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."

Worst comparison chart EVER

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from not selecting like for like that's arguably the most horribly biased selection of measurements I've ever seen used in a comparison chart. I know the aim of the chart is to try and make the iPhone look good but when doing these type of charts most companies at least give their competitors some credit so as not to look too desperate. Probably the most obvious is the first - thickness comparison without weight, width and height comparison? It's a shame it doesn't list things like features either because that's where the iPhone really fails miserably, it simply has no killer app like the Nokia N95's built in GPS.

Posted anonymously to avoid the Apple fanboy army that plagues Slashdot and that can't accept that Apple aren't always capable of producing a decent product.

Nice

[timeOday]

Those are upgrades every user will appreciate. Battery life is obviously good, and remember all the furor over iPod Nano scratches?

But....

[svendsen]

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

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[pantherace]

You've not looked at many of Apple's comparison charts have you?

Re:How about.... Price?

[Paulrothrock]

If 1% of the people getting new phones buy on, Apple's met their goal.

Re:How about.... Price?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Yeah. That 1% didn't work too well for the N-Gage.

Uh huh

[lewp]

The battery probably didn't even change. The only difference is that the old numbers came from engineering, and the new numbers came from PR :P

(I kid, I kid. I think it's a pretty sweet little device, personally.)

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[eln]

the comparison charts deal strictly with physical attributes, not things like GPS.

Really? I had no idea that "Internet Use", "Video Playback", and "Audio Playback" were physical attributes.

It's a kind of magic..

[delire]

..and the new Intel Macs were supposed to be four-to-seven times faster [gizmodo.com] than a 1.7GHz PPC and have 4 hours battery life.

I think I might just wait for the first few 100k sales before I look at the next 'comparison chart' from Apple Corp..

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[fishthegeek]

Seriously, if you are the sort of person that must rely on GPS and a four billion dollar infrastructure to get lunch you probably shouldn't be allowed in public unescorted anyway.

GPS is a gimmick unless you are :
A) Plotting cruise missile strikes
B)Lost in a forest being chased by bigfoot

TomTom is much better for in car navigation than any cell phone could be.

Re:Battery Life

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Seven hours of video playback from 8 Gigs (max) of RAM? Color me skeptical, too.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[Wabin]

Supports third party development? Are you kidding? Sure, you can make web apps, but palm, symbian and even windows mobile kinda blow it out of the water on that front.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[madsenj37]

Alone they are not. However, they are physical attributes when related to use of battery time.

Re:Interesting

[notanatheist]

quote "if you're on your cellphone more than 8 hours a day, you might need to re-evaluate your life"

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 irrelelvant if it uses a standard mini-USB connection as you can always find a shop that'll sell the cable for less than $10.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[pla]

Finally, slimness is what consumers care about.

So you'd feel just fine with a 0.25in thick phone 1ft high by 6in wide and weighing 15lbs?

I care about exactly one aspect of my phone's geometry - Does it fit in the little half-pockets on the mid-leg side of all my jeans.

For the record, the iPhone comes in at 0.46x2.4x4.5in. That would probably not fit in said pockets (which have a flattened width of just under 2.5in on the pants I have on today), or at best would fit too tightly for comfort. My current phone fits nicely, however, at 0.9x2.0x4.3in, despite literally twice the given-yet-irrelevant thickness.



the comparison charts deal strictly with physical attributes, not things like GPS.

The "Wi-Fi", "Talk Time", "Internet Use", "Video Playback", and "Audio Playback" rows on that chart would tend to disagree.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[djdavetrouble]

GPS is a Gimmick ?!?

HOORAY, I LOVE GIMMICKS !

seriously, isn't that what this is all about anyway? most gimmicks wins ?

Re:Where are the useful features?

[MrPerfekt]

Okay, you want marketing material on "sshing to your linux box"? Are you daft? Do you realize that nobody save for a few technical people will know what that means? The point of advertising is to reach the largest number of people with your message. Disqualifying 90% of the audience with severely technical things is stupid. The same people that would complain about that are the same people would complain because the OS isn't free (like beer and freedom). You're obviously too picky.

Saying all that, I too want these features but it's far from what I'd call a deal breaker if I can't ssh from it given all that it CAN do.

Worst AC excuse EVER

[Gary W. Longsine]

No. You posted AC because you posted a flamebait troll. Claiming to be afraid of the "fanboy" is an interesting ploy. I think you would have found that the mod points awarded to your AC post wouldn't have been much different if you had posted under your regular login, Mr. Ballmer.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[Firethorn]

Slimness is all consumers care about?

