The iPhone thread Options

[cmac]

from apple:

A new Apple-designed application on iPhone will wirelessly stream YouTube’s content

To achieve higher video quality and longer battery life on mobile devices, YouTube has begun encoding their videos in the advanced H.264 format, and iPhone will be the first mobile device to use the H.264-encoded videos.

With its advanced Safari browser, iPhone lets you see web pages the way they were designed to be seen, then easily zoom in by simply tapping on the multi-touch display with your finger.

does your phone show techsans like you're looking at it right now? or is it some broken down ie version.

i use myspace as an example because cingular (at&t whatever) makes you purchase a subscription to use myspace on a normal smartphone (blackberry, etc)

as far as edge goes, i use the wifi when it's available, and the edge when i'm on the road. i'll gladly sacrifice 3 seconds when loading a web page, e-mail etc. for a tremendously better user experience than some of the other phones out now.

i had the blackberry pearl before the iphone and i loved it when i had it. now that i have the iphone, i see that the pearl's user interface was crap.

[cmac]

i'd love to know who has spent some time with an iphone too. not just saw it in a store, spent two seconds with it and close-mindly said this sucks.

impala has obviously. who else?

i question if microsoft made the device if opinions would be totally different.

[James]

Keep in mind that the true supporters of Microsoft in this crowd is pretty much limited to Impala...

[2wolUTT]

i got a pocket full of stooooooooooooooooooooones

[impala454]

It's funny that some of us say cmac is stupid for "wasting" so much money on a phone when a lot of us have spent similar amounts on our own.

i never said he was stupid for buying an iphone. i actually think the iphone is pretty sweet. the interface is definitely cool. i personally wouldn't get one, as i prefer an environment that's more customizable and expandable.

[impala454]

Chuck, what are you doing with the phones during each mode is the big question. I was just arguing power per bit. Lot more bandwidth comes more clock cycles.

right but what's the power required to run the thing in the first place? i.e. if you just had a wifi radio vs a cell radio.

also what doesn't seem to make sense to me is how the iphone can use less power with wifi... does it turn the cell radio off while the wifi is on? I don't really see how cell radio alone > cell radio + wifi in consumption.

[impala454]

A new Apple-designed application on iPhone will wirelessly stream YouTube’s content

what do you believe will be different about this? "wirelessly stream" is the same thing as when you look at it from the web page... whether it's an application or a browser, all you're doing is streaming the content from their server...

iPhone will be the first mobile device to use the H.264-encoded videos.

this is absolutely false. the H.264 as they seem to have coined as a buzz word recently is simply referring to MPEG-4, which has been around for almost 5 years. MPEG-4 viewers have been available for windows CE and WM5 devices for a long time. I personally have had MPEG-4 videos on my phone since I got it last year. Windows media player does not natively play them, but them stating that the iphone is the first mobile device to play them is wrong.

With its advanced Safari browser, iPhone lets you see web pages the way they were designed to be seen, then easily zoom in by simply tapping on the multi-touch display with your finger.

yes, if you want to view full sized web pages, it is easier on the iphone. it's a bigger screen than most, and the zoom thing helps for sure. if you're connected through wifi it's a great browser. but any place where I don't have wifi, I'd much rather view the mobile version of the site (whether on an iphone or wm5 device).

from apple:
does your phone show techsans like you're looking at it right now? or is it some broken down ie version.

yes, albeit on a smaller screen. basically, if you took your browser on your computer and resized it so that it was about 320 pixels wide (really skinny). most phones have a mobile browser. this browser will show any web page, but common web sites like yahoo, google, weather sites, etc will have a mobile version, often without ads, less graphics, etc. some of them will look at your browser and automatically show you the mobile version of the site. imho this is a much better way, as most websites nowadays have a lot of unnecessary graphics, and if I'm viewing a site from my phone, I just want to get the score, see the radar, read my gmail, re-bid on the ebay item, etc.

i use myspace as an example because cingular (at&t whatever) makes you purchase a subscription to use myspace on a normal smartphone (blackberry, etc)

I don't really use myspace much, but I use facebook some. they have a mobile site, m.facebook.com. while you could load theh full facebook site on your iphone, you'd probably still want to use the mobile site. it's way faster, fits the entire thing on your screen with no zooming, and presents a more compact, sensible page for a small screen interface.

as far as edge goes, i use the wifi when it's available, and the edge when i'm on the road. i'll gladly sacrifice 3 seconds when loading a web page, e-mail etc. for a tremendously better user experience than some of the other phones out now.

i guess 'tremendously better experience' is pretty objective. take this site that I use every day for instance:
http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/layers/

vs their mobile site:

http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/mobile/maps.aspx

now say you wanted to view this site on your iphone. the larger version is about 800px wide and a couple hundred KB, the smaller is about 200px wide and about 20KB. i'm not comparing or saying my phone is better or anything, but which site makes more sense to load? load the large one and zoom out, or just load the one designed to fit the screen and use up less space?

i had the blackberry pearl before the iphone and i loved it when i had it. now that i have the iphone, i see that the pearl's user interface was crap.

just because something new comes out, it doesn't mean the old one is crap. yes, the iphone's interface is very nice, but useability is what matters most to me. to be honest I rarely even look at my phone's screen. if I need to go to the transtar site while i'm in the truck, i press a button on my headset and say "open transtar", wait about 2 seconds and then look at the screen. if i'm going to listen to music on my phone, i don't really care to see all the album covers and flip through them, i just wanna start up a playlist.

