Specs

Jailbreaking your iPhone was the first thing a lot of users did before the 2.0 revision and App store rolled out. It was a little bit of hassle, but the payoff was huge: Your iPhone could run a variety of cool apps. Once the App store was revealed the impetuous to jailbreak the iPhone dwindled. Why even bother with the warranty voiding hassle of jailbreaking your iPhone when there are a bajillion (give or take) applications you can buy (or download for free) in the App store?

Personal reasons vary. There’s the “just because they made it hard for me” reason. Which is great, it is the same reason people climb mountains. There’s the “it’s my hardware I should be able to do whatever I want one it is mine” reason. Also great, once you buy something it is yours (or it should be). There’s the ”I’m writing a book so I have to” reason which is really just a lame excuse, no one believes you. Finally there is the “I want my phone to do more” reason. Also great, who can freakin blame you… more...

Gizmodo is reporting that the iPhone is able to play 1080P video. Which is frickin’ awesome cause on a three inch screen if you’re not seeing everything in 1080P you’ll see all kind of jaggies and and the background will look… Wait, wait that isn’t even close to true. There is absolutely no reason to watch 1080P on a screen as small as the iPhone. Most videophiles will tell you that 1080P isn’t really useful until you get to really large screens (50 inches and up).

But the iPhones ability to play 1080 P does have interesting ramifications if iTunes HD is on the way as rumored. Plus, as time goes by and the iPhone’s storage capacity increases being able to hook your iPhone to a TV for hi def playback would be a interesting option. Of course, if you want to do that you’ll need something special from Apple.

It’s been speculated for a while and we’ve all heard that it will cost us a couple thousand for 2 years just to have an iPhone on AT&T’s network but in traditional Apple style 3 new, simple plans have been announced for the iPhone.

With the exception of the last plan which costs 100 dollars it won’t be a couple thousand dollars for the duration of your contract to use an iPhone but excuse me if this hasn’t been applied to other smartphones as well, just seems kind of ironic that the iPhone has been knocked for having an expensive plan when other phones can run more per month. Anywho the first plan offers 450 minutes, 5,000 Night & Weekend Minutes plus Unlimited Data, Visual Voicemail, 200 SMS Text Messages, Rollover Minutes and Unlimited Mobile To Mobile for $59.99. The only thing that differentiates the others two plans is the price ($79.99 and $99.99) and the amount of minutes (900 for the $79.99 plan and 1350 for the $99.99 plan) but both have unlimited Night and Weekend minutes.

What seems odd though is the inclusion of Visual… more...

Check out this from USA Today where Larry Carter, SVP of Sales for AT&T says that there will be new service plans announced to coincide with the launch of the iPhone.

There are other surprises in the works for June 29. In addition to launching the iPhone that day, Carter says AT&T also will announce new service plans for it.

He declined to be specific, but says plans will be customized for the iPhone. Translation: The iPhone may offer cool features such as unlimited Web browsing, but you’ll have to pay for them.

Now, in all fairness to Larry Carter he doesn’t say what USA Today infers. However, in all fairness to USA Today being suspicious of any service plans is certainly warranted given the history of our cell carriers have screwed us in the past.

I just hope it doesn’t mean my iPhone is gonna cost me 100 bucks a month just to use Safari every now and again to make a call. I’m also worried that AT&T will see an opportunity in the fact that people are going to pay double, triple, or more for a phone to fleece… more...

In the current TV advertisements for the iPhone, Apple claims that “this is not a watered down version of the internet.”

But according to Mobile Business Magazine, this claim may be a tad misleading.

Near essential applications such as Flash and Java will not be viewable at all on the iPhone and JavaScript applications will be limited to just five seconds runtime when using the built-in Safari browser

The YouTube announcement is certainly a huge development for Apple and the iPhone but based on this Java and Flash limitation, fully-blown websites won’t be accurately viewed on the iPhone’s version of Safari.

So will this limitation play a huge role towards the success of the iPhone? And will the majority of people really notice a difference?

[Via MBMagazine]

AT&T announced a great new service called Video Share. The only problem is the jewel in AT&T’s crown, the Apple iPhone will not be able to take advantage of it.

This new service will allow users to take video with their mobile device and stream it live to another caller on their phone. But the best part is the ability each end of the call has to converse while the video is being streamed.

It’s a feature that is sure to be a hit. The only problem is it requires AT&T’s 3G netowrk to run and unfortunately (at least from what we hear) the iphone is not 3G compatible yet.

According to freep.com:

Video Share is initially available only in Dallas, Atlanta and San Antonio (the corporate HQ city), although company CEO Randall Stephenson says it will expand to other 3G cities nationwide starting next month (including Detroit).

Yet another reason why Apple’s iPhone (said to run only on the EDGE network) could be limited by their initial launch offering’s network compatibility.

So a guy who authored a third-party app for the iPhone checks his web log and sees visitors that are using the iPhone. By doing further digging, he thinks he learns more about some specs used on the iPhone.

The author of Gas.App for Safari checked his web logs and noticed the iPhone users were running Safari 419.3 (the older version of Safari), viewing on a 320x396 pixel screen and does not have Flash support.

It is unclear why the iPhones are not running the new Safari 3.0 Beta. Could it be that only the pre-released iPhones out there in the wild are running old versions and the major release will be more current?

[Via ZDNet]

Today Apple issued a press release citing an improved battery for the iPhone along with a new screen cover made of glass.

Apple has had 6 months to improve a few things before June 29th and apply the finishing touches before launch, today we get a glimpse of 2 major changes on the iPhone since Macworld. First off, Steve Jobs announced the iPhone to have a 5 hour battery life for talk time, video, Internet and 16 hours for audio playback. The updated specs takes video playback up to 7 hours, talk time up to 8 hours, Internet use up to 6 hours and audio playback up to 24 hours. Also standby time has been confirmed for 250 hours or over 10 days which just happens to be the amount of time between now and June 29th, maybe someone someone at Apple is using an iPhone battery to remind them when launch day rolls around. Now that Apple has announced changes to the internal battery and confirmed the final specs an old pal of ours, John C. Dvorak can no longer whine about an insignificant… more...

As if the short quicktime videos weren’t enough, Apple has given us more to whet our iPhone appetities. Since January, we have all been watching and rewatching the short animations highlighting iPhone features. Well now Apple has released 3D QuickTours on Apple.com showing us even more.

From the Gizmodo link:

the demos are exceedingly successful at showing how some of the phone’s more widespread technologies work

[Via Gizmodo]

Much like the iPhone spec ad I blogged about last week, here’s a great spec ad by Director Alec Sutherland, called ’iPhone New York”. The spot, available in 60 and 30 second versions on www.iphonenewyorkcity.com, highlights people in new York talking about the iPhone in many different languages.

This is a truly classy ad: one that captures the robust offerings of the iPhone while delivering the rich diversity of the city. View the commercial here.