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iPhone Rumour Round-up 37

Coffin Black writes "Apple only has to look askance at a piece of hardware and people are falling over themselves to slap an 'i' all over it and slavering about how cool the theoretical gadgetry is gonna be. So the iPhone may not even exist — beyond a 'just once more thing' gleam in Jobs' eye — but already the column inches are stacking up. Think the iPod is dying? Never fear, says this columnist, it's merely evolving from one form into another (clue: from portable to mobile). This writer, meanwhile, is sticking the boot in early — she says she won't be buying an iPhone, when it of course finally makes it onto the shelves... Though she does add: "If Microsoft created a Phune (a phone and a Zune in one, geddit?), I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole either but that's a different story."" We also covered this story a couple months back.
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iPhone Rumour Round-up

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  • Like the author of the article says, you don't want a phone that you need to plug in every day just to listen to 2 hours of music. You don't want the phone to run out of juice when you need to use it as a phone.

    Other than that, I think the sleek styling that Apple applies to their products would be a great relief from all the tiny, too-ill-featured mobile phones on the market today. If the author would just use a little concealer, she could probably stop looking like a raccoon.
    • by NekoXP ( 67564 )
      I'd happily buy phone that played audio but Apple would have a huge market to compete with (every midrange phone has an SD or MMC slot these days and can do it, I see 100 people on the train every morning in Frankfurt fiddling with their playlists on their Samsungs and RAZRs)

      Playing video would sap the juice out of any phone, and there are plenty of those around already too. I don't think Apple could get into it because there would be just too much competition, not because of battery life. Even with iTunes
      • That's the beauty of the SIM Cards isn't it?

        I can take the SIM Card of my phone and put it on the new Apple phone and the phone company can't do anything to stop me.

        (Except that there is not Apple phone yet.)
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by meanween ( 709863 )
      I doubt battery life will be that much of an issue. I'm guessing that the author must own a disk based iPod. Bigger screens and hard disks suck up the juice. I'm guessing Apple would take the innards of an iPod Nano and stuff it in a phone. Those new nano's are supposed to run for 24 hrs on a charge.
    • I don't really want an mp3 player that is connected to any network beyond my own computer and home network. That's how much I hate the idea of DRM and music industry tracking of what I listen to. It's only a matter of time until the portable media player includes books (both audio and written), news articles, etc., and I really don't want unknown parties aware of what I read or what news I digest.

      I'd much rather the media player manufacturers concentrate on quality, capacity, battery life, and usability f
      • Uhhhhh?

        I read books and listen MP3 in my cell phone and there is no way the cell phone companies know what do I read or listen.

        I do however, agree on the batterie life issue.
    • You obviously have never listened to music or watched vids on ya phone! I listen to music for my commute to work and watch an episode of futurama on the way back and happily get 2-3 days before a recharge, which is fine for me! I've got a Sony Ericsson k750i - I find the batteries in SE phones kick ass.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by conigs ( 866121 )

      As per the battery issue. I know people who have mobile phones "a couple years old" that have to charge up every day as well. Batteries will do that if you don't take care of them. Then there was this little gem:

      I've spent hours of my life convincing iTunes I should be allowed to play songs I either ripped from lawfully bought CDs or purchased from Apple itself on my laptop or my iPod. (emphasis mine)

      That little gem right there leads me to believe this is more flame bait than anything else. And I stopped

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by kalidasa ( 577403 )

        've spent hours of my life convincing iTunes I should be allowed to play songs I either ripped from lawfully bought CDs or purchased from Apple itself on my laptop or my iPod.

        Funny, I have 50 GB of them and have never had a problem. And I get a hell of a lot more than 2 hours of play time out of a charge, even on my old 15 GB 3G iPod - the one with the recalled battery which I never had to submit to the recall.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by bunions ( 970377 )
      it's not the mp3 player that sucks up the juice, it's the phone. If I turn the phone part of my treo off, the battery is good for ... I don't even know, I've never had the phone part off for that long. Longer than a 6-hour flight, anyway.
  • 1. Something happens to the phone. You lose the MP3 player, camera and storage device while it's getting fixed.
    2. Something happens to the camera, you lose the phone, MP3 player and storage device while it's getting fixed.
    3. You get the idea.
    • by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      Convergenece is not something to bet your life on. I have a K750, which I think still is considered relatively high end (or well, it was an year or so ago).

      That doesn't stop me from having backup nokia, and DSLR camera for more special occasions. If the K750 would wreck (not a glitch so far though), I have replacement.

      The ultimate use is - convenience, nothing more. While it works, having a camera and mp3 player in your phone is not bad at all.
    • and here's mine (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bunions ( 970377 )
      convergence: grab treo off charging station, walk out door.

      sans convergence: grab cell phone, mp3 player, walk out door, walk back in door to get organizer, almost walk out door, realize you'll be sitting on the train for 45 minutes, walk back in to look for gameboy or a book, walk back out door.
      • Yeah. But a choice of convergence would be nice. I would buy an iPhone if it simply was an iPod, say 4 gigs and a phone. No downloading music to the phone - there isnt enough rhythm in that market anyway. I am listening to music on the iPod, the phone rings, and I answer it as the music sort of fades/pauses. I speak, I ring off, the music plays again. I continue my commute. I want to make a call, I press something, speak the name, it dials, I speak, I ring off, the music is back. Thats ALL I want from an i
  • by Biotech9 ( 704202 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @09:26AM (#16822392) Homepage
    I used to think having a mobile phone that played MP3s would be a dumb move. The iPod has a neat interface, easy to update from itunes, a mobile that plys MP3s would be a pain in the ass to use (my old phone did have the capability, but it was rubbish at it, in order to play a song or album you had to spend 5 minutes burrowing around in a dozen menus trying to find the buggy copy of realplayer to play stuff).

