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The
iPhone is a multimedia, Internet-enabled mobile phone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It has a multi-touch screen with virtual keyboard and buttons. The iPhone's functions include those of a camera phone and a portable media player ("iPod"), in addition to text messaging and visual voicemail. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity. It is a quad-band mobile phone that uses the GSM standard, hence has international capability. It supports the Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) technology for higher speed and reliability.
Following the success of iPod,
Apple announced the iPhone in January 2007. The announcement was
preceded by rumors and speculations that circulated for several months.
The iPhone was introduced, first in the United States on June 29, 2007 with much media frenzy and then in the United Kingdom, Germany and France in November 2007. It was named
Time magazine's "Invention of the Year" in 2007.[6]A new version of Apple's iPhone will be introduced in 2008 that is capable of operating on faster 3G cellular networks.[7]
History
-
The genesis of the iPhone began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs's direction that Apple engineers investigate touch-screens. At the time he had been considering having Apple work on tablet PCs.[8]
Comments made by Jobs in April 2003 at the "D: All Things Digital" executive conference expressed his belief that tablet PCs and traditional PDAs
were not good choices as high-demand markets for Apple to enter,
despite many requests made to him that Apple create another PDA. He did
believe that cell phones were going to become important devices for
portable information access.
On January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the iPhone at the Macworld convention, receiving substantial media attention,[9] and on June 11, 2007 announced at the Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference that the iPhone would support third-party applications using the Safari engine on the device. Third-parties would create the Web 2.0 applications and users would access them via the Internet.[10] On October 17, 2007 Apple announced that an iPhone software development kit would be made available in February 2008[11][12], allowing developers to create native applications that take full advantage of the iPhone's application programming interface.[13]
Spanish company SevenClick, based on information from a manager at Telefónica, announced on their technology blog[14] that Telefónica Spain expects to be shipping 3G iPhones by May 2008.[15]
The iPhone normally prevents access to its media player and web
features unless it has also been activated as a phone with an
authorized carrier. On July 3, 2007, Jon Lech Johansen
reported on his blog that he had successfully bypassed this requirement
and unlocked the iPhone's other features with a combination of custom
software and modification of the iTunes binary. He published the
software and offsets for others to use.[16]
On July 25, 2007
Apple announced in their 2007 Q3 sales report and conference call that
they sold 270,000 iPhones in the first 30 hours on launch weekend.[17] AT&T reported 146,000 iPhones activated in the same time period.[18] Apple anticipated selling their millionth iPhone in the first full quarter of availability,[19] and anticipates selling 10 million iPhones by the end of their 2008 fiscal year.[20] On September 10, 2007, Apple announced sales of 1 million iPhones.[21] This was followed by Apple's 2007 fourth quarter earnings announcement on October 22, 2007 which put total iPhone sales at 1.39 million with 1.12 million sold that quarter.[22]
On November 21, 2007, T-Mobile
announced it would sell the phone "unlocked" and without a T-Mobile
contract, caused by a preliminary injunction against T-Mobile put in
place by their competitor Vodafone. In Germany, a company is not allowed to lock the SIM card to itself.[23] On December 4, 2007,
a German court decided to grant T-Mobile exclusive rights to sell the
iPhone with the SIM card locked, overturning the temporary injunction.[24]In addition, T-Mobile will unlock the iPhone at the termination of a customer's contract.[25]
On December 1, 2007, Tusmobil, Slovenian
mobile operator, started selling "unlocked" iPhones without official
contract with Apple, which caused a lot of confusion with Apple Europe,
local media and local Apple representatives.[26]
Features
The iPhone allows conferencing, call holding, call merging, caller
ID, and integration with other cellular network features and iPhone
functions. For example, a playing song fades out when the user receives
a call. Once the call is ended the music fades back in. Voice dialing is not supported by the iPhone.
The iPhone includes a Visual Voicemail
feature allowing users to view a list of current voicemail messages
on-screen without having to call into their voicemail. Unlike most
other systems, messages can be listened to and deleted in a
non-chronological order by choosing any message from an on-screen list.
AT&T modified their voicemail infrastructure to accommodate this
new feature designed by Apple.
A ringtone feature, introduced in the United States on September 5, 2007,
but not yet available in all countries where the iPhone has been
released, allows users to create custom ringtones from their purchased iTunes
music for an additional fee, the same price of a song. The ringtones
can be from 3 to 30 seconds in length of any part of a song, can
include fading in and out, can pause from half a second to five seconds
when looped, and never expire. All customizing can be done in iTunes,
and the synced ringtones can also be used for alarms on the iPhone.
Apple has released a video explaining many of iPhone's features through a series of demonstrations.[27]
Multimedia
When music is played on the iPhone, album art is shown on most of the screen, with play controls beneath.
The layout of the music library differs from previous iPods,
with the sections divided more clearly alphabetically, and with a
larger font. Similar to previous iPods, the iPhone can sort its media
library by songs, artists, albums, videos, playlists, genres,
composers, podcasts, audiobooks, and compilations. Cover Flow,
like that on iTunes, shows the different album covers in a
scroll-through photo library. Scrolling is achieved by swiping a finger
across the screen.
Like the fifth generation iPods
introduced in 2005, the iPhone can play video, allowing users to watch
TV shows and films. Unlike other image-related content, video on the
iPhone plays only in the landscape orientation, when the phone is
turned sideways. Double tapping switches between wide-screen and
fullscreen video playback.
