Relax Wayne. Yes, Cingular has Edge, but it also has UTMS (3G). I have an 8525 that is 3G. It isn't everywhere in LA but is expanding pretty quickly with the coverage. Odds are v2 or v3 of the iPhone will be UTMS. And there will be APIs for 3rd party apps. They just haven't sorted the details of security yet.

For now, v1 of the phone will be Edge (I have an Edge phone too and it is ok, just not as fast as 3G), and developers will be able to creat web apps using Ajax, and run them via Safari since it is a "real" web browser running on the phone (as opposed to the bs IE that runs on WM5).

Apple delivers, but v1 of a revolutionary hardware device always takes a couple of iterations to get really right.

Especially since they just started working on the iPhone project a short 5 years ago.

Seriously, I think the i-cult will keep the iPhone held high no matter what short comings it has. There are a lot of dweebs looking for more of that brand association --plunk down 6 bills and a 2 year contract for a slap of techno-color -- instant "not a dweeb." ;)

Geeze, my phone is just a phone. ...so old it still supports AMPs! Analog in a digital world :eek:--that's so beyond metaphysics, eh Dr no?

my razr running on t-mobile is pathetically slow, as is the phone itself so not sure whether moving away from cing will make any difference.

seeing how you've dealt w/ computers ever since mit and onwards, you may be able to help yourself. have you come across http://www.modmymoto.com/forums/index.php ?

they have tons of apps for motorolla phones. they have software that you can download for free to completely change how your phone behaves. forums to ask for help. tutorials w/ pictures. you have stuff to change the appearance as well as total performance of your phone.

i don't have the skill, time, nor inclination to do that (just waiting for a particular nokia to come this way b/c to me nokia=mac), but it may be something for you. i've played w/ a modded phone and it was a night and day difference.

I have a good idea where the phone drops the ball. I have a Razr that I have used the last 1.5 years and its not slow at all.

Course its a worldwide version that never has had any software on it other than what Motorola installed. No ATT, no Cingular, no Verizon and so on, just the factory stuff and it works great and very fast.

Was purchased overseas and never "locked" so will work anywhere on anyone's system. Can put anyone's SIM chip in the phone and it works fine, exactly what the local phone companies in the US do not want.

The phone is not the issue IMHO, its the crappy software that each phone company puts on their phones trying to personalize them.

+1, ask the Verizon people with the Treo 700p!! a great example on how to 'kill' a great phone with bad software.

iPhone will have WiFi, and while without a doubt UMTS (3G) is faster than EDGE, the later is more widely deployed in the US.

My Blackberry 8700 with EDGE is 'good enough' for casual browsing and 'unfortunately great' for email and IM.

... and yes, I'm getting an iPhone version 1

I think the Razr was marketed at teens. Oooooo, it's thin and cool.

I have an older nokia that I bought off of ebay for $22. It's not terribly small, it's not a flip phone, it doesn't play mp3s, it won't take pictures, it's definitely not cool, BUT it is a good phone, always gets good reception often when other phones don't, is reasonably loud, has a decent phone book, good buttons, all in all, it's just a good phone, but nothing else.

When you 2 get you iPhones, you let us know how they work in the real world.

Will do, just that 'real world' may have a different meaning to different people. I spend around 16 hours a day in data-mode. I use to write the code that make those things and the data networks work, I have done 'capacity testing' where the test population was over 1.5M devices!!!

Just for 'giggles' check the Nokia N77 or N95, probably the two more advanced phone/computers in the market, quad-band, UMTS, kitchen and sink, common theme no WiFi!! is not 'politically correct' to add WiFi because the operators will lose voice revenue (welcome Skype!).

Hell yes I'm getting an iPhone .... need to add more toys to my collection, I have over 50 phones and service with the 4 major carriers in the US and SIMS from all over the world!!

N95 has Wifi, but you are right Wifi is viewed as a negative from the carrier point of view.

The Iphone will sell rapidly at first then dwindle just like every other high end phone out there. The vast majority of northamerican customers dont care, they want to phone home to find out if they need bread, nothing more.

Nice article in the current Business Week on the iPhone--Jobs feels Apple will sell 10 million units by 2009. That's based on initial sales of the iPod, which started off slow. I recently moved and now my Slivr is useless. I have to go out and stand on the corner to get even a faint signal.

Wow!

So are you in some sort of "therapy" for this problem?

