iPhone FAQ : Basics

What is iPhone?

iPhone is a cellular phone created by Apple. iPhone combines an iPod music/video player, a cell phone, and an internet web and email client into one device. iPhone is intended to compete in the “smartphone” market. Two models will be sold for $499 (with 4 GB of storage) or $599 (for 8 GB of storage).

How many songs/videos can iPhone hold?

There are two iPhone models, one with 4 GB of storage and one with 8 GB of storage. Some of the iPhone’s storage is used for its operating system, so not all of this space is available to store songs and videos. About 300 MB is used by the OS, and our 8 GB model had 7.24 GB of free space before it was set up by iTunes.

What OS does it run?

iPhone runs a version of OS X, similar to the desktop Mac OS X operating system.

Is it a Mac? Can it run Mac programs?

No. iPhone lacks many of the programmers’ interfaces required to create a Mac program, and has a radically different user interface from a desktop Mac.

Does it use an Intel processor?

Disassembly photos indicate iPhone uses an ARM-type processor with just 1 Gigabit (125 MBytes) of RAM, complementing the 4GB or 8GB of flash memory. (ARM processors feature very low power consumption and were used in Apple’s Newton MessagePad, iPods (other than the Shuffle) and many current cell phones.)

Can I run other programs on iPhone?

No. Only the programs supplied by Apple for iPhone can run. Some developers are creating web-based applications that will run in iPhone’s web browser.

Are there games for iPhone like there are for iPods?

No.

How bright is the screen? Is it viewable in sunlight?

iPhone adjusts its brightness for ambient conditions. We found it usable in direct sunlight, although videos and photos appeared washed out.

Does it sync with my Mac/PC?

Yes, iTunes provides synchronization services for Safari bookmarks on Mac or PC, Internet Explorer bookmarks on PC, Mac Mail/Outlook/Outlook Express email accounts, iTunes music and video, Mac Address Book and Outlook contacts, and photos from iPhoto or a PC folder.

Can it sync wirelessly?

No, it must be docked like an iPod to sync.

What is the color and material of the back of the iPhone? In some pics it looks white, in others it looks matte silver with a shiny Apple logo. What is it?

The back of iPhone is satin-finish metal, except for the bottom fifth, which is black plastic. The antennas are located behind this black panel, similar to the Motorola RAZR’s innovative antenna design.

Roll Your Coaster, Iphone Style

The boys at Brazil-based design company Meninos really have a thing for wrapping technology in art.

First they created cases for your external hard drive that made it look like anything from a box of Frosted Flakes to Jules Whitfield in PULP FICTION.  Now they’ve turned your iPhone icons into a collection of drink coasters to keep your coffee table immaculate.

The coasters are made from sturdy MDF plywood, wrapped with a premium vinyl decal, then varnished for added protection. There’s even a thin layer of rubber on the underside for no-slide goodness.

The full set of sixteen coasters is only US$60.00 at Meninos’ online shop. Show your iPhone pride at your next wine-tasting or coffee klatch.

How Not To Submit An App to The App Store

Erica Sadun over at ArsTechnica offers prospective iPhone app developers a checklist of four things to check before submission — any one of which will eighty-six your application in record time:

1. Your Large And Small Icons Should Match. You need a 512 pixel x 512 pixel version for the App store display, and a 57×57 version for the installed app itself.  No match?  Your submission gets thrown out the window.  (C’mon, isn’t this why you downloaded Photoshop in the first place?)
2. Don’t “Branch to Fishkill.” Erica calls it “The 404 of Doom.”  In other words, if the app or the support documention has a web link, MAKE SURE THE PAGE IN THAT LINK IS ACTIVE BEFORE YOU SUBMIT.  “Page Not Found” = “App Not Approved.”
3. “Beta” Is a Four-Letter Word. Customers pay for finished products, not buggy test editions.  The App Store has a strict no-beta policy.  That means not only must the app be version 1.0 or higher, but if the word “beta” shows up ANYWHERE in the docs or code — bum’s rush, pal.
4. Accessories MUST Be Authorized. If it plugs into an iPhone, Apple wants to know — and know that it’s supposed to plug into said iPhone.

Erica learned some of these lessons the hard way: her voice recognition app languished in approval hell for three months before being reject.  The offense?  Suggesting the use of an unauthorized external microphone (on a first-gen iPod Touch).  By the time she corrected the app, enough vox-recog apps had already flooded the market.