Another oddball consumer here-

What I care about is reception range/quality and battery life. I actually prefer a larger phone, as long as it'll fit in a pocket. Note: I shove paperback books in that pocket all the time. The reception range is on the list because I live a long ways from the nearest cell tower. The battery become second because as a result my phone ends up having to use full power much of the time.

Followups would be durability, then various features like bluetooth, GPS and MP3 playing. I know how to use a map, and do so, so I normally know where I am, and already have a dedicated mp3 player.

A nice big brick phone with a sensitive receiver, powerfull transmitter, huge battery with bluetooth would almost be my ideal phone. That way I can use my nice headset and stick the monster on my belt or passanger seat of my car.

Re:How about.... Price?

[thefinite]

It's fine to add the service contract to the price of the phone. After all, that will be the true cost. However, just make sure you add the service price to all of the iPhone competitors as well, just to give an accurate comparison.

Re:It's a kind of magic..

[TheRaven64]

My MacBook Pro takes 7-10 second to do a complete build of my thesis (pdflatex, bibtex, gnuplot for graphs, etc running from a big Makefile), while my 1.5GHz G4 PowerBook took 40-60 seconds. Of course, that's not all from the Core 2 Duo, a big part of it comes from the faster hard drive, but it's not a completely unreasonable speed comparison. I have had 4.5 hours of battery life from it when I tried hard (low screen brightness, not doing much with the CPU or GPU), but 3-3.5 seems more reasonable.

"Optical quality" glass

[dpbsmith]

"Optical quality: would that be like "industrial strength," "high definition," and "premium?"

What would you call the high-index polycarbonate plastic in my eyeglasses? I certainly hope it's "optical quality" plastic...

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[Fulkkari]

the comparison charts deal strictly with physical attributes, not things like GPS.

Really? I had no idea that "Internet Use", "Video Playback", and "Audio Playback" were physical attributes.

Time! Internet Use [Time]. Video Playback [Time]. Audio Playback [Time]. Timetimetime! How long the battery can keep up with the load. That certainly is a physical attribute.

I'm reminded of those "comparison" ads

[Solandri]

Thankfully they seem to have gone out of vogue, but they were ubiquitous back in the 70's and 80's. Basically a product's marketer would take the spec sheets for their product and their competitors' products. Then they'd go through and cherry-pick all the features where their product was the best. Then they'd make an ad based on it. It was incredibly annoying because you'd see ads for a half dozen competing products all (semi-truthfully) claiming to be the BEST in bold letters with the details hidden in the fine print. "This cereal is the BEST! (has 100% recommended dietary allowance of niacin)." "No, this cereal is the BEST! (has 100% recommended dietary allowance of vitamin C)." etc. This was in direct contradiction to the common accepted definition of "best" which implies that only one product can qualify.

The fanboys would also pick up on it too, trying to think of excuses why their list wasn't a list of features that made their chosen product look good compared to the competition, but rather was a list features that mattered. I see nothing has changed in that regard.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"Seriously, if you are the sort of person that must rely on GPS and a four billion dollar infrastructure to get lunch you probably shouldn't be allowed in public unescorted anyway."

There's a difference between 'rely' and 'better convenience'. You'll be happier in life when you figure that out.

Phony "upgrade"

[ClosedSource]

You can't upgrade a product that doesn't yet exist. The original announcement was probably deliberately misleading so they could announce an "improvement" just before the product is made available.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[W2k]

Plays TV shows, movies, music,

So does any PDA with a media player. My ancient Windows Mobile 5 device does this remarkably well, using an SD card for storage (my music collection isn't that big).

Google Maps with traffic and directions,

Also available on any PDA which runs Java. Or any device with a semi-competent web browser. I usually use Opera Mini to surf for directions on my WM device. Which is fast because while old, my device supports 3G, which the iPhone lacks.

syncs with iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Office/Outlook,

Again, old hat. Just replace the first three with the Windows equivalents and this applies to almost all WM devices in existence. The PDA I had a decade ago could also sync my calendar, contacts and e-mail, by the way.

supports third-party development,

That's a joke, right? It's common knowledge by now that the iPhone locks out third-party developers.

on a huge 3.7" screen.

Now I know you're joking. 3.7" isn't huge.

How is that failing on features?

