Already at reason #2 of our “Top Ten Reasons to Buy iPhone Contest“! That means tomorrow is the big day. If you are not camping in front of an Apple Store, it means that you still have time to enter a comment to enter the contest. Prizes include an Apple Gift card and Belkin iPhone Cases!
REASON #2: IT’S ALSO AN iPOD
The iPod needed to be revamped. At least, seriously improved. Now Apple says, “iPhone is the best iPod we’ve ever made”.
iPhone is a 3.5 inch widescreen iPod with touch controls that lets you enjoy your content — including music, audiobooks, videos, TV shows, and movies. It also lets you sync your content from the iTunes library, the software you’ve been using for years now.
The introduction of “Cover Flow” (see image) to browse your music library by album artwork is a serious improvement for the newly revamped iPod.
iPhone’s stunning widescreen display is also the ultimate way to watch TV shows and movies from the iTunes Store on a pocketable device. Just tap the touch controls for play/pause, chapter forward/backward, and volume.
How sweet it is!
Read Reasons #3 to #10 after the jump!
REASON #3: GREAT iPHONE ACCESSORIES ARE POURING IN
Other mobile phones have accessories as well. But they are usually
limited to a few brands and models. With iPod, Apple gave birth to an
extremely huge and lucrative third party product industry. And as we
speak, iPhone and iPod accessory makers are giving everything they’ve got to live up to Apple’s design quality reputation, and it shows (from the goodies
we’ve seen so far). The market potential is so big, that it’s worth for
them to invest money massively to come up with innovative products.
All companies currently doing business in the iPod accessory market
have to jump on the iPhone bandwagon. This is a no brainer. If they
don’t, they’re facing a certain death. Tons of extremely attractive and
well designed iPhone cases are already available. And I don’t think they are betting on the come. If you take a look at the new Belkin iPhone cases for example (image above), asides from being a very kind sponsor of this contest…, they offer great new iPhone products and the device is not even released yet.
Just imagine all the great stuff we will have for iPhone a year from
now. That alone is an excellent reason to buy iPhone, and to spend even
more money on the gadgets we love so much!
REASON #4: IT’S OS X BASED
iPhone uses OS X,
the world’s most advanced operating system according to Apple. Having
so much power under the hood is great news for application development.
OS X brings you features and applications like rich HTML email, full-featured web browsing, and applications such as Safari,
calendar, text messaging, Address Book, Weather, Stocks, Maps, Notes,
and YouTube. Having OS X built-in also makes iPhone “future proof”. New
applications will be easily develop by Apple or eventually third party
developers.
iPhone is also fully multi-tasking, so you can read a web page while
downloading your email in the background. This alone is a reason why
you should buy iPhone!
REASON #5: MULTI-TOUCH SCREEN
Apple says iPhone features
the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse. Well, that may
be over exaggeration, but the screen is a major breakthrough for
portable devices.
It’s an entirely new interface based on a large multi-touch display
and innovative new software that lets you control everything – using
only your fingers.
So you can glide through albums with Cover Flow, flip through photos
and email them with a touch, or zoom in and out on a section of a web
page — all by simply using iPhone’s multi-touch display.
In a few years from now, this won’t even be considered a feature,
but a bare minimum any mobile phone user interface should have.
However, for now, it’s part of the Top 5 Reasons to buy iPhone. How do
you feel about that?
REASON #6: COOL SENSORS ON BOARD
Accelerometer, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor…
When we read these words, it’s far from obvious that we are talking
about a mobile phone here. But we do – and they make iPhone an
extremely innovative product!
Here’s what they are used for:
The accelerometer detects when you rotate the device from portrait
to landscape. It automatically changes the contents of the display, so
you immediately see the entire width of a web page or a photo in its
proper landscape aspect ratio. Great? No, amazing!
While talking on the phone, iPhone screen
will be in contact with your ear and cheek, to avoid inadvertent
touches until iPhone is moved away, a proximity sensor detects when
you lift iPhone to your ear and immediately turns off the display. This
will also save power.
The ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the display’s
brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light,
thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time.
