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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."
Why dont they simply use polycarbonate and use the same coatings used on glasses? There are some anti-scratch coatings for polycarbonate that give you nearly the same durability as glass does with far less weight and problems.
Although I have wondered this cince the Ipod came out. anti scratch coatings are pretty darn impressive.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The press release is about the physical attributes of the iPhone, so the comparison charts deal strictly with physical attributes, not things like GPS.
Finally, slimness is what consumers care about. If you want to make l x w x h comparisons, all that data is readily available.
Fails miserably on features? Plays TV shows, movies, music, Google Maps with traffic and directions, syncs with iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Office/Outlook, supports third-party development, on a huge 3.7" screen. How is that failing on features?
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I'll pay $250 tops. This is the first smart phone that I've seen that I would actually consider using. I just set up my VP's black berry last week and after 5 minutes my thumbs were already sore. But I just can't justify spending more than $250 on a phone. I'd like the extra features, but I can live without them.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Looking at these phones it becomes clear that battery life was a secret feature of the iPhone, probably known to Apple all along. It's clearly one of the intended design features of the phone. By eliminating the keyboards (and sliders), and stylus storage slots, Apple wound up with a phone that not only has almost twice as much space available for the display screen, but also has nearly twice as much room for battery. Sure, they probably put a lot of effort into power management features of OS X, and other optimizations in the hardware design, but the biggest win is undoubtedly the physical design.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I used to think the NFL was the world's greatest hype machine, with the annual orgy of coverage about the Super Bowl, a game that's usually not as interesting as the commercials.
But Apple has probably gotten something like a billion dollars of free publicity for six months about the iPhone, which almost nobody has actually held in their hands yet. I'm convinced that the business last week with Safari was planned way in advance, as was this bit with the batteries and the screen, so that in the last few weeks before the iPhone came out Apple would be getting more gobs of free press.
Is there anybody who works the press as well as Steve Jobs?
Ok, what percent of AT&T users will need to buy this to get it to equal 1% of all new phone sales? I think the lack of choice in carriers has a bigger impact than the price, right off.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Cell phones get dropped fairly regularly. I'm sure the same goes for ipods. Will the iphone be able to withstand a fall from 3 or 4 feet onto carpeting or concrete?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I am also no "fanboy" as everyone seems to like to call people who likes Apple. I just love better products and are willing to pay extra for them.
Also, last time I checked, it was only $600, but if it is now $800, fine... For Apple products, it definitely worth it.
Just as a note: take it from me, you're a fanboi if this is the way you really think.
You're already proclaiming that spending as much as 2-3 times what most smart phones cost is Ok with you because it's an Apple, without even getting the phone into your hands? Actually, even more than Ok but "definitely worth it."
If that's not fanboism what is?
I'm not saying the phone is not worth it. If all the promises are true and if the phone is as reliable as my iPod has been I can understand why people found it desirable. But the fact is that you're pretty much saying it's a done deal. No one on slashdot, or at least very very few, have even had one of these in their hands let alone made a call on one or beat it around for a few months or a year to give us the kind of serious insight into this device that dictates spending big money on it.
To sit there and publicly proclaim a product get's a "thumbs up" simply because of the name etched into it's shell is fanboism. 100%. Every company makes a bad product and Apple has had enough to show us they're no different than anyone else. To deny that is also fanboism.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
How exactly is removing features to extend other features brilliant? Don't forget they removed the battery cover, circuitry for 3G, GPS, etc etc.
The iPhone, from this chart, essentially comes with two batteries compared to other devices. That was one complaint...
But even if that were not enough for you, there is a viable solution to extended power I have seen used with Windows Mobile phones - a small external battery pack that can recharge the phone. It's around the same size as a normal phone battery, and gives quite a bit more power.
In fact, it's such a good idea - they are already being made today. That's for the iPod, but since the iPhone uses the same dock connector...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Snake oil is talking about "photosensitive silicon", when there's not many companies making camera CCD's, and at least at consumer grade, they're all pretty much the same. The lens before the CCD and image processing electronics after it counts for a lot more. And there's where you realize it's a phone, and you're not going to get optical zoom out of it, and probably not a flash either. Lacking all these other features, the resolution dominates.
But hey, way to spin it, fanboy.
More than likely.
fishthegeek was likely refering to the fact that a dedicated GPS navigation device, such as TomTom* is going to be a better performer for any serious navigation devices than the system stuck in a multirole system such as a phone. It's getting to the point it might eventually not be much of a hit, but the dedicated device is still likely to be far easier to work with in it's intended role.
*I hate that name.
I don't read AC A human right
How can it be a comparison if all the other answers are "they don't say"?
What are we meant to be COMPARING it against?! Man, I was actually hoping to see something intelligent on there. That chart alone just put a bullet in apple's foot.
Oh come on now, Apple never said it was going to be a smart phone. Remember the original announcement? It's a iPod + a phone + a camera and a few basic apps. You can get away with not having a real developer kit with arguments like 3rd party developers make the phone unstable and crash a lot. Apple is protecting their rep by limiting access so it will be stable and just work as expected. And it's not marketed to the business crowd. It's not a Blackberry, or a Palm Treo, or a Nokia N95, and wasn't meant to compete with them, so comparing them is completely silly. They're not even the same market. Apple is going for the people who want to combine the functionality of their phone and iPod so they don't have to carry multiple devices. Jeesh, where do you people come up with this stuff, what a rediculous comparison. You freaking morons just don't get it!
(I'm trying to paraphrase what my fanboy friend explained to me when I brought up some of the concerns I read in previous slashdot threads)... It's hilarious to me now that Apple is pulling out such a comparison chart, I'd ask if it was a joke, but I can believe they're serious. I'm not buying one. If it ends up surviving to a gen2 or gen3 and turns out to be cool then maybe...
You keep using that phrase,straw man. I do not think it means what you think it means. You see, I didn't misrepresent my parent poster's opinion. You, however, misrepresented my argument by mischaracterizing it as a "straw man" argument when it was not. Thus it is you, not I, who have constructed the straw man argument. That, by the way, is an example of irony.
Furthermore, by assuming that I've made a straw man argument, and then asserting without any other evidence that I've done so, you have also provided a nice example of begging the question (aka "petitio principii").
Thank you for providing a two-fer example for logical fallacies with such brevity.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.