“At the moment, the iPhone is in an advanced prototype stage, which I was allowed to play with for only an hour; the finished product won’t be available in the United States until June, or in Europe until the fourth quarter. So this column is a preview, not a review,” David Pogue reports for The New York Times.
“Already, though, one thing is clear: the name iPhone may be doing Apple a disservice. This machine is so packed with possibilities that the cellphone may actually be the least interesting part,” Pogue reports.
“As Mr. Jobs pointed out in his keynote presentation, the iPhone is at least three products merged into one: a phone, a wide-screen iPod and a wireless, touch-screen Internet communicator. That helps to explain its price: $499 or $599 (with four or eight gigabytes of storage),” Pogue reports. “The iPhone’s beauty alone would be enough to prompt certain members of the iPod cult to dig for their credit cards. But its Mac OS X-based software makes it not so much a smartphone as something out of ‘Minority Report.'”
Pogue reports, “As you’d expect of Apple, the iPhone is gorgeous… You won’t complain about too many buttons on this phone; it comes very close to having none at all… Note, too, that the software is still unfinished, and many questions are still unanswered. Will you be able to turn your own songs into ring tones? Will there be a voice recorder? Will the camera record video? Can you use Skype to make free Internet calls? Will the battery really last for five hours of talking, video and Web browsing (or 16 hours of audio playback)? Will you someday be able to buy songs and videos from the iTunes Store right on the phone?”
“At this point, Apple doesn’t yet have the answers, or isn’t revealing them,” Pogue reports. “What it does have, however, is a real shot at redefining the cellphone.”
Much more in the full article here.
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