The hype over the iPhone is pretty insane at this point. (T-minus a week and a day now.) People are talking about camping out in front of Apple stores and AT&T will close its stores down late in the afternoon, to open them back up at exactly 6pm Friday... just the time the phone is scheduled to be available. (Remember all those holiday stories of fights at Wal Mart over cheap DVD player? So cynical, I know.) And I should confess, I want one, too. I'm just way too cheap to actually buy it at this point. Maybe next year. Anyway, every company and their grand-companies are coming out with new models to compete (whether they can or not is another story). And that's only after the announcements of phones that stream live TV, share videos, track you (your kids, spouses, etc), offer directions, find nearby people to date, play music (duh), surf the web, email, IM, take photos, blah, blah, blah. I'm sure there's a show in here somewhere. I use my phone primarily to talk, occasionally IM, and every now and again to take a picture and shoot it to someone. Of course, it CAN do more, I just tend not to unleash it. So all you cell phone fanatics... what can your phone do? (And do you actually use it?)
Blog of the Nation
When I became eligible for a free upgrade on my cellphone, I wanted a basic model. I am a fan of Nokia phones, but the basic models were all ugly and clunky. I finally settled for a sleek Nokia flip phone which has a camera, plays music, text messaging, email capabilities, games (who plays games on their cell phone????)access to the internet (if I pay for it.... to cheap to do it!) Truth is the two functions I use are the phone and text messaging. But when I saw a recent demostration of the IPhone, I decided I want one. I'll wait for the next generation, just as I did with my IPod.... the price will be less and the software much better. But oh that IPhone is way cool.
My cell phone comes with the standard features (camera, text messaging, web...) I really don't want (or use) the useless camera and I wish I could exchange my camera phone with a smaller, cheaper phone that doesn't have a camera. Unfortunately my service provider no longer sells any phones without cameras. Until they can put a high-quality camera in my cell-phone, just leave it out! (the camera in the i-phone still only has 2-megapixels)
Kaleena,
I know what you mean about the camera. BUt, it is handy if you ever want to post a quick pic online and don't have a "real" camera with you. Right now the best combo of a really high quality camera and a phone that I have seen is from Nokia. A 5 megapixel number with nice Carl Zeiss optics. Of course, you could still buy a great digital SLR AND a separate cell phone for less than the $750 you'll pay for the phone. But, it is coming...
And Carline: "Who plays games on their cell phones?????"
I actually see it all the time on the train... the earbuds connected to the iPod and their fingers banging away at games on the phone (this is only underground, of course, once we're above ground it's all IM all the time!) I'm still happy with my newspaper
I was hoping the iPhone would enable some of the "across communication" type functionality, such as converting email text to voice and vice versus. It would be useful to be able to use voice commands into a internet-connected phone to do many of the things that are currently text based commands, such as: load my calendar with an appointment or reminder, initiate a internet search, etc...
Similarly, I'd like to have some text converted into voice messages, such as: listening to an email or text message rather than trying to red it while driving etc...
The technology for these type of "email to phone" etc...services is avialable currently. The iPhone would have been truly innovative if this kind of "acrosscom" technology (aka "softswitching") had been developed within the iPhone.
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