It's failing because despite all the hype, the iPhone offers practically nothing that competing devices hasn't had for years, except the "Apple feel" which frankly will only win over people who don't need anything but a shiny toy anyway. It lacks important features like actual support for third-party developers, 3G and GPS. I for one won't buy a PDA without a fold-out QWERTY keyboard, since I use my handheld a lot for blogging and e-mailing on the go.

What is?

[SuperKendall]

If that's not fanboism what is?

Prediction based on past performance?

Apple has shown they can do a good job with UI on a small device, and furthermore have a lot of demonstration videos that convincingly show the utility of this small device. Is it so unthinkable to say, I have liked products from this company before, I'll trust them with a new purchase now?

Oh good grief

[Gary W. Longsine]

The chart is very clearly focused on a small set of features related to key differentiators of the iPhone. It's designed to attract people, to make them want to learn more about the iPhone. People who are curious will explore the feature set of the relative devices beyond this little chart. A giant chart with every feature of all devices would not attract nor interest anyone.

Your use of the term "fanboy" is unnecessary, as no actual fanboy performing actual fanboy stunts is cited. Attempting to use the propaganda technique of creating a boogeyman, "the evil fanboy" who pollutes your, uh, your advertising world by making excuses for, uh, advertisements, undermines any rational argument you may attempt to make.

Re:I don't see what all the fuss is about.

[Phroggy]

People are all excited about this thing, and I don't understand why. Is it the iPrefix somehow making people think this will be as big a deal as the iPod?

No. I don't care about the iPod. I've never owned one, and don't plan to buy one. If I get an iPhone, I don't expect to use its iPod capabilities very much (although, who knows, I guess that could change when I have it).

The difference here is that the iPod came in at the beginning of a new market, while the iPhone is trying to crack an existing and highly-competitive one.

Yes, that is one difference. That probably explains why the iPod has something like 85% market share while Apple's stated goal is for the iPhone to capture 1%.

And I'm just not seeing anything special.

Then you're really not looking. Forget about the technical specifications for a moment; nobody cares about that. Look at how the user interface works. Go to www.apple.com/iphone [apple.com] and view the Flash walkthroughs. All of them. See how easy it is to e-mail a photo to somebody, how to browse your voicemail messages, how to use Google Maps while a call is on speakerphone. My current phone has all of these features (except for using Google Maps during a call), but the interface is painful and it takes forever to do anything. I would never think of e-mailing someone a photo I've just taken with the built-in camera, because it takes too much time and effort on my phone. I use it to check my e-mail sometimes, but it takes forever, I can only access one e-mail account at a time, and even though I'm using IMAP, it will only show me new messages; I get no access to existing messages or other folders. Apple hasn't stated that the iPhone will definitely support multiple servers and IMAP folders, but I expect that it will, and it will be as easy to set up and use as it is on my iBook.

Let's see.

It's expensive. It only works on one provider. And it's closed platform.

It is expensive, but I support Apple's efforts to wrest control of the American mobile phone market out of the hands of cell phone carriers. It's an uphill battle, and Cingular was the only company willing to allow Apple to do this; everyone else refused. That's the reason it only works on one provider. Hopefully, if the iPhone proves successful and customers on other networks start demanding it, the other carriers will back down.

I am concerned about the iPhone being a closed platform. AJAX widgets are great, and completely appropriate for a lot of the things I would want a phone to do, but they can't be the only solution. I want an SSH client, for example, and that just can't be done in AJAX. A VNC client that I could tunnel through SSH would be a nice bonus. Hopefully in the future, Apple will begin to support third-party development of real native applications for the iPhone. In the mean time, the iPhone can do just about everything my current phone can do, plus a whole bunch.

If it used a SIM card, and had an open API, I'd be a lot more impressed.

As someone else already said, it does use a SIM card.

As it stands, I'll wait for the Openmoko [openmoko.com].

Openmoko does sound promising, but maybe by the time that's ready, Apple will have addressed your other concerns in the next version of the iPhone. Don't buy one yet, but understand that your needs are not the same as the needs of a lot of other people, and the iPhone does everything most people want just fine. This is the first release, and the next one will be even better. Don't write it off.

Re:Look at the phones. Battery life was a secret.

[dfghjk]

I think you have that exactly backwards. The iPhone is limited by it's thickness and weight. Any manufacturer can add a bigger battery if they're willing to sacrifice in those areas. With the iPhone, removing a keyboard that consumes no power and replacing it with a double-sized screen leads to more power consumption, not less. Apple has had to contend with a device that uses more power for its size than its competitors. It is also using an OS not specifically written for low power devices. That doesn't mean that the device will be a failure but it sure indicates the unlikeliness of your claim. It's far from clear that battery life is the secret feature; everything suggests the opposite.