;)
:D

I will not be getting an iphone. I did get the UpStage and its a nice phone.. I just cannot see paying 600.00 for a PDA'ish phone with EDGE. If you want it for downloading music, forget it. EDGE is dirt slow compared to just about anything but dial-up.

What feature makes this phone worth 600.00? I just don’t get it. Is it the touch screen or something?

Well I'm happy to believe in anything Steve Jobs says.

18 months ago he said Apple shares would go "off the chart".

They were $22.- dollars or so then. Today they are $122.- or so.

Doomed? Hardly.

Edge is just a bandaid until the world becomes one big WiFi hotspot. You laugh, but its coming.

Besides, this is a phone that can be upgraded over time by the *user*. Think iPhone OS v1.1 / v1.2. That sells it for me. Bugs? No problem, just wait for the next release. If only I could upgrade my Moto V3 software, the UI is a travesty.

I was a huge Moto fan until they fell so far behind it isn't even funny. I went to a MW5 smartphone (3125), then back to a Razr because of a hardware issue. I could not believe how antiquated the UI and capabilities of the Moto were. Got a new 3125 and have been issue free since then.

Horses for courses. Some people just need a phone, others need more. Some people want just a phone, others want more. No right answer...

Nah .. just work (or use to be work), cheaper than Porsche's ... and probably didn't pay for any.

Is amazing how technology obsoletes ... yet remains the same.

As MichiganMat says, the 'key' on the iPhone is the WiFi interface (aside from being Apple and to have a really cool interface) and don't forget your 'standard' iPod capabilities.

Reading the posts here it seems like some of what is being said is speculation or even wishful thinking. When will the world be one big wifi hotspot? How many iphones before that happens?

I am sure many people will buy this thing but I agree with Wayne that teaming with ATT exclusively was likely a mistake.

For an engineer, you're such an....engineer :p

Doesn't matter how long you work on a product in the lab, until it gets in the hands of users you don't get the data you need to tweak.

Don't forget that this isn't just a phone, but essentially a small Mac running serious apps. It'll be like a windowsMobile device that actually works. Rev 1 will not be all that and a bag of chips, but it'll so outpace anything from Moto, Nokia, etc, that it won't even be funny. WindowsMobile and Symbian will be in the back seat. Or in the trunk where they really belong...

And they will sell open phones down the line, probably after about a year. Going with a single providor gets them some advantages such as being able to control the user experience a bit better, and also getting $$$ for the exclusive contract.

"Apple will never make it."
-- some random passerby at West Coast Computer Faire, April 17, 1977

... and repeated endlessly by every industry pundit ever since.

eveyone knows the original razrs suk. I have the newer krazr with att/edge, and it works light years better than the old razr did.

I hope he didn't bet the company on 10 million units by 2009. That is about $5Billion in sales.

My Verizon Razr is the worst phone I've owned. The UI is incredibly slow and the battery life is horrible. No downloaded graphics, screen savers, games, ring tones, or apps. Stock out of the box and it's a total dog. Good thing it's a company phone - I would have hated spending money on this thing.

I can't believe folks are willing to pay $600 (iPhone) for the newest gadget. These things are throw away devices after 16 months.

+1

That is the best point so far. $600 is pretty steep. I change my phone about every 18 months to 2 years. And let us not forget, this is the subsidized rate.

I expect that there will be a rush for them in the first few months, then it will drop off rapidly. Then the price will then drop by at least $200, maybe $300, per phone.

Wayne said: "Is the iPhone doomed? I think it might be so..."

It will be interesting to revisit this quote in the months and years ahead.

I will stick my neck out and say this quote will probably meet the same fate of similar calls of doom for the iPod after it was released.

Best,

Kurt

Glad you mentioned that. The predictions of failure for the iPod were everywhere. Now, I think there've been 90 million sold.

100M+ :)

Best,

Kurt

I think it will be AT&T/Cingulars Draconian attitude towards end user options.

My E62's Firmware was severly crippled by Cingular. Would not allow any 3rd party apps unrestricted access to the network.

Cingular denied it and would divert you to Nokia for support.

The same phone on Rogers in Canada is not restricted.

There is also a "generic" E62 that was slated for other carriers after the Cingular exclusive ran out.

So hacking the BIOS on the phone to change it to either the generic NA or Rogers product allows you to reflash the firmware with the generic/Rogers and voila, uncrippled phone.

The hack was available for about a week before Cingular caught wind and strong armed Nokia into shutting down firmware updates for the e62. Then they had nearly all the posts on various bb's removed to cover up what they had done.

