iPod is dead, long live the iPhone!

Well not quite. iPods are great at what they do and will certainly sell well for several years to come. Today, however, Apple Inc. made a big step towards device convergence by introducing its iPhone (just like we predicted not too long ago).

It is widely agreed that Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple posesses a reality distortion field. His brilliantly produced keynotes (the apparent simplicity and clearness comes at a high price) make everyone think something along the lines of "Why didn't another company come up with this before? The idea is so obvious! I'm getting this gadget the day it comes out!". It doesn't matter if someone else thought of the same thing earlier (recall our coverage of Chamelephones), if there are numerous problems that have yet to be addressed or if the price is painfully high. Steve makes it seem like the new era is here and anyone can be a part of it.

This is not to say the upcoming iPhone is not innovative. It is a brave step in the right direction, a world's first and a technological marvel. The list of features makes any geek drool - touchscreen, OS X, Wi-Fi, 8 GB of memory, a variety