The iPhone allows users to purchase and download songs from the iTunes Store directly to their iPhone over Wi-Fi, but not over the cellular data network.[28]
Web connectivity
The iPhone is able to access the World Wide Web via a modified version of the Safari web browser when connected to a Wi-Fi or an EDGE network. It is not able to utilize AT&T's 3G or AT&T's HSDPA network. Steve Jobs has stated 3G would need to become more widespread and much more energy efficient before it's included in the iPhone.[29][30]
By default, the iPhone will ask to join newly discovered Wi-Fi networks
and prompt for the password when required, while also supporting
manually joining closed Wi-Fi networks.[31] When Wi-Fi is active, it will automatically switch from the EDGE network to any nearby previously approved Wi-Fi network.[32]
Before the launch, some reviewers found the EDGE network
"excruciatingly slow," with the iPhone taking as long as 100 seconds to
download the Yahoo! home page for the first time.[33] Immediately before the launch the observed speed of the network increased to almost 200 kbit/s.[34] This is probably due to the new "Fine EDGE" upgrades AT&T had been making to their network prior to the launch.[35]
The EDGE network benefits iPhone users by providing greater
availability than 3G, as 3G continues its expansion to most major
cities in the United States.[36] Most countries outside the United States have very little EDGE infrastructure in place. For example, the United Kingdom's EDGE infrastructure amounts to less than 30 percent.
[
citation needed] As a result, many users outside major cities will have to browse the Internet on GPRS, a much slower protocol.
The web browser displays full web pages as opposed to simplified pages as on most non-smartphones. The iPhone does not support Flash or Java technology.[37][38]
Web pages may be viewed in portrait or landscape mode and supports
automatic zooming by pinching together or spreading apart fingertips on
the screen, or by double-tapping text or images.[39]
Apple developed an iPhone application for accessing Google's maps service
in map or satellite form, a list of search results, or directions
between two locations, while providing optional real-time traffic
information. During the product's announcement, Jobs demonstrated this
feature by searching for nearby Starbucks locations and then placing a prank call to one with a single tap.[8][40] Though Flash isn't supported in Safari on the iPhone, Apple also developed a separate application to view YouTube videos on the iPhone.
E-mail
The iPhone also features an e-mail program that supports HTML e-mail, which enables the user to embed photos in an e-mail message. PDF, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel attachments to mail messages can be viewed on the phone.[41] Yahoo! is currently the only e-mail provider offering a free Push-IMAP e-mail service similar to that on a BlackBerry for the iPhone;
[
citation needed] IMAP and POP3 mail standards are also supported, including Microsoft Exchange[42] and Kerio MailServer.[43] There is currently no search support.
[
citation needed] The iPhone will sync e-mail account settings over from Apple's own Mail application, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft Entourage,
or manually configured using the device's Settings tool. With the
correct settings, the e-mail program can check many IMAP or
POP3-enabled web based accounts such as Gmail, .Mac mail, and AOL.[44]
Others
A picture of an iPhone taking a picture of the image of an iPhone which is taking a picture on a monitor.
The iPhone features a built in 2.0 megapixel camera, without a flash, located on the back for still digital photos, but does not support video recording.
It also includes software that allows the user to upload, view, and
e-mail photos. The user zooms in and out of photos by "unpinching" and
"pinching" them through the multi-touch interface. The software
interacts with iPhoto on the Mac and Photoshop in Windows.
The built-in Bluetooth 2.x+EDR supports wireless earpieces (which requires the HSP profile), but notably does not support stereo audio (requires A2DP), laptop tethering (requires DUN and SPP), or the OBEX file transfer protocol (requires FTP, GOEP, and OPP).
Text messages are presented chronologically in a mailbox format similar to Mail, which places all text from recipients together with replies. Text messages are displayed in speech bubbles (similar to iChat) under each recipient's name. The iPhone does not support message forwarding, drafts, delivery reports, instant messaging, MMS, multi-recipient SMS, or copy/cut/paste capability.[45]
Interface
The display responds to three sensors: a proximity sensor that shuts off the display and touchscreen
when the iPhone is brought near the face to save battery power and to
prevent spurious inputs from the user's face and ears, an ambient light sensor that adjusts the display brightness which in turn saves battery power, and a 3-axis accelerometer,[46]
which senses the orientation of the phone and changes the screen
accordingly. Photo browsing, web browsing, and music playing support
both upright and left or right widescreen orientations, while videos
play in only one widescreen orientation.
A single "home" hardware button below the display brings up the main
menu. Subselections are made via the touchscreen. The iPhone utilizes a
full-paged display, with context-specific submenus at the top and/or
bottom of each page, sometimes depending on screen orientation. Detail
pages display the equivalent of a "Back" button to go up one menu.
The iPhone has three physical switches on its sides: wake/sleep,
volume up/down, and ringer on/off. All other multimedia and phone
operations are done via the touch screen.
The iPhone interface enables the user to move the content itself up
or down by a touch-drag motion of the finger, much as one would freely
slide or flick a playing card across a table with a finger. Similarly,
scrolling through a long list in a menu works as if the list is pasted
on the outer surface of a wheel: the wheel can be "spun" by sliding a
finger over the display from bottom to top (or vice versa). In either
case, the object continues to move based on the flicking motion of the
finger, slowly decelerating as if affected by friction. In this way, the interface simulates the physics of 3D objects, giving it a real world feel.
The photo album and web page magnifications are examples of Authored
by: Huss
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