da iPhone

Well, it's finally here. The iPhone from Apple. As an Apple geek and a phone geek it is technically gadget nirvana. That said, I know enough about mobile phones and their technology to be very sceptical about the iPhone - at least version one of it.

Thoughts:

It needs 3G for the rest of the world. The US's rollout of GSM 3G is at least a year behind Europe. Most high end phones come out with 3G in Europe. It has to be noted that 3G (300Kb) is UMTS or W-CDMA (not to be mistaken with normal CDMA which is the opposition to GSM). The often mentioned HSDPA (often mentioned in regard to iPhone) is a kind of upgrade to UMTS - more 3.5G (1Mb). With regard to the European markets (huge mobile phone users), a lot of the networks never bothered with EDGE as they'd spent so much buying up 3G licences. So the iPhone would be very slow here as it is now (it may have to do GPRS data - often as slow as 28Kb or, God help us, normal GSM 9Kb) - I'd expect an upgrade to 3G by the time of the European rollout though.

For places outside the US, texting is more the "killer app". This is because all networks are on GSM and they all interoperate when it comes to texting. No worrying about whether your friend is on the same network or technology - texts just work. Because of that, a lot of the people who have tried the iPhone mention the on-screen keypad has limitations because of the size of the keys and the lack of tactile response (which obviously can't be helped). Maybe they can make a landscape keyboard view for people who want to run off an email? That'd make the keys bigger.

They better have a good battery indicator - you'd hate to have your phone die on you because you've been enjoying your music or videos too much!

Do the contacts have default phone numbers (i.e. double click on the contact to dial their default number instead of having to choose every time). Nokias do and that was always the flaw when I synced my contacts over - I'd have to choose my defaults again.

According to reports - no flash or Java yet. I hope they're working on a iPhone version of Flash or many websites are going to have problems (Flickr?) and I'm not sure if JavaScript is supported, which again is heavily used in websites these days.

Nobody's really tested the actual mobile reception yet - that could be a make or break for most heavy phone users. The question of Cingular is a US specific one - GSM coverage is pretty much everywhere in the rest of the world. You expect your phone to work anywhere in Europe. The move by Apple to go GSM may be another nail in the coffin for CDMA (and EVDO) - already the few other countries in the world that use it are having second thoughts - like places in South America, Australia and NZ where other GSM networks compete. Nokia (the biggest handset manufacturer) also seems to have ceased making phones for it.

Are the other international networks going to have to engineer the "visual voicemail" function from scratch or are Cingular or Apple going to sell the work they've done to them to save time and effort? That would also reduce the rollout time.

As a person who has been severely stung (i.e. I could have paid for the iPhone with change if I hadn't got the phone bill) by data charges on 3G in the past, the data plans on this would be very important. Not only does it make using data services practical (and networks have discovered that nobody really cares about video calling so need other uses) it could make it pervasive. If they continue to have "deadly" call plans, there could be a number of very angry (and broke) subscribers after the first month rollout.

Only having a 2Mpixel camera seems a bit light - maybe this will be upgraded when (or if) they upgrade the phone to 3G (which will be able to handle the bigger file sizes better). Think photoblogging to Flickr. Maybe Yahoo (Flickr's owners) will make a custom application for the iPhone since they're currently friends with Apple?

I'd guess this will be like the original iPod (and Mac) that later versions will fix a lot of problems - more storage for video; smaller phones for people less keen on video and more keen on compactness; price; attachment viewers if they really want to take on Blackberry.

Nokia's already have a number of the facilities available to them - especially on the N95 coming out soon - just not the extreme ease of use. They already use a Safari (well, WebKit) based browser on their new phones - and apparently don't need a special version of Google Maps to see them. It does however make Motorola's and even Sony Ericsson's phone interfaces look exceedingly poor.

Overall, I'd say highly appealing - and also curious for version 2.0. Software upgrades are also an interesting matter.

Pity that MacWorld didn't actually have any Mac announcements though! :(