Iphone

The iPhone, will be three devices in one: a cell phone, a wide-screen iPod with touch controls, and an Internet communications device. Cingular is the lucky carrier.

Apple made it a quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) world phone. Considering the multimedia-friendly feature set, the omission of any 3G compatibility is a bit bizarre, particularly since Cingular now offers UMTS and HSDPA.

They pulled a new trick out of its hat with Visual Voicemail. Rather than forcing you to call your voice mail and waiting to browse through multiple messages to hear the one you want, Visual Voicemail displays all the messages you have in a list, similar to an e-mail in-box. All you have to do is select the message you want and listen away.

It's tough to truly evaluate the iPhone's capability as a music and video player without some hands-on experience, but a cursory look at the product shots and details gives us some idea; that, and the fact it's closely related to the highly rated iPod music player iPod. In short, the iPhone is sure to offer an easy-to-use media playback interface, and the breadth of content offered by iTunes (its compatible service) ensures you'll never be wanting for music or video files. Of course, the touch-screen interface will take some getting used to for users who are accustomed to the iPod's Clickwheel.

The iPhone, which will be offered in 4GB and 8GB capacities (flash memory), doesn't have any restrictions on how much of that memory you choose to fill up with media content--no 100-track limit, as is the case with the Motorola Rokr. The convergence device also takes a step away from its iPod brethren by offering a built-in mic for audio recordings. And unlike most cell phones, the iPhone offers a standard 3.5mm audio jack, which will work with all mainstream stereo headphones. There's no FM radio but that's nothing new from Apple. Source: www.cnet.com