Any Rumour of WHEN the iPod-phone?

CraigNB

Contrary to recent reports, Engadget says that Apple's rumored "iPhone" may appear as early as August.
A reader is reporting to us that a coworker's tech-unsavvy friend, who is regularly hired by Apple to do marketing photo shoots, was recently brought on to take some shots of "the sleekest, sexiest damn phone he's ever seen."

It has been well-established that Apple has been working on an Apple-branded phone for some time, however the release date has been difficult to pinpoint. Recently, various patents (1, 2) have been uncovered regarding Apple's cell phone technology and Peter Oppenheimer made comments during Apple's Q3 2006 conference call virtually acknowledging Apple's work on the product, stating "We're not sitting around doing nothing" with regard to cell phones.

Update: Engadget points to an AppleInsider post revealing that the June 28th iPod updater package has some Phone related text strings such as "t_feature_app_PHONE_APP, kPhoneSignalStrength, clPhoneCallModel, clPhoneCallHistoryModel, prPhoneSettingsMenu".

mjmoonwalker

How about us international users? Well, there's never any word about this. It's not even "confirmed" that there's going to be an 'iPhone', but it's just factless speculation. I hope that it's going to break out of its little Cingular shell, or have Cingular and Verizon combine or something because it's a pain not having good reception on one (Cingular) and not SIM-card compatible with the other (Verizon).

CraigNB

I heard NOT verizon OR cingular cause their too worried about losing $ on ringsales but PROB T-Mobile cause I geuss they dont sell as many ringtones so hope to make up what theyd be losing on the huge apple phone sales....I have T-Mobile now anyway so im set haha (Sidekick3)

mjmoonwalker

(Originally Posted by bobb-mini)

Don't people in Asia carry like 3 phones on their belts?

iPhone, when available, is gonna sell like hot cakes.

Haha yeah they do. On Wikipedia it states that most of them carry more than one...

Probably one for one ringtone and the other for another. Hah.

Skwidspawn

Well, there have been some interesting allusions to the new "iPhone." An article written today in Businessweek (and on the iLounge home page) had references to some: http://businessweek.com/technology/c...823_726985.htm

[quote]"iPHONE"? First, there were the comments on Aug. 9 by Lions Gate Films (LGF) CEO Jon Feltheimer and the company

jpr100

I doubt T-Mobile USA will be the original carrier for this highly anticipated phone ..

1) T-Mobile is way to small to launch this powerful device (assuming it will be packed with 3G, which T-Mobile does not offer to the general customers yet) T-mobile has half the number of customers as Cingular does, which would limit the sales to this device (I for one would never go back to T-Mobile not even for the Apple phone.. T-mobile couldn't pay me to go back to their bad service)

2) Apple aims for the best .. which, in my opinion, excludes T-mobile

3) if you've looked at past activity between Apple and Cingular you would see this pattern to be obvious -- ROKR e1, SLVR, RAZR v3i, then the future launch of Cingular's mobile music service .. which may include iTunes in addition to Yahoo and Napster (i believe)

Therefore, T-Mobile would be out as a contender. Verizon, also large is CDMA and already has a fully operational music service. Sprint Nextel is bigger than T-Mobile but is also out, seeing that it is a CDMA carrier and very small. Alltel is not even a consideration.

bootsie

(Originally Posted by jpr100)

I have T-mobile, I want to switch to Cingular just because I like their phones better, but there is no way that is going to happen. I am not going from 1500 min/month to 450 at the same price, I would be crazy to do that! Plus I have really liked T-mobile, their service has been great for me. How does cingular even manage to keep customers with a difference like that?!

I do not like their phones however, I want a phone similar to the RAZR (i.e. slim and cool) but I have heard a lot of bad about them, Cingular has the cool SYNC by samsung, that is the phone that I really want!