iPhoneStuff.org

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?

If you were like me and watched the oscars, you might have seen a sexy little compilation of some very famous people all picking up a phone and saying “hello.” This was Apple’s first television ad for their upcoming iPhone.

The video for this amazing ad is on the official Apple iPhone site.

A Macrumors forum user put together a list of the actors seen in the short clips, and I use this as reference for my list of actors together with still frames from the ad and of course from the original movies and shows they were taken from.

Lucille Ball

Jackie Gleason

Humphrey Bogart

Marlon Brando

Jerry Lewis

Marilyn Monroe

Clark Gable

Peter Sellers

Steve McQueen

Richard Dreyfuss

Burt Reynolds

Betty Rubble

Robert Redford

Michael J. Fox

Harrison Ford

John Cusack

Audrey Tautou

Kevin Spacey

William H. Macy

Dustin Hoffman

Will Ferrell

Sarah Jessica Parker

Jeff Bridges

Billy Crystal

Cameron Diaz

Samuel L. Jackson

John Travolta

Robert DeNiro

Ben Stiller

Michael Douglas

Mr. Incredible

Hello

This was quite an amazing ad and I’m really looking forward to the forthcoming ad campaign as we get closer to the launch of the Apple iPhone!

Stanley Feinbaum wrote an interesting article about why he’s not interested in buying an iPhone. A humorous look at some of the ‘features’ of Apple’s new cell phone.

Cingular only. This makes as much sense as selling computers that can only access the internet through AOL.

Some sexy iPhone icons for your OS X desktop were released a few days ago over at INTERFACELIFT.com. This is surely only the first of many iPhone icons, as there are many versions of the popular iPod product in icon form, as well as iMac, Mac Pro, and more. Get them while they’re hot!

Although many Apple fans are complaining of the iPhone’s high pricetag, analysts have pegged Apple’s new iPhone as not a cheap piece of technology for Apple to make either.

In a recent article regarding Apple’s margin versus cost of parts, they stated that the screen itself might cost upwards of $60 to Apple. Adding the sensor technology, as well as battery, hard drive, etc. leaves Apple with a cost “well above $300 for the 4 GB model.”

Whatever the current cost is to Apple, one also has to take into account the price of advertising, marketing, commercials etc. that Apple is famous for, and add that into the cost. Apple’s margin over the iPhone may not be as high as some reports have noted.

Ars Technica got some great information from a well-known professional usability expert, Bruce Tognazzini, including his opinions on whether the iPhone’s touch-screen interface will be the next big thing, or the next big flop. You may find the results surprising.

Naturally, besides a few elite media people, and Steve Jobs himself, no one has really had a good “hands-on” with the iPhone to test it out for usability, however, perceptions and predictions can be formed.

Bruce…

Loves:

Gives ordinary people widespread access to technologies that have otherwise been very limited for public consumption (such as multitouch and whatnot)
Very approachable, even for older folks
Visual, random-access voicemail. “It’s about time.”
Hates:

Five hour battery life, and non-replaceable battery (without a crowbar…). “That’s a bad interface,” Tog says.
Relying on public WiFi (”Public WiFi is a mess”) for Internet access, or expensive cell networks affect fundamental reliability
SMS, e-mail, and voicemail are all separated out as much as possible. “I should not have to visit three different places on my phone every few minutes to see what is happening.”
Widgets are the only add-on path for the iPhone. “I can only hope that changes.”
Needs a keyboard. Touchscreen keyboard is nice and all, but not good for extended use and takes up much of the screen.
Nits:

Desperately needs to be tested for ruggedness (is that a hint for me, Tog?)
SMS should include an interpreter to expand upon common abbreviations
Camera should be higher resolution
Facial recognition “would be a plus”
iPod interface potentially confusing, much more complex than phone interface
Safari browser on iPhone may and may not be forgiving to web pages that are not totally strict on HTML. Forgiving will be much better in the long run than not.
Maps on the iPhone should just “know” where you are and tell you how far, distance and time-wise, you are from appointments that are on your calendar

He did, however, comment on how much of an improvement on current cell phones this phone from Apple really is, saying “Traditional cell phones are dull, limited, and at end-of-life. iPhone is glorious, and it is only the beginning.”

Yes, if we can learn one thing from our technologically and cell-phonically advanced neighbours in Japan, it’s that cell phone innovation has to start somewhere, but where it leads to with competition, is limited only by imagination.

The first generation iPhone comes equipped with a two megapixel digital camera on the back of it. To see exactly what size of image to expect to see taken from this tiny camera, I have provided a scaled-down picture I took with my Canon Powershot A70 a few years ago on a frosty morning. Click on the picture to enlarge it to full two megapixel screen size.

Whether we’ll be able to get this type of macro quality out of the small iPhone camera or not is yet to be seen, but what’s not left to worry about is if the size of the photo will be enough for printing 4×6 prints, or even 5×7 prints. They will look as sharp as your skill as a photographer lets them.

A word of caution: don’t plan to be bobbing your head to the beat of a soulful tune playing on the iPod section of your iPhone while taking a picture with the iPhone camera. Doing so will likely lead you to a road of disappointment in picture quality, due to the fact that your shaking will make for blurry portraits.

Apple has been using the same typeface for all its’ iPod products for years now, and it seems they’ve carried this same marketing over to the iPhone.

To replicate exactly what this looks like, for any personal reasons, simply use the font Myriad Pro, Semibold, at its’ default kerning.

You can notice by my image comparison that the official logo seems to be a modified version of Myriad Pro, somewhat elongated on the height scale. This is especially noticeable in the “o.”