The Apple Mobile Phone: iPhone
by: Wikipedia
The iPhone is a multimedia and Internet-enabled mobile phone, announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs during the keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo on 9 January 2007, that is scheduled to be released on 29 June 2007 in the U.S. at 6 p.m in an unspecified time zone.
The iPhone's functions include those of a camera phone, a multimedia player, mobile phone, and Internet services like e-mail, text messaging, web browsing, Visual Voicemail and wireless connectivity. iPhone input is accomplished via touchscreen with virtual keyboard and buttons. The iPhone is a quad-band GSM phone, though Jobs mentioned in his keynote that Apple has a "plan to make 3G phones" in the future. Apple has filed more than 200 patents related to the technology behind the iPhone.
The iPhone will be available from the Apple Store and from AT&T Mobility, formerly Cingular Wireless, with a price of US$499 for the 4 GB model and US$599 for the 8 GB model, based on a two-year service contract. Apple intends to make the phone available in Europe in Q4 2007 and in Asia in 2008.
The genesis of the iPhone was Jobs' direction that Apple engineers investigate touch-screens. At the time he had been considering having Apple work on tablet PCs. Many have noted the device's similarities to Apple's previous touch-screen portable device, the Newton MessagePad. Like the Newton, the iPhone is nearly all screen, and its form-factor is credited to Apple's head of design, Jonathan Ive. Comments made by Jobs in April 2003 at the "D: All Things Digital" executive conference expressed his belief that tablet PCs and traditional PDAs were not good choices as high-demand markets for Apple to enter, despite many requests made to him that Apple create another PDA. He did believe that cell phones were going to become important devices for portable information access, and that what cell phones needed to have was excellent synchronization software. At the time, instead of focusing on a follow-up to their Newton PDA, Jobs had Apple put its energies into the iPod, and the iTunes software (which can be used to synchronize content with iPod devices), released January 2001. On September 7, 2005, Apple and Motorola released the ROKR E1, the first mobile phone to use iTunes. However Jobs was unhappy with the ROKR, feeling that having to compromise with a non-Apple designer (Motorola) prevented Apple from designing the phone he wanted to make. In September 2006, Apple discontinued support for the ROKR and released a version of iTunes that included references to an as-yet unknown mobile phone that could display pictures and video. On January 9, 2007, Jobs announced the iPhone at the Macworld convention, receiving substantial media attention.
It is not yet known what processors power the iPhone. However, on 24 January 2007, AppleInsider stated that Samsung will provide a unified CPU. On 7 February 2007, EE Times Europe published a report that three ARM processors are used in iPhone, but did not confirm exactly what chips might be used. Earlier, Intel Italy executive manager Dario Bucci claimed that one of Marvell's XScale series of ARM processors is to be found in iPhone.