REASON #7: INTERNET OVER WI-FI
Internet over Wi-Fi on a cellphone is a major breakthrough. Until now, network operators have done everything they could to avoid public Wi-Fi networks to work with mobile phones. The reason is simple; when you use a public Wi-Fi network
you are not using the operator’s bandwidth. Increasing the use of their
network is of course key for network operators. Their future depends on
it.
AT&T and Apple are opening a can of worms with this feature and
we are so happy about it. Besides the (eventual) lower costs for data,
the increase of performance will be a knockoff! But don’t get to
excited here, an unlimited data plan will certainly be mandatory for
the iPhone. Everything has a price!
REASON #8: SAFARI AND THIRD PARTY APPLICATIONS
With a full scale Safari browser built-in, Apple says iPhone let
us see any web page the way it was designed to be seen, then easily
zoom in by simply tapping on the multi-touch display with a finger.
Ok, a few things like Flash and JavaScript are still missing. But this is a lot better than what we had until now.
After the initial announcement disappointment, the enthusiasm created by the abundance of third party applications made for the iPhone is now a total blast. In six months to a year from now, hundreds of well designed applications will complement iPhone.
Being limited to the browser has its downsides. Like not being able
to fully use iPhone resources, having to reload the application
from the internet and not being able to store anything on iPhone,
to name a few. But it also makes good applications easier and faster to
write. This also opens the market for a broader group of programmers
since html and Ajax already enjoy great communities compared to what a
proprietary SDK could have had.
REASON #9: YOUTUBE PLAYER AVAILABLE ON THE HOME SCREEN
iPhone has a special YouTube player that you can launch right from
the home screen. So now you can access and browse YouTube videos
wherever you go. And when you find a video you want to send your
friends, iPhone can even create an email with the link in it for you.
Some of you think this is useless and others think it’s amazing but
it sure is something we never had before on our cell phone or portable
device. That’s why the Youtube player makes the Top Ten.
REASON #10: VISUAL VOICE MAIL
You should buy iPhone because of the Visual Voice Mail feature.
With iPhone, Apple brings many new concepts to the mobile phone
world, but the “Visual Voice Mail” will sure make Apple’s iPhone the
leader in innovation from day one.
According to Apple, iPhone Visual Voice Mail is an industry
first! The feature allows you to go directly to any of your messages,
without listening to the prior messages. So you can quickly select the
messages that are most important to you. Isn’t that great? You won’t
have to listen to “You have 5 new messages”


June 28th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
This first model is bound to be destined for cool spots at the Museum of Modern Art and The Smithsonian.
June 28th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
And not only is it a widescreen iPod with touch controls its an iPod that actually has battery life!!!! (so we are told) Unlike my video iPod the iPhone is rated to deliver 7 hours of video time! My laptop can’t even get through a 90 minute movie on battery power. (On the most power conservative mode mine you). The days of being bored on a road trip or on an airplane are going to be a thing of the past.
June 28th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I no longer have to share my ipod with my wife!
June 28th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Yes I definitely think that this is an awesome part of the iPhone. Personally for me, I don’t have a video iPod so I just have a nano but would like to watch movies…..thanks to the iPhone I can after tomorrow. I can’t wait.
June 28th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Yes I definitely think that this is an awesome part of the iPhone. Personally for me, I don’t have a video iPod so I just have a nano but would like to watch movies…..thanks to the iPhone I can after tomorrow. I can’t wait.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
I have a video iPod, but sometimes it’s a pain(weighs my pockets down and stretches the pants or shorts:-)) to carry two devices. The 8GB one should be perfect to take a movie or two, and enough songs to serve me when I need it. If I want to, I can always revert back to using my regular iPod. I think the interface for this is great. I haven’t used coverflow that much in iTunes (too many songs w/o album names) but the other views look nice and easy to use too.
June 28th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Love your site. Learned about it through your best of Typepad billing.
Here’s my “homage” to the iphone
http://mypetfat.typepad.com/mypetfat/2007/06/weigh-less-wi-1.html#trackback
All the best!
Jay
June 28th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Reason #1 should be: It’s the coolest thing to come out in a long time, and an ultimate status symbol!!!!