I will say the one thing on the iphone I like the most, is the 'physics' behind its scrolling. the ability to scroll by swiping your finger across the screen is pretty nice.

overall i think the iphone is a great device. it's very useful for those who want to combine their ipod and phone into one piece, view web pages on the go, etc. it's just not for me. i prefer a device i can write software for, add other 3rd party software to, view whatever music/videos/media i want to. for windows mobile and to an extent palm OS, you can find a huge base of people developing software, games, utilities, even home brewed ROMs to replace the entire OS. the "pocket pc" devices are essentially just that, a tiny PC, much of their hardware and programming is just a smaller, miniaturized version of what sits on your desk. the iphone seems to be more of a one off device designed from scratch.

[impala454]

Oh and just in case anyone wants a few links, here's my mobile favorites (note that some of these sites will auto-detect which browser you have and display the appropriate page). If anyone else has some post em up!

Ebay = http://wap.ebay.com
ESPN = http://mobileapp.espn.go.com
Facebook = http://m.facebook.com
Gmail = http://m.gmail.com
KHOU (local news) = http://www.khou.com/mobile
KHOU Weather = http://www.khou.com/mobile/mobile3.htm
Houston Transtar = http://traffic.houstontranstar.org/mobile/maps.aspx
Weather.com = http://xhtml.weather.com

[chook]

right but what's the power required to run the thing in the first place? i.e. if you just had a wifi radio vs a cell radio.

also what doesn't seem to make sense to me is how the iphone can use less power with wifi... does it turn the cell radio off while the wifi is on? I don't really see how cell radio alone > cell radio + wifi in consumption.

They have single IC solutions for wifi minus the power amp. The power amp (it takes a weak signal generated from the device and makes it much more powerful, usually measured in dB gain. On a cell radio, it only pings the tower on occasion. During data transfer and phone audio, the thing is going constantly. During wifi access, the 802.11 power amp is going constantly. Old cell phones (and i think CDMA based) run at 1 watt RF transmission power. The amps used are usually class A's and only about 50% power efficient. 802.11 uses around 100 mW on a laptop, and probably less on a PDA/Iphone. I can't give real numbers, but that is the reasoning behind it.

[impala454]

is that 100mW constant for 802.11? and yeah the pings to the tower are by default every 3-5 seconds i believe. some people complain that theirs is set from the factory too high and sometimes their phone doesn't even ring before their voicemail picks up. the WM5 phones have some hacks you can do to lower that time (at the cost of some battery of course).

[Hartmann]

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/08/04/app...ed.over.iphone/

Sued already.

impala, you've posted mobile versions of sites. Cmac's point is that he sees full blown sites (including regular ole Facebook.com). I am still unable to view the NYT and WSJ on my Palm, but when using the iPhone I could.

[Divergent Realit...]

i think you are all missing the real reason why the iphone sucks.



jews.

[impala454]

impala, you've posted mobile versions of sites. Cmac's point is that he sees full blown sites (including regular ole Facebook.com). I am still unable to view the NYT and WSJ on my Palm, but when using the iPhone I could.

you didn't read my entire post then. I understand that you can view the full blown site on the iphone, as you can on a WM5 phone (albeit squished). My point was, iphone or not, if you're on a slow cell network, why would you want to view the huge, slow loading ESPN.com, when you can load the mobile site so much faster and get to the info you want?

edit: on the suit.. LOL

[chook]

is that 100mW constant for 802.11? and yeah the pings to the tower are by default every 3-5 seconds i believe. some people complain that theirs is set from the factory too high and sometimes their phone doesn't even ring before their voicemail picks up. the WM5 phones have some hacks you can do to lower that time (at the cost of some battery of course).

It would use that much whever transmitting bits. Same as when bits are transmitted using one of the cell bands, just at 1/10th the power. I am not sure about the exact power numbers and should be taken qualitatively.

[impala454]

right but most people use the wifi for stuff like email so there's typically some kind of socket "keepalive" message or email check running every few minutes, especially for these manager types we have that get every damn email in the company. i suppose that's why we see the battery usage go up with wifi in the non-iphone case. although it's not a huge deal for some because a lot of us just keep the thing in a dock while at work anyhow. no problem w/the iphone though as corp email doesn't work!