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."

Dvorak strikes again

[Space cowboy]

A little while back, Dvorak (the original, not the popular term for a retard) was claiming the iPhone would have 40 minutes talk-time [youtube.com] [the link doesn't go to Dvorak's site].

So, where's the retraction, John - after all, any *responsible* journalist's priority is the truth, not just seeking attention for himself at the expense of others...

Simon

Re:How about.... Price?

[soft_guy]

No wonder you were modded troll - the cost isn't $800 - it is $500 or $600 depending on the model.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[Xest]

You sound roughly about as biased as the comparison chart. To be fair the OP has a point.

If it's about physical attributes why does it list non-physical attributes? and only one of the few physical attributes?

Slimness is all consumers care about? If that was the case everyone would be happy with the iPaq phones because they're so slim, of course in reality, the issue is they're too wide for most people to want in their pockets. Personally I also prefer phones to be light, so for me weight is one of the largest issues.

As for features well, yes it does have a few but not as many as the new Nokia and Sony offerings. Supports 3rd party development? this is a joke right? again, other offerings have full Java and some even C++ application support - that's an awful lot more than rich internet apps which nice, are still extremely limited - again, you aint EVER going to see anything like this on iPhones with their supposed 3rd party application support:

http://www.midlet-review.com/index?content=news&id =1023 [midlet-review.com]

It's probably worth noting the iPhone's camera is pretty dire in comparison to the new Sony/Nokia offerings too - 2megapixel vs. 5 megapixel.

Re:Nokia N800 should be on Comparison Chart

[DoctorPepper]

Um, because maybe the N800 isn't a phone? You can do VOIP, but it doesn't have cell phone capabilities (I know, I own an N800).

Re:Pick one.

[cowscows]

Inches for the screen because Americans know what inches are.

MM for the thickness, because the point of the chart isn't the actual thickness, but the relative thickness of the iphone compared to the other phones. It's much easier for most people to compare the MM measurements against each other than it would be to compare 3/4" to 5/16" to 3/8", or whatever the imperial measurements would end up being. I deal with fractional measurements all day at work, and I still have to take a few seconds to think about it when I compare them.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[theGreater]

A better comparison chart might include

• 02 XDA Flame
• Eten Glofiish x500+
• FIC neo1973
• Sharp 904SH
• T-Mobile MDA-IV

These models are all in a similar price range, have nice touchscreens (I think), and full 640*480 resolution. Have I missed one?

-theGreater.

Re:Glass why?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as a "scratch coating" for optical polycarbonate lenses. The lenses are coated, true, but without the chem treatment and UV curing you'll scratch the lens by _breathing_ on it.

Polycarbonate is _soft_ compared with optical plastic. It's more shatter resistant because it's soft, and bends under an impact, rather than stiffly resisting like glass.

That doesn't mean that they perhaps dont have a bettr class of chem treatment, but optical polycarbonate == compact disc material. Tell me that resists scratches as much as glass!

How about capabilities?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a cute comparison, but my Palm does:

SSH
VNC (with and without SSH)
IMAPS and SMTPS with multiple account support
NES emulator
Doubles as a broadband modem
Google Maps
IRC
IM (AIM, YM, Jabber, GTalk, MSN, ICQ)
Full keyboard for typing up emails

As for hours, my phone is constantly connected to IM and email, often times notifying me of new emails before thunderbird does on my laptop. All that, with occasional phone usage, and I get about 12 hours out of it.

Looks like the iPhone has a beautiful interface for looking at pictures and playing music, but it won't give me the tools I need to leave the laptop at the office when I take the afternoon off.

Best of all, I'm not tied to Cingular. I jumped ship when AT&T started having lots of connection issues. I have numerous friends who still use Cingular, and I refer to them as "two-call" friends, since the connection usually takes two calls to get through. I don't have that problem calling Verizon, Sprint, or T-Mobile friends.

Re:Pick one.

[Hognoxious]

Sorry to rain fact on your little rant, but Screen sizes [surcouf.com] are quoted in inches in some countries that have been metric since longer than anyone can remember. No, I don't know why.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[empaler]

It's probably worth noting the iPhone's camera is pretty dire in comparison to the new Sony/Nokia offerings too - 2megapixel vs. 5 megapixel.

Give me a 2 MP cam with good photosensitive silicon rather than a 5 MP with cheap third-rate silicon.
I'm not saying that Apple has shelled out for a better cam function, I'm just saying that MP count is like snakeoil.

Dock connector

[SuperKendall]

If you're on a business trip for a couple of days without access to a charger then it sure would be nice to have that exteneded talk time. Though it can be considered irrelevant if it uses a standard mini-USB connection as you can always find a shop that'll sell the cable for less than $10.

It uses the same dock connector with other iPods, so it's almost as easy to find a charger... or if you are bringing a laptop, just remember the iPod sync cable.

However there are other external battery solutions like this one [batteryspace.com].

what percent?

[Gary W. Longsine]

Since AT&T has about 1/3 of the U.S. market, that would mean about 3% of AT&T subscribers would need to switch for the iPhone to capture 1% of the market. This doesn't account for people who will switch carriers.

Re:You need better AJAX training

[zyzko]

The problem is not with the bandwidth, it's with the latency. GPRS/EDGE has a latency of 200-300ms to default gw in the best scenarios, and it can be as high as 1000ms. That makes designing interactive apps "challenging" - AJAX or not. In fact - traditional web pages can be more intuitive on slow connections because you don't have to guess if the page is updating part of it or not.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[Shakrai]

What I care about is reception range/quality and battery life

An oft unappreciated phone (and the one I use on a day to day basis) is the Motorola V195 [phonescoop.com]. It's offered by T-Mobile and Cellular One, but it's GSM, so you can get it unlocked and use it with anyone.