News

Flickr Mobile Gets Video, Picture Upgrades

Flickr, the online picture-hosting site, has a slogan: “Share your photos. Watch the world.”  And now, their mobile site is poised to make the experience even better.

Flickr Mobile – perhaps buoyed by the news that, this year alone, nearly a beeellion handsets with built in cameras were sold worldwide, and many of them already uploading content to Flickr — has introduced a slew of new features, targeting not just those snazzy iPhones but any handset with a state-of-the-art browser.  First and foremost (what Flickr says is “the sexy part”), iPhone, iPod touch and Android owners can now view videos on Flickr’s mobile site.

You will also be able to comment on, and mark as favorite, photos from your mobile phone. In addition, there have been improvements in browsing and searching for particular photos.

Not only that — by creating an address book entry with the email “flickr,” you can shoot a picture and instantly email it to Flickr.

iPhone Rumors

Bloomberg.com is reporting the rumors of iPhones being sold through Wal-Mart are even closer to fruition.  Contacts in five California stores maintain that the super-discount chain will offer the handset by the end of December, and employees are already being trained on how to sell them.

This comes on the heels of Steve Jobs’ announcement in September that the Best Buy big-box electronics chain would offer iPhones, up to that point the exclusive domain of Apple and AT&T wireless phone stores.

Not surprisingly, no one from Apple, AT&T, or Wal-Mart would officially confirm or deny the reports.

The big question, in fact, is: which iPhone model will Wally World offer, and how much?  One analyst suggests the now-discontinued 4 GB unit would be a perfect fit:

But the odds of iPhone availability through Wal-Mart seems a certainty, as does a timeframe of somewhere between just before Christmas and just before New Year’s Eve.

BeeJiveIM: All Messaging, All The Time

BeeJiveIM is a multi-platform (Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and now Iphone) mobile app that lets you keep in touch with your instant-messaging friends — even on different chat clients.

It advertises the ability to simultaneously IM on AIM, iChat, MobileMe, MSN/Windows Live, Yahoo!, MySpace, GoogleTalk, ICQ, and Jabber.  Even more clever is their messaging technique: sending instant messages over your data plan and reducing text messages used, so your SMS charges don’t blow up.

At US$15.99 from the Itunes store, it’s not the cheapest app out there — but recently-posted reviews at iTunes seem to concur it’s worth the freight.

Quick Tip: iPhone Home Button Tricks

The iPhone’s home button is more functional than you think - it’s not just there to take you back to the home page.

iPhone Home Button Trick 1

There is a common misconception that you must press the “Sleep/Wake” button to bring your iPhone out of sleep mode. You can press either your home button or your sleep/wake button to wake your sleeping iPhone and bring up the “Slide to unlock” screen.

iPhone Home Button Trick 2

You can assign several functions to “double-clicking” your Home button. Simply go to Settings -> General -> Home Button. You should arrive at this menu:

You can choose whether double clicking your iPhone takes you to your “Favorite” contacts, or brings up iPod controls. While phone favorites is convenient, setting it to iPod mode allows you to start music no matter what else you’re doing. In other words, it brings up iPod controls (play, pause, skip, volume) over whatever other application you are running (Safari included).

Setting iPod Controls to “On” means that if you already have music playing, double clicking the Home button will bring up iPod controls even if you have the Home Button set to “phone favorites”.

iPhone Home Button Trick 3

Double clicking the home button from the “Slide to unlock” screen will always bring up iPod controls, right over the “Slide to unlock” screen. You can control your iPod without even unlocking your phone!

There were lots of complaints to Apple customer support regarding some users of the Iphone 3g having problems with their Iphone while updating to 2.0.1. In this case, every feature on your phone freezes, nothing is responding and you are standing there wondering what went wrong.

Error like this one pops up, ” The ipod “ipod” could not be updated. An unknown error has occured (-1).

Note: Even though the reason why an Iphone crashed while updating to 2.0.1 in unknown, it might be because Itunes is not updated to its most recent version, 7.7.1.

Follow these step by step guide to restore your Iphone to working order.

1.  Your iPhone must be disconnected from the USB chord (there is  need to “eject” in iTunes because the error automatically turns off your Iphone)

2.  Press and hold down the Home button and the Sleep button for over 10 seconds. You will see a white light flash. The screen will shut off. Continue holding the buttons until the screen comes back on.

