After the initial excitement wore off (see yesterday’s post) I came up with some questions/concerns regarding the iPhone:
- Will there be an unlocked iPhone? I know that as a Tmobile customer I can purchase a Palm Treo from Palm.com that is unlocked and stick my SIM in and be good to go. That would cost me $400 compared to joining Cingular for 2 years and getting it… well, for less.
Incidentally, my prediction is that Cingular will be the “official partner” in charge of selling the device but unlocked iPhones will also be available. With partners like Google, Yahoo and Cingular I bet Apple could practically give the thing away if it were in their best interest – any of those three would gladly pay to have you use their stuff so I think there is some serious wiggle room in the prices announced.
I think that in June Cingular will surprise everyone by pulling the “$150 rebate” to new customers trick. This deal allows them to get all of the release hype and get tons of new customers while still allowing Apple to sell to everyone. Personally, I’d give up a $150 rebate to avoid being locked into Cingular. I really hope I’m right on this.
- What’s the battery life on the thing? I was totally jazzed about the “Origami” project that Microsoft had going, but the reality was that the resulting UMPC’s only had (have) about a 3 hour battery life. This thing seems to do all the UMPC was supposed to do and more.
- Finger prints/smudges/scratches. What is the surface of the thing like? Will it be ugly after an hour?
- iPhone Applications. What is going to be available? It seems to me that now would be a great time for VersionTracker (world’s best Mac software site) to put up a “iPhone” tab and category. Maybe this will be exactly what some Mac developers need to revive their businesses (Apple makes being a developer pretty stressful… if you come up with an idea that they like enough they tend to integrate that feature into their OS and then you’re out of luck, or maybe rich if they buy you). Take a look at the booming Palm application space… there are something like 10,000 palm apps out there in the world. Are you ready (or even interested) Mac developers?
More later… let me know what you think!
Well apple claims the battery life of 5 hrs talktime. Now for the finger print, it’s not a fingerprint resistant screen — had it been steve would have boasted about it.
The sad part — there will be no applications available for iPhone, the only stuff would be the firmware itself that gets updated via iTunes and may be some widgets….
My disappointment comes in when apple made it only on cingular with 2 years contract (must) and the way you use your iPod is not the way you’d use your phone, so having these two in one package that costs a whopping $600 — nope not for me.