UPDATE: Jobs announced that the price of the iPhone will be $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB model--that's WITH the two year contract through Cingular. Also, the iPhone will be an exclusive for Cingular through 2009, however, Europe will see it launch in Q4 and there is that recent ruling about the legality of unlocking phones... hmm. The phone will also be WiFi enabled, run for 5 hours between battery charges, and include a sleek, black pen-cap-like BlueTooth headset. The earbud headphones will also include a mic now.
Here's the original post...
As if awakening from a Jobsian nightmare in which the world was awash in non-Apple branded, ear-budless, talk-centric mobile phones, today's historic speech by messianic consumer icon Steven Jobs allowed every cellco subcriber to breathe a collective sigh of relief. With one handset to unite them all, the entire human race thanks Jobs for ushering in a new era of world peace and prosperity.
Steve Jobs announced the "iPhone" today, yes, he's going to call it that. The device is also an "Internet communicator" and a wide-screen video iPod all rolled into one. The iPhone will run on OS X, on Cingular's network, and have no keypad or buttons, just a large touch screen. As Jobs said "Let's not use a stylus, we're going to use the best pointing device in the world--our fingers. We have invented a new technology called multi-touch. It works like magic, you don't need a stylus, far more accurate than any interface ever shipped, it ignores touches, multi-finger gestures, and BOY have we patented it!"
Other interesting features includes a sensor that can tell if you are holding it in portrait or landscape mode, a sensor that detects lighting in your environment and adjusts the screen's brightness accordingly, and a sensor that can tell when you hold it up to your ear so it shuts down the screen to save power. The phone is only 11.6 mm thick, but boasts a 3.5 inch screen with 160 ppi resolution. -Brian