3.  At this point, “Connect to iTunes” screen will be displayed on your screen.

4.  Now Leave your phone as it is - Be certain that  it’s not connected to your computer.

5.  Close all running programs on your computer, including itunes.

6.  Uninstall (via Control Panel) “Apple Software Update” and “Apple Mobile Device Support”

7.  Once the above programs has being removed, uninstall “Quick Time” and then “iTunes”

8.  After the uninstallations are completed, now restart your computer

9.  Be sure you have no “QuickTime” or iTunes” folders left onyour computer. If you’re on a PC, go to  C>>Program Files, and search for “iTunes” or “QuickTime”. Delete the folders.

10.  Now go to http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ and download iTunes.

11. Run the installation for  iTunes and QuickTime.

12. Using the Itunes icon on your desktop, open iTunes and connect your iPhone.

13. There will be a pop up message notifying you that you “must restore your iPhone”.

14. Click restore

15. Give your Iphone some time for the restore process to finish

16. Once the first restore has being completed, itunes will ask you whether you want to treat it as a new phone or restore from a backup

17.  Hopefully you have a  backed up for your iPhone, if not, you will lose all your contacts,video, music, photos, and apps.

And this process should bring your Iphone back to from the dead.

Note: If you have not yet updated to 2.0.1, it is very important to make sure you have iTunes 7.7.1 first. To check, open iTunes and go to Help >> About iTunes. Update if necessary.

1. Soft Reset

Press and hold the home botton and sleep botton to restart your iphone. There will be a white flash on the screen, the screen will turn off and then back on. Keep holding till the screen turns back on.

2.  Set Parentall Controls

Certain restrictions or parental controls can be enabled  on your iPhone. You can block YouTube, iTunes, Explicit lyrics or the App Store by just going to settings, General, Restrictions.

3.  Save any Image from Safari

Images from the web can be saved to your camera roll by simply pressing  and holding the image. There will be a  menu asking you if you want to ”Save Image” or “Cancel”. Once the image is in your camera roll, you can use this image as your wallpaper.

4.  Scrolling to the top of the Page

Using any application on your Iphone, including safari, you can scroll to the top of the page automatically just by tapping on the “top bar” which has the serive bar, time and battery. In Safari, this will not only bring you to the top of the page, but also brings up the URL bar.

5.  Domain Resolution

If you want to type a URL in Safari, there is no need  to type the “.com” or “www”.For example, for www.google.com just put in ”google” in the URL box. Note: You must have your search engine set to Google, and not Yahoo.

More tips to Come

The iPhone is a new cell phone that allows you to make calls by just tapping a number or name in your address book. A call log or a favorites list. In order for you to set up your iPhone, you will need an account with apple’s iTunes Store.

Availability
Apple intends to make the phone available in Europe in Q4 2007 and in Asia in 2008. Apple has released a Guided Tour video explaining all of iPhone’s boasts through a series of simple demonstrations. Apple has confirmed an optimized version of the Mac OS X operating system (without unnecessary components) will run on the iPhone, although differences between the operating system (OS X) running on Macs and the iPhone have not been formally explained. Apple intends to offer a smooth method for updating the iPhone’s operating system, in a similar fashion to the way that Mac OS X and iPods are updated, and touts this as an advantage compared to other cell phones. Apple also announced that its goal is to capture 1% of the global mobile phone market, which would be approximately 10 million units being sold in the first full calendar year of iPhone availability. Apple’s posted a twenty-minute guided tour of iPhone boasts on its website.

Safari
The iPhone has built-in WiFi, with which it will be able to access the Internet (through a wireless network) via a altered version of the Safari web browser. Other boasts include quad-band world phone support, a 2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth, a speakerphone, e-mail and a Safari Web browser.

Applications
When it begins shipping on June 29, the iPhone will run applications created with Web 2. Such apps came along even before the release of the iPhone; the first being “OneTrip”, a program intended to keep track of the user’s shopping list. Applications must be created in Ajax or JavaScript to maintain device security. It’s unknown which business applications will be available for the iPhone. Widget type applications could work very well on a mobile device.

Conclusion
The iPhone includes an SMS application program with a predictive QWERTY soft keyboard that prevents and rectifies errors, making it easier and more efficient to use than the small plastic keyboards on alot of smartphones. iPhone is radical, not a big storm coming from Steve Jobs. iPhone is excellent, and it’s only the beginning. Find an Apple Store near you and see iPhone firsthand.