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iPhone Gets Better Battery, Scratch Resistant Glass
Dekortage writes "Prior to its much-hyped launch on June 29, Apple has announced upgrades to its battery life (almost 40% more than originally announced) and scratch resistance (using "optical quality glass" rather than plastics). The announcement also includes a comparison chart pitting the iPhone against smartphones from Nokia, Samsung, Palm, and Blackberry."
Apart from not selecting like for like that's arguably the most horribly biased selection of measurements I've ever seen used in a comparison chart. I know the aim of the chart is to try and make the iPhone look good but when doing these type of charts most companies at least give their competitors some credit so as not to look too desperate. Probably the most obvious is the first - thickness comparison without weight, width and height comparison? It's a shame it doesn't list things like features either because that's where the iPhone really fails miserably, it simply has no killer app like the Nokia N95's built in GPS.
Posted anonymously to avoid the Apple fanboy army that plagues Slashdot and that can't accept that Apple aren't always capable of producing a decent product.
Those are upgrades every user will appreciate. Battery life is obviously good, and remember all the furor over iPod Nano scratches?
How is the actual voice quality since well it's a phone and all?
If 1% of the people getting new phones buy on, Apple's met their goal.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Yeah. That 1% didn't work too well for the N-Gage.
The battery probably didn't even change. The only difference is that the old numbers came from engineering, and the new numbers came from PR :P
(I kid, I kid. I think it's a pretty sweet little device, personally.)
Game... blouses.
..and the new Intel Macs were supposed to be four-to-seven times faster than a 1.7GHz PPC and have 4 hours battery life.
I think I might just wait for the first few 100k sales before I look at the next 'comparison chart' from Apple Corp..
Seven hours of video playback from 8 Gigs (max) of RAM? Color me skeptical, too.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
quote "if you're on your cellphone more than 8 hours a day, you might need to re-evaluate your life"
If you're on a business trip for a couple of days without access to a charger then it sure would be nice to have that exteneded talk time. Though it can be considered irrelelvant if it uses a standard mini-USB connection as you can always find a shop that'll sell the cable for less than $10.
Okay, you want marketing material on "sshing to your linux box"? Are you daft? Do you realize that nobody save for a few technical people will know what that means? The point of advertising is to reach the largest number of people with your message. Disqualifying 90% of the audience with severely technical things is stupid. The same people that would complain about that are the same people would complain because the OS isn't free (like beer and freedom). You're obviously too picky.
Saying all that, I too want these features but it's far from what I'd call a deal breaker if I can't ssh from it given all that it CAN do.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
No. You posted AC because you posted a flamebait troll. Claiming to be afraid of the "fanboy" is an interesting ploy. I think you would have found that the mod points awarded to your AC post wouldn't have been much different if you had posted under your regular login, Mr. Ballmer.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
It's fine to add the service contract to the price of the phone. After all, that will be the true cost. However, just make sure you add the service price to all of the iPhone competitors as well, just to give an accurate comparison.
Boom Shanka
"Optical quality: would that be like "industrial strength," "high definition," and "premium?"
What would you call the high-index polycarbonate plastic in my eyeglasses? I certainly hope it's "optical quality" plastic...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The fanboys would also pick up on it too, trying to think of excuses why their list wasn't a list of features that made their chosen product look good compared to the competition, but rather was a list features that mattered. I see nothing has changed in that regard.
You can't upgrade a product that doesn't yet exist. The original announcement was probably deliberately misleading so they could announce an "improvement" just before the product is made available.
If that's not fanboism what is?
Prediction based on past performance?
Apple has shown they can do a good job with UI on a small device, and furthermore have a lot of demonstration videos that convincingly show the utility of this small device. Is it so unthinkable to say, I have liked products from this company before, I'll trust them with a new purchase now?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The chart is very clearly focused on a small set of features related to key differentiators of the iPhone. It's designed to attract people, to make them want to learn more about the iPhone. People who are curious will explore the feature set of the relative devices beyond this little chart. A giant chart with every feature of all devices would not attract nor interest anyone.
Your use of the term "fanboy" is unnecessary, as no actual fanboy performing actual fanboy stunts is cited. Attempting to use the propaganda technique of creating a boogeyman, "the evil fanboy" who pollutes your, uh, your advertising world by making excuses for, uh, advertisements, undermines any rational argument you may attempt to make.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
It's expensive. It only works on one provider. And it's closed platform. It is expensive, but I support Apple's efforts to wrest control of the American mobile phone market out of the hands of cell phone carriers. It's an uphill battle, and Cingular was the only company willing to allow Apple to do this; everyone else refused. That's the reason it only works on one provider. Hopefully, if the iPhone proves successful and customers on other networks start demanding it, the other carriers will back down.
I am concerned about the iPhone being a closed platform. AJAX widgets are great, and completely appropriate for a lot of the things I would want a phone to do, but they can't be the only solution. I want an SSH client, for example, and that just can't be done in AJAX. A VNC client that I could tunnel through SSH would be a nice bonus. Hopefully in the future, Apple will begin to support third-party development of real native applications for the iPhone. In the mean time, the iPhone can do just about everything my current phone can do, plus a whole bunch. If it used a SIM card, and had an open API, I'd be a lot more impressed. As someone else already said, it does use a SIM card. As it stands, I'll wait for the Openmoko. Openmoko does sound promising, but maybe by the time that's ready, Apple will have addressed your other concerns in the next version of the iPhone. Don't buy one yet, but understand that your needs are not the same as the needs of a lot of other people, and the iPhone does everything most people want just fine. This is the first release, and the next one will be even better. Don't write it off.
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I think you have that exactly backwards. The iPhone is limited by it's thickness and weight. Any manufacturer can add a bigger battery if they're willing to sacrifice in those areas. With the iPhone, removing a keyboard that consumes no power and replacing it with a double-sized screen leads to more power consumption, not less. Apple has had to contend with a device that uses more power for its size than its competitors. It is also using an OS not specifically written for low power devices. That doesn't mean that the device will be a failure but it sure indicates the unlikeliness of your claim. It's far from clear that battery life is the secret feature; everything suggests the opposite.
/. fashion, the author claims in the title that the iPhone gets a better battery. Not true, of course, as the iPhone gets better battery *life* *ratings*. I'm curious what the new weight *rating* is especially with glass replacing plastic for the screen.
I'll also note that, in true
I've found that most people don't know units at all. Sure, 12 inches in a foot, 10 mm in a cm, stuff like that. But ask people to hold their fingers 1 cm or 1/4 inch apart. For non-integer or fraction sizes, it's worse (3.3 cm for example). Even with technical people, it's hit or miss. If someone comes close, it's because they try to match something known.
... as long as you were consistent. Most people, though not all, can still figure out number A is bigger than number B.
For comparing relative sizes, you could probably get away with a mix of cubits, angstroms, and width of a human hair
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I don't think the iPhone's "superiority" on the above bullet points is anywhere near as conclusive as you seem to think. I think it's pretty comparable, which is awkward, considering the obsolescence of the comparison model.
Sooo... you're saying the 4-8 gigs of something in the iPhone isn't Random Access Memory? What is it?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
A user interface that does not suck.
Really, all these feature comparisons are meaningless. People aren't going to buy this phone because it has some innovative new feature. It doesn't. It does, however, seem to have an UI that does not drive you insane. Which immediately makes it better than pretty much any other smartphone in a lot of people's minds.
1.) buy 2 shares of apple right now, at $124. 2.) Wait a month or two and sell the shares when they're at $250. 3.) Sell stock and buy iPhone. You know Apple stock is going to explode.