I'll also note that, in true /. fashion, the author claims in the title that the iPhone gets a better battery. Not true, of course, as the iPhone gets better battery *life* *ratings*. I'm curious what the new weight *rating* is especially with glass replacing plastic for the screen.

Re:Pick one.

[jbeaupre]

I've found that most people don't know units at all. Sure, 12 inches in a foot, 10 mm in a cm, stuff like that. But ask people to hold their fingers 1 cm or 1/4 inch apart. For non-integer or fraction sizes, it's worse (3.3 cm for example). Even with technical people, it's hit or miss. If someone comes close, it's because they try to match something known.

For comparing relative sizes, you could probably get away with a mix of cubits, angstroms, and width of a human hair ... as long as you were consistent. Most people, though not all, can still figure out number A is bigger than number B.

Re:What is?

[east coast]

Prediction based on past performance?

I would agree with you if this was a new generation of an existing product instead of a new product with no past history. Again, manufacturers produce shoddy products from time to time. This is true of every manufacturer.

Is it so unthinkable to say, I have liked products from this company before, I'll trust them with a new purchase now?

Ah ha! But that's not what the OP was saying. The OP was saying that it was definitely worth the money without ever even seeing the product (nor having any real market data since none exists!) based on the fact that the Apple brand name was attached to it. To say "It should be a good product given..." is a far cry from "This product is definitely paying over current market value for..."

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"fishthegeek was likely refering to the fact that a dedicated GPS navigation device, such as TomTom* is going to be a better performer for any serious navigation devices than the system stuck in a multirole system such as a phone."

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.

Re:Uh huh

[drinkypoo]

Yes, even back to the original Macintosh, every window had rounded corners, and you could see other windows behind it in the corners. Pretty impressive for an 8 MHz processor, don't you think?

Not really. The Amiga cost far less and did far more because they added some of their own fancy silicon. The Macintosh was a graphics-only computer with no graphics acceleration. And the Amiga 1000, 500, and 2000 (in order of release) all had processors between 7 and 8 MHz.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[earlymon]

GPS is a gimmick unless you are :
A) Plotting cruise missile strikes
B)Lost in a forest being chased by bigfoot

C) Called unexpectedly to Boston, where streets have no signs and you don't have your Garmin or TomTom or whatever
D) Have been avoiding a TomTom, Garvin, whatever waiting to see how things like OpenMoko or an iPhone might do, would give anything to carry one less piece of specialized tech, and have been to Boston and harbor dread at returning.....

Re:Whoever buys the iPhone is dumb.

[Achromatic1978]

• Does it work with a Mac without using 3rd party software? - define 'work'. It comes with a USB cable, and shows up as USB Mass Storage. It supports industry standard Bluetooth OBjectEXchange profiles. So, yes.
• Does it play music from your iTunes library you bought from the iTunes store? - No. No non-Apple item does. This is a "failing" of Apple's licensing policy, not phone featureset.
• Does it have a 2 megapixel camera? - No. 1.2mp. HOWEVER, it is an obsolete model, by several generations. All current HTC products (of which this is one) do.
• Does it have a 3" screen? - 2.8".
• Does it have 4GB of memory? - microSD - can go to 4GB. Mine came with 1GB. (Notwithstanding you meant storage. The device has 64MB of RAM, again, several generations obsolete.
• Does it have 802.11g WiFi? - Yes.
• It might have an accelerometer to detect position, but does it have a proximity sensor or an ambient light sensor? - Current models have ambient light sensor.
• Does it have an 8-hour talk time battery? - Six hour claimed talk time.
• Does the 8125's display match the 320 by 480 pixels (160 ppi) of the iPhone? - 320x240. iPhone definitely wins here.

I don't think the iPhone's "superiority" on the above bullet points is anywhere near as conclusive as you seem to think. I think it's pretty comparable, which is awkward, considering the obsolescence of the comparison model.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[trisweb]

Wow, I thought slimness was a bit obvious. When you get your head too far in statistics I can see how you might lose the obvious... but man.

With my current phone I wish I had an electronics pancake maker press thingie so I could press it as thin as possible, I don't even care how wide or tall it gets as long as it's as thin as possible.... it's all about seamlessly fitting in the pocket and not sticking out and making you look stupid.

