The iPhone is an Internet-enabled multimedia 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, 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, and hence has international capability. It supports the EDGE data technology. The iPhone is a prime example of converged device.
Apple announced the iPhone in January 2007. The announcement was preceded by rumors and speculations that circulated for several months. The iPhone was introduced in the United States on June 29, 2007, with releases in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France in November 2007, and in Ireland and Austria in March 2008. It was named Timemagazine's Invention of the Year in 2007.
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, O2, T-Mobile, and Orange modified their voicemail infrastructure to accommodate this new feature designed by Apple. A lawsuit has been filed against Apple and AT&T by Klausner Technologies claiming the iPhone's visual voicemail feature infringes two patents.
A ringtone feature was introduced in the United States on September 5, 2007, but is not yet available in all countries where the iPhone has been released. This feature 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. Custom ringtones can also be created using Apple's GarageBand software 4.1.1 or later (available only on Mac OS X) and third-party tools.
Apple has released a video explaining many of iPhone's features through a series of demonstrations.
Multimedia
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 full-screen video playback.
The iPhone allows users to purchase and download songs from the iTunes Store directly to their iPhone over Wi-Fi with the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, but not over the cellular data network.
Internet connectivity
Internet access is available when the iPhone is connected to a local area Wi-Fi or a wide area EDGE network. The iPhone is not able to use AT&T's 3G or AT&T's HSDPA network. Steve Jobs has stated 3G would need to become more widespread in the United States and much more energy efficient before it's included in the iPhone. 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. When Wi-Fi is active, the iPhone will automatically switch from the EDGE network to any nearby previously approved Wi-Fi network.
The EDGE network benefits iPhone users in the U.S. by providing greater availability than 3G, as carriers based in the U.S. do not have full 3G coverage. By contrast, 3G coverage ranges from 60 to 90-percent in the United Kingdom.
Since the iPhone's inception, the use of the handset for Internet connectivity has exposed one or more trends. According to AT&T and Google, the iPhone generated 50 times more search requests than any other mobile handset. The iPhone also increased the average wireless data usage as much as 30 times higher than on other phones, or 100 MB per iPhone customer.