It was all so they could charge $9.95 for services that could be had for free with an uncrippled phone.

They effectively killed the e62 in the NA market.

http://symbianguru.typepad.com/welcome/2006/12/finally_a_java_.html

And just another multi-touch on the market http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_htctouch.htm

Here is what a recent issue of The Economist had to say about it:

The iPhone's drawbacks include its battery life, which is mediocre and vexing because the battery will be irreplaceable. The phone also uses a data network, AT&T's EDGE, which is slow compared with third-generation networks (although Mr Jobs counters that the iPhone will be so good at hopping onto Wi-Fi hotspots for a broadband connection that this will not matter). Nor is the iPhone open to third-party software developers, although Mr Jobs intends to change that over time.

Has anyone seen the battery life numbers? I'm interested in both the with and without wifi turned on. How about the mAh of the battery installed?

And not being able to carry a spare battery, bad news with a cell phone. My lifedrive, the battery lasted about a year, and I'm guessing the battery life should be similar.

The Treo680 came out in the past 6 months and the biggest issue was it's battery life is less than the 650. With the push e-mail turned on, it will last 6-8 hours. So I keep some of the features of the phone turned off. That really is not acceptable.

I read 8 hours talk time and 6 hours of data use. But as we all know if they say 8 it means 6 in the real world.

I heard Jobs claims they are developing a radiation antennae that will harness the power of the users smug energy, granting the device an additional 2-3 hours of life.

The iPhone will be a ground breaking device in many ways, especially the keyboard/interface. The Apple loyalists will have the expected orgasmic response when they get one and it will influence the design of future phones too, like the HTC Touch.

However, it will probably be just another excellent niche Apple product until 2 things are changed. First the market for phones is exploding because of messaging, email in particular. From what I read there are no Blackberry, Good, or Microsoft applets built in. That means Apple ignored the Holy Grail that is driving the market: Over The Air synchronization of everything typically found in Outlook.

On top of that, the multimedia capabilities of the phone are crippled with only having EDGE data connections. That might be semi-ok for downloading a MP3 or 3, but there is no way I would try to pull down a DVD. Why they didn’t go ahead and add HSDPA (3G) is beyond me. Even worse is that AT&T is slowing down 3G deployment and emphasizing an improvement to their EDGE network to accommodate the iPhone! So don’t look for this problem to go away anytime soon.

So in the end the initial iPhone will be a multimedia success filling the need of a relatively small market segment but again missing the mass market. Maybe Rev 2 will move it mainstream.

Everyone mentions how good the iPhone will be with WiFi, but how many of those hotspots are open? Will the iPhone magically connect to WPA or WEP encrypted hotspots? WiFi capability might be fine at home or in the office, but it will useless in most areas unless you pay for another fee for WiFi service.

I'm looking forward to an iPhone Mini with a lower price. $500 is a bit much.

Apple doesn't need Microsoft applets and other crap. They just announced the killer app: youtube. With H.264 they'll be able to stream over Edge. The first iteration will likely be a bit rough, but that will change. And it'll be 3G soon enough (that was likely due to FCC issues). I'm sure it'll do email push as well...that isn't rocket science. Likely it'll be a kludge early on (probably doing it through att or .mac and safari), but remember, this isn't a "corporate" phone. Most non-geeks are texting, not emailing. Email is for old farts.

Stream video over EDGE? Yeah. when pigs fly. Do not blame the FCC for ATT's 2G network. A direct quote from the CEO "We are not sure what 2G is fully capable of yet so we will continue to explore it"

I have a Blackjack. 1st thing I noticed was the horrible battery life in 3g- I could barely do 30 minutes talk time before it dropped out. The thing is shipped with two batteries, Samsung knows this.

The common fix is to hack a shortcut into adminset so you can set the phone to GSM to make it operate like a normal phone, only activate 3g for internet surfing.

Other bugs with the network include roaming, when you leave your area for another 3g area if someone calls they get the "the subscriber has traveled out of the area" message instead of VM if you don't answer.

The sound quality on the phone makes it sound like you're talking through one of those reverb machines from time to time.

It still needs work..

rjp

You don't understand. I'm not talking about ATT, I'm talking about Apple designing v1 for Edge rather than 3G. My understanding is that there might have been issues with Apple getting FCC approval, so they went eith Edge for v1.

You'd be surprised what you can stream video over.