And besides, it's not like Apple actually STUDIED phone users or anything, like they would EVER ask people what they want, or look at statistics... I'm sure they did. If I were a designer, I'd have looked for a good balance between width and height and thickness, and I'm sure they did too. The phone looks both slim and not too wide, I think that could be a good combination.

Anyway, just because there are a lack of statistics about it doesn't mean they didn't design it well, or collect their own stats. I highly doubt it was just for the advertising emphasis.

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[trisweb]

Nah, he's right, the characteristics of the imaging sensors are mostly what hold the camera phones back. They're tiny, pack a ton of pixels in a very small area, and therefore have a very low SNR, so they capture lots of noise and not much light (hence, they're not the best at being "cameras"). This is probably because the sensors themselves are so small, and the photosites on the CCDs are proportionally smaller. In that case, packing 2 million pixels into an equal space as 5 million will give you more than twice as many photons per photosite and should increase the SNR accordingly, giving higher quality images regardless of the optics.

Lens quality being equal, the 2 MP sensor will probably be better (unless of course you really need the extra resolution, which is highly unlikely when using a telephone as a camera...).

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[shmlco]

"It's failing because despite all the hype, the iPhone offers practically nothing that competing devices hasn't had for years..."

I could rephrase that to "It's failing because despite all the hype, the iPod offers practically nothing that competing devices haven't [sic] had for years." And look where that got them.

"...except the "Apple feel"..."

Which is the point you've missed entirely. Yes, many phones may have done some or all of those things before. Doesn't matter. The iPhone, like the iPod and the Mac, is about integration, and about doing those things consistently, seamlessly, and WELL. It's about elegance, and as such about NOT cramming in the kitchen sink, just because you can. Some people get that. Others don't.

You'd also do well to remember that it's merely the first iPhone. Future versions may have some or all of those features you deem to be necessary for success.. Then again, future versions may have FEWER features (e.g. nano).

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[Firethorn]

Aha! [wikipedia.org]

Basically, it sounds like many cellphones don't have the computing power necessary(or aren't set up for it) to do GPS calculations, so it transmits the information to a server that does the calcs for it. So off the verizon network - no server to do the GPS calcs, no GPS coordinates.

Re:Whoever buys the iPhone is dumb.

[Shag]

Sooo... you're saying the 4-8 gigs of something in the iPhone isn't Random Access Memory? What is it?

Re:Worst comparison chart EVER

[gig]

People are crazy over the iPhone because it has the features that it has. How do other phones compare to the features of the iPhone? That is what is answered here. It isn't a comprehensive journalistic look at all of the various features of all phones. It's from Apple PR, not Consumer Reports.

If Apple thought this feature set was important enough and desired enough to make a whole phone around them, surely Apple PR thinks they are important enough to compare to the rest of the industry? Same feature set applied once by Apple designers and engineers and then now by Apple PR.

No, they don't compare Java compatibility or GPS, those are pocket calculator features that require glasses just to use.

You should be picking on these other phones for still sucking so much. Try and defend them in 3-5 years. Wi-Fi is coming up on 10 years old and these phones don't have it yet? Oh yeah, they don't have real Web browsers either. Pick on that. That is a shame, to have that much computing power and connectivity not be Web-compatible. BSD and Firefox are FREE. It's not rocket science.

As far as width and height goes, they fit in your hand, and you can compare that in the photos. What you can't see in the photos is thickness, can it fit in your pocket? I would bet the iPhone's width and height were basically a constant during the whole production, based on the screen size, but they worked to make it thinner and thinner, they almost got it down to a centimeter. Unless you make the screen smaller how do you suggest that the iPhone could reasonably be smaller? There are phones with half the features that are thicker.

Re:Drastically underestimating the power of....

[stewbacca]

No one here gets it. You people are all caught up on features and specs and parts and price, but it's the whole picture that makes an amazing product.

And this, my friends, is succinctly why people have been bashing Apple since 1984. They don't get it, and for some reason, find extreme bliss in blabbering on about specs and dollars (to sooth their aching insecurities, I suppose).

What the iPhone offers that nothing lese does

[LKM]

A user interface that does not suck.

Really, all these feature comparisons are meaningless. People aren't going to buy this phone because it has some innovative new feature. It doesn't. It does, however, seem to have an UI that does not drive you insane. Which immediately makes it better than pretty much any other smartphone in a lot of people's minds.

How to get an iPhone for 250 bucks.

[luckingfame]

1.) buy 2 shares of apple right now, at $124. 2.) Wait a month or two and sell the shares when they're at $250. 3.) Sell stock and buy iPhone. You know Apple stock is going to explode.