    Cut a long story short, I bought a Nokia N80 (bought it because it was a wifi capable smart phone with a great screen, not because of the MP3 playing aspect) and my girlfriend bought a nokia 5300 (because she liked the look of it and it was free).

    Neither of us use our ipods anymore. The N80 plays MP3s fine, when you start playing them the player pops up on the active standby so you are always one click away from having control over the player, and the 5300 has dedicated buttons on the case to play music. It's as handy to use as your average MP3 player. There are plenty of hacks to get them recognised by iTunes and auto-synced, and it's one less device in the pocket.

    just look at the photos of the 5300, they [mobileguerilla.com] show off the little rubberised buttons for playing music. The price-tag on it was so low that buying it from a carrier means it's free. It made me totally rethink my position on the uselessness of convergent devices.
  • It's obvious from the number of people I see regularly with earbud wires hanging down from their ears. Also how many people can claim not to listen to their car audio system, whether it's a CD, an MP3 player linked through it, or terrestrial and satellite radio?

    Personally, I think the cell phone companies missed the boat when they skipped audio transmission and aimed for video transmission. From a X-ware point of view, the bandwidth required is much smaller for audio than it is for video. At the risk o

  • My employer uses a Windows mobile smart phone for its callout pager. Not only is it the worst mobile phone I've ever used, but is close to the worst PDA I've ever used. Configuring the thing is a friggin' nightmare. Network settings are held in four different places.
  • by lidocaineus ( 661282 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @10:33AM (#16823086)
    From the article:

    I've spent hours of my life convincing iTunes I should be allowed to play songs I either ripped from lawfully bought CDs or purchased from Apple itself on my laptop or my iPod.

    First off, I've *never* heard anyone complain about DRM problems when playing music they've ripped because... uh, well, iTunes doesn't put DRM on that. And while I really dislike DRM (yes, even Apple's, you thought I was going to say theirs is tolerable weren't you?), Apple's is extremely easy to work with. When you download a track, it works in iTunes on the computer you downloaded it from. It works on the iPod that you transfer that song to. And it works on up to four other machines as well (someone can clear up the details if I got the number wrong) with some brainless simplicity - when you try and play a DRM encumbered file, it asks you for your iTunes Store username/password to authorize playback. What exactly is difficult about any of that??
    • by Carthag ( 643047 )
      Maybe she ripped the songs on a PC to WMA and then transferred them to her Mac? Fuck if I know. IT reporting is pretty exasperating.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by conigs ( 866121 )

      That's what we call flame bait. It almost sounds like she heard a few people complaining about DRM and decided she wanted in too. Though she has a wonderful technique. It goes like this:

      her: I know you'll hate me, but your band sucks!
      band: Why?
      her: Well, your xylophone player is horrible. No talent at all!
      band: Um, we don't even have a xylophone player. We're a three piece garage band: guitar, bass, drums.
      her: Well, I knew you'd hate me. But let me finish! You have a mastery of Nirvana covers.

      Someth

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jaysones ( 138378 )
      That was ridiculous as well as "like a lot of people, my iPod has been back to the shop more times than I care to think about." Well, I've owned 5 iPods and never had a problem with any one. So my anecdotal evidence cancels out hers!
      • Likewise. I've owned 3 iPods and the only thing thats ever gone wrong with them is that the earbuds started to fall apart.. and Apple sent me new ones to replace them. In fact all the people I know with iPods have never had hardware problems with them (that includes a few older HDD type including Gen1, 2 and 3), 2 shuffles, and 2 Nano's.

        Based on that anecdotal evidence iPods are exponentially more reliable than Creative Zen players.. I only know one person with one of those, and that developed a disk fault
  • If Apple built an iPhone, would they develop the phone chipsets themselves? Or would they licence from a 3rd party that already knows how to build these things?
    If so, who would sell to them? Are there any mobile phone manufacturers that licene their chipsets to 3rd parties?
    • by acb ( 2797 )
      Well, Apple did license the iPod chipsets from various vendors such as PortalPlayer. And I believe there are companies selling GSM chipsets.
    • Qualcomm makes CDMA chipsets that they sell to other manufacturers. My LG cellphone came with a sticker that said "Qualcomm 3G CDMA" on it. I imagine that they sell to others as well.
      • by jonwil ( 467024 )
        Apple would never do a CDMA iPhone. Pretty much all of the major carriers still using CDMA (such as Verizon Mobile and Sprint Nextel) generally lock their phones down (because they can and because they are evil greedy bastards).

        As one of the likely central features of any iPhone is audio playback (both ITMS DRM music and other music) and given that the big CDMA carriers are notorious for preventing the loading of any music (especially for use as ringtones) that isnt purchased from an approved download site
        • If Apple DO make an iPhone, hopefully they allow you to use any music you upload to it (including iTunes store music) as a ringtone.

          Ha-ha, that's a good one! Yeah, I'm sure Apple wouldn't do anything like force people to re-purchase what they already own so that it can be used as a ringtone! /rolleyes
  • by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 ) on Monday November 13, 2006 @11:23AM (#16823684) Journal
    What about the rumors that Apple will record your phone calls and sell them on iTunes for 99 cents to $4.99, depending on the level of intimacy?
  • Forced drm checking over the the network is big no-no at $.10 a k-bite

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