That Apple iPhone thing

Okay, I’m salivating. The iPhone is nearly here. Details are sparse but I’m already excited by what I saw from the keynote.

Need more details:

  • Can you buy it without the SIM lock?
  • Is the battery user replacable? This feature is required in cell phones but still absent from iPods.
  • It runs OS X. Um, what? Will applications need to be built specifically for the iPhone?
  • The UI looks cool but I’d like to see more. What I saw was very polished. I like having the active call shown at the top when you’re in other applications, and I like how easily it handles interruptions due to incoming events.
  • Can you listen to music on the Bluetooth headset? It’d be a nice fallback if I forget my headphones.

Now that’s refreshing:

  • Accelerometers in a phone. How long until someone controls a Roomba with this one? I’d like to be able to flick my phone to bring up the on screen keypad.
  • Proximity sensors. There goes a big annoyance from older Treos! It doesn’t accept touch input from a face, but bring it away and tap a button and it works fine.
  • Multiple touch interface! I’ve been watching demo videos of these in schools for a long time. I’d love to be able to rotate a Google map with two fingers, stretch and pinch to zoom, or hit multiple buttons at the same time.

Cool stuff:

  • Wifi. This is awesome for all mobile data addicts. EDGE is expensive and wifi allows for gobs of data that’d normally make me shy away. I can web browse instead of just using email.
  • Quad-band GSM + EDGE. Great, 850 mHz is the most popular band here and I’d like to be able to use EDGE when it’s got better coverage.
  • OS X based. This’ll be the first mainstream phone that’s based on a BSD environment!
  • Landscape and portrait web browsing. I’m happy to see this is becoming a required feature in mobile browsers.
  • Data and voice use at the same time. Hopefully it lets you use EDGE and voice at the same time, but wifi and voice at the same time will be sufficient.
  • Very high resolution screen. So pretty..

Lame!:

  • Cold shoulder for Canadians. When can we get it? Seriously, what the hell?

Apple, if you’re listening, please tell me when Canadians can buy this thing. Oh yeah. The same developer discount for computers applied to iPhone would be cool too.

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