It has the highest RF output of any non-brick phone I've ever seen (1.7 watts on GSM850/900 and 1.0 on GSM1800/1900), the best reception, an insanely long battery life (rated for 10.5 hours of talk time -- I tend to get six or seven, depending on signal strength), class 1 (long range) bluetooth, plus it's a quad-band phone and will work in any country with a GSM network.

Yeah, it has no camera (who cares?) and is slim on features. But if all you want is a phone, I'm hard pressed to think of a better GSM one. And the full retail price is only $120.00 ($20 with contract) from T-Mobile. I'll cry a lot less when my $120 phone goes into the swimming pool/toilet/stolen then I will when something happens to my $600 iPhone. And that's with contract -- wonder what they'll charge you to get one at "full price" once you are already under contract?

Re:But....

[Shakrai]

How is the actual voice quality since well it's a phone and all?

Probably shitty, cuz it's Cingular^wAT&T and they make everybody use a half-rate codec even in those markets where they have enough network capacity to allow you to use full-rate. What, 60mhz of spectrum isn't enough for you to let me use full-rate? T-Mobile does friggen NYC on 5mhz....

Of course, the to-go joke here could also be: "What, you wanna use your phone to talk to people? What a concept!"

Re:"Optical quality" glass

[goombah99]

Like plastics (including poly carbonate) there's optical quality and non-optical quality. It's not a hard concept.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[nasch]

I'll cry a lot less when my $120 phone goes into the swimming pool/toilet/stolen then I will when something happens to my $600 iPhone. And that's with contract -- wonder what they'll charge you to get one at "full price" once you are already under contract?

The $600 price is with no discount for signing a contract, that is full retail price. Apple has stated there will be no discount for a contract - it's just that they won't sell the phone without a contract at any price.

Re:Whoever buys the iPhone is dumb.

[catdevnull]

I'm not a fanboy, but I'm just comparing specs from the perspective of a Mac user--

• Does it work with a Mac without using 3rd party software?
• Does it play music from your iTunes library you bought from the iTunes store?
• Does it have a 2 megapixel camera?
• Does it have a 3" screen?
• Does it have 4GB of memory?
• Does it have 802.11g WiFi?
• It might have an accelerometer to detect position, but does it have a proximity sensor or an ambient light sensor?
• Does it have an 8-hour talk time battery?
• Does the 8125's display match the 320 by 480 pixels (160 ppi) of the iPhone?

It seems to me, that they are just a little different.

Here's another chart..

[traveller604]

http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/4885/untitledma5. jpg [imageshack.us] And it's still missing stuff like.. you know GPS :)

Quick Size Comparison

[slarrg]

For those who are interested:

Apple iPhone
115 x 61 x 11.6mm
135 g

Nokia N95
99 x 53 x 21 mm
120 g

Samsung Blackjack
113 x 59 x 12 mm
106 g

Blackberry Curve 8300
107 x 60 x 15 mm
111 g

Palm Treo 750
111 x 58 x 22 mm
153 g

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Amusingly, this is not necessarily true. The cell phone's 'multirole' function also includes a data connection to the internet. This gives it some interesting flexibility that a TomTom does not have, especially with regard to things like traffic updates or use with other applications. That's not to say that TomTom doesn't have its plus sides, but "better performer" is a judgement solely left up to the beholder.

You obviously don't get around much ;)

A co-worker friend of mine brought his brand new GPS phone from Verizon with him on our recent trip to New Mexico. During some off-time, we decided to take a road trip around New Mexico. The navigational system was totally useless. If you were not on Verizon's network, you had no navigation available (not even GPS coordinates or heading). Being in New Mexico, We had no navigation available. This is despite the fact that we still had phone service on someone else's network.

Anyone who seriously believes that a GPS phone is anything remotely useful as a Garmin or TomTom is delusional at best...

Re:Quick Size Comparison

[Achromatic1978]

In other words:

• It's the second heaviest
• It's the tallest
• It's the widest

I can't imagine why Apple might have left those comparisons out, hrmmm...

But it is the slimmest! By 15/1000 of an inch! Apple fanboys, go forth and spread the message! "It's the slimmest!"

Bleh.

Uh, show me the WHOOOOSH

[drinkypoo]

You can fit more than seven hours of video into eight gigabytes of memory. In fact, you can condense an entire feature-length film into a pretty good-quality video at 700MB, enough to fit it into a CDROM - at DVD resolution.

If you're willing to sacrifice resolution and frame rate, you can probably get days of video into 8GB.

And if the joke was something else, it just wasn't funny. Sorry if I can't detect stupid humor.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[weicco]

Yep. That simulator is pretty awful piece of ... something that stinks awful.

It runs on your PC processor (phones runs on different processor type) so it doesn't catch any, for example, memory misalignment errors. Same goes for Windows emulator but you can do actual on-device debugging on Windows thingies.

It doesn't have GSM or SMS functionality! At least last time I checked it. Of course normally PC's doesn't have GSM card in it but how about if I attach my GSM into PC, why couldn't simulator use it to make calls?

Two way constructors and those exception look-alikes are awful. I know there wasn't exceptions in C++ at the time when Symbian was made but there was experimental stuff and there sure is now!

Does it still use Perl and whole bunch of weird scripts in compile? Can't they even write a fricking native Windows program to handle this. It was pain to hassle with those scripts.

C++ interface is awful but that's just my opinion.

Documentation is pure sh*t. It's easier to read .h headers and poke around with method calls at random than trying to understand what the heck they wrote on docs.

Yes, I once was Symbian coder. I did code for Nokia and SE. Then I quit and never go back, no matter how much they offer me.