do everything w/o looking at the manual
12. last, easy to use
The ability to use my iTunes songs as my ring tone and shove it to those $1+ ring tone/quarter song bastards.
iPod Nano — Music, Video;
4 Gb:$149
8 Gb:$199
12 Gb:$249
iPod — Music, Video, PDA, Camera;
40Gb:$299
80Gb:$399
iPod Pro — Music, Video, PDA, Camera, iChatAV/Phone,
80Gb:$549
(Pardon duplicate post on separate article).
Give us Mac-only killer features!
Full face touch screen for numerical or alphabetical input; voice calling; speakerphone; bluetooth; hard drive.
One thing that I would like to see from the proposed iPhone is a complete interactivity and synching between the iPhone and the Macintosh computer. I’d love to see the iPhone be my Macintosh on-the-go; taking all of my Mac’s Address Book, iChat AV (Screw the camera, how about an iSight?), Mail, Safari-style web browsing information along with me.
Not just the idea of having access to my Mac’s iTunes stuff but a Macintosh version of Microsoft Mobile. We Mac users have been left out, because of Apple’s dropping the Newton PDA and Microsoft is ahead of the mobile game. I’d like to see Apple catch up with this.
Also, Tethering is a must. This is the biggest rip-off from all of these mobile carriers and I think once Apple gets this going, everyone will follow.
Another thing that I’d like to see is a clam shell version of iPhone. I love folding up a phone to half it’s size and protecting the innards. I hope that Apple would consider this for the future.
Finally, to have a decent mobile phone that’s powerful, has a lot of memory, battery power, and is easy to use, so my Mom, or Mother-In-Law can use a mobile without being too confused with how to work it.
I wish for a touch screen virtual interface that morphs into the internal device I choose, whether it be iPod, phone, camera, PIM, syncing, etc.
One touch and I only see the phone interface with everything else out of the way as if it is just a phone.
Another touch and I only see the iPod interface with everything else out of the way as if it was only an iPod.
Yet another touch and all I see is the contact info stuff, and again, everything else is out of the way as if it was only a calender.
I will call it iMorph, because the device virtually becomes only what I want it to become, yet it is integrated under the hood.
The Sony Ericsson M600i looks like it could be a sibling of the iphone. Its touch screen and comes in black and white.
No one has mentioned the ‘less is more’ application to phones. I understood my first phone. Gradually they have added 1000 functions in a complex menu structure so that I use virtually none of them. It is the phone version of MS feature-creep.
Apple is good at hiding the complexity and putting the common functions closer and the less common items further away.
I don’t WANT an iPhone PDA/everything. The iPod is music FIRST and other things next. while the iPhone should be a fantastic phone FIRST and a music player, etc. second.
Anything less visually stunning than a RAZR V3 phone will be disappointing. It’s got to look great with a compact form factor. It has to be a departure from all other phones. It has to shock the industry. Oversimplification in terms of features is my biggest worry. Apple has a propensity for dumbing down products. Also, a price above $199 will hurt. Regardless of the result, I’ll be the first in line to get one (make that two).
“What’s the deal with Mobile Operators in the US? I’m in the UK, so it’s completely different, ie: you can buy any phone and use it with any network. What do the US carriers do to disable this?”
Two things, the US uses a retarded mix of different cellular technologies, so in some cases the radio side of the phone will only work with one carrier. I don’t see Apple being able to address this except by different versions of hardware for each carrier EXCEPT the GSM ones.
Now with GSM, the provider locks the phone to his network so that you can’t swap in another provider’s SIM, buy a prepaid card when overseas etc. This is a software setting in the phone.
In almost all cases, phones can be unlocked.
With some phones, unlocking is as simple as punching in some numbers on the keypad.
With others you need to connect a data cable to unlock it.
You can already purchase unlocked GSM phones in the USA, so Apple producing an unlocked phone will be nothing new.
But hardly anybody buys unlocked phones because they cost more than the ones bundled with service, they are exactly the same phone, and unlocking is usually easy.
So my bet is that for some networks Apple will partner with the provider, because the phone just wouldn’t be usable on another provider’s network anyway. With GSM phones, they’d probably do both, provide phones through the cellular providers and provide an unlocked one for anybody who wants to upgrade their handset and hasn’t yet had the phone long enough for the carrier to give them a discounted upgrade.
I want a complete replacement for my Treo – only one that is reliable, intuitive, and integrates seamlessly with the Mac. Oh, and running OSX so I can import spreadsheets, Word docs and PDF’s, modify them and export them again – or better yet sync them reliably with .mac and my macs.
Come on Steve, I am waiting with my Visa card in hand!
Thanks Phones, that a great post.
As above, easy sync is critical. Moreover, I want a software interface to take care of everything, a la iPod with iTunes. If it is in iTunes, so be it. That would make music & video syncing easy. I don’t want to jump around from app to app doing stuff. The new tabbed organization for iPods in iTunes 7 is the kind of thing I want.
Even if it doesn’t have an OSX mobile, I want a fucking menu system that is easy to use, which the majority of the current ones are not.
8 GB flash memory.
Removable battery (unlike iPod).
A flip and a non-flip (candy-bar?).
I don’t need a camera, but if they do put one it, 1 megapixel is just useless. 2 MP at least, IF they put in a camera. I just do not want a useless appendage.
Unlocked. I do not want carriers fucking up the thing by diabling features.
An a-hole nullifier ray. That zaps anyone without anything useful to say. It just incapacitates them for 5 minutes.
Seriously. Unlocked, sleek form factor, use any of my music from iTunes as a ringer, at least 200 minutes of stand-by time, easy functionality with iCal and maybe Google Calendar, and crime deterent.