The second coming

July 11th, 2008 by sridgway in mlearning

image by apple

Not just religious icons heading to OZ this week but what has been dubbed the “Jesus Phone” is transubstansiating in Apple and phone carrier stores today throughout Australia. Apple pilgrams queued in freezing conditions to honour it arrival. It’s fitting offcourse that Jesus should return as a mobile phone and not just any phone but an Apple iphone, destined to capture the hearts and minds of the masses.

Nothing quite matches an Apple product launch for hype and buzz, and the iphone3g is no exception dominating tech stories in the blogoshere and mainstream press for a month or so prior to it’s launch. Off course this is the second generation iphone with the first being launched around 12 months ago. Australia missed out on the first iteration, although many users were able to connect hacked versions on OZ networks. In many ways the new model titled iphone3g is an evolutionary step or a version update rather than a new product, but with all they hype you would be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

So what’s the big deal, here is a brief summary of its distinctive features

it supports 3g, meaning you can access the internet on halfway decent speeds. woopie do you might say, many phones have had this functionality for ages, well amazingly the first gen iphone was not!!
it brings together the itouch ipod (touch sensitive screen interface), 3G phone & PDA style functionality. In this sense it’s represents a convergence
I has GPS functionality and using google maps positions you on a map and provides you directions to a specified destination. No it’s not real time, like car navigation systems which vocalise direction turn by turn. Instead you get a fix and it maps a route and you read the instructions, just like google maps on your computer. I suspect this is just the beginning of GPS enabled tools to be rolled out on the iphone3g, so watch this space over the next 6 months.
Has a decent web browser built into the OS, Safari. In this scene it the real web you are looking at rather than one served up especially for mobile users via a intermediary server.
Apple has allowed 3rd party developers to create and retail applications through it’s iphone - App store. Should be some interesting apps emerge in this space
It has an accelerometer built in so it can detect movement. Will have to see what innovative ways this could be used, but think the wee meets ipod and you sort of get the idea
Apple has allowed the phone to be utilised on multiple networks. For OZ customers this may appear normal but in the US the first iphone was only available on one network AT&T for which Apple was much criticised.
Has support for email applications such as gmail and corporate exchange servers like we use in DET. Should provide some competition to the Balckberry product which has been very popular with an older generation of enterprise/business/corporate users addicted to email
Has a camera or be it a rather crappy 2 megapixel with no flash, auto focus or video recording capability.
Has wide wireless connectivity including 3G & HSDPA for mobile networks, wifi, bluetooth (although limited to headphone support), GPRS & A-GPS (mobile network based) positioning
The wifi is useful as it allows users to browse the web in hotspots rather than via the more costly mobile network
Oh yes unfortunately no MMS so you will need to email your pics to another mobile user or moblog
Finally it’s flash based memory in 8 and 16 Gb options. The Itouch is available in a 32 Gb version so I expect we will see this in the iphone3g soon.

One thing it has done is reinvigorate interest in the mobile phone as as a network based tool rather than just for voip and sms. Hopefully we will begin to see other phone manufactures lift their gain and provide more social networking support in phone designs.

Well that is about it, for better or worse I will purchase one once the hype & dust has settled a little and post a more informed review.

For info on plans see

Optus

Vodafone

Telstra - no idea of a link here, tried their website to no avail, they are offering it though.