I’ve compiled a list of 7 facts about the iPhone that are often overlooked, and also what they mean to me, and maybe to you too.
1. The iPhone features a built-in battery that is not intended to be user-replaceable (”we knew that,” you cry), similar to existing iPods. The battery is capable of providing five hours of video, web browsing, or talk time. HOWEVER - the battery life for music playing is 16 hours. It is unknown how long the batteries will last in sleep mode.
The fact that underneath all the gloss and music and video, it is a cell phone, here’s hoping that the sleep mode battery life will be at least 48 hours. Most cell phones can be left on in sleep mode for a few days.
2. There will be new headphones which are similar to those of current iPods, but which incorporate a microphone.
If you thought you had to hold the iPhone right up to your mouth to talk, and worry that you’ll drop it, worry no longer. Also, if it’s illegal to hold a cell phone and drive at the same time where you are, out of the box this will not be a problem for you with this corded solution.
3. Calls can be answered and ended by squeezing the microphone.
I hope you don’t have an itchy finger for squeezing, because if you squeeze twice quickly, you would have just answered and hung up on your friend. A good way to lose friends!
4. The loudspeaker is used both for handsfree operations and media playback.
That’s right - it has a built-in speaker. Well of course it does, it has MP3 ringtones doesn’t it? Annoy all of your coworkers while you watch the latest episode of Scrubs or The Office without headphones!
5. Storage: 4 or 8 GB Flash memory, storing files (music, video, contacts, photos) and operating system.
Unlike current iPods, the iPhone will use flash memory, not a hard-drive based memory storage. This is good news for a cell phone, which will more than likely get tossed around more than an mp3 player. A hard bump and you might get the sad iPod icon on an HDD based iPod, but flash memory is solid with no moving parts like the USB thumb drive sticking out the back of your computer right now.
6. Apple has announced that the slimmed-down version of OS X running on the iPhone will take up “considerably less” than 500MB.
Does this mean it will take up 495MB? Add a couple of widgets and most likely it will be close to 500MB. This means that on a 4GB model, you will be able to add only 3.5GB of your own songs, videos, and photos. Also of note is that the flash memory will not be upgradeable.
7. The iPhone has three switches on its sides: sleep/wake, volume up/down, ringer on/off. All other multimedia and phone operations are done via the touch screen.
We knew that it was basically an all-finger operation, but I for one am glad to see a manual volume control on the side. When I used to ride the public transit bus through the heart of the ghetto known as the north end in my city, I always kept my CD player in my backpack and just reached in to adjust volume. I didn’t want to pull it out. The problem with the iPhone is that if you want to change tracks without looking, you might have a tough time.
That’s my roundup of things I found interesting that haven’t been talked about to death. Anything I missed?
Let’s face it - one of the main reasons you’ll want to buy an iPhone is to wow other people with it. Naturally you’ll want to customize and personalize your iPhone’s default background (which we can assume will be the clown fish wallpaper.) Here’s a few I made.
Since we already know the resolution of the iPhone’s screen, we can start making wallpapers for it! The iPhone’s background will be able to be customized by the user, just like your OS X wallpaper. You’ll want to make it your own! Steve Jobs has his favourite wallpaper chosen already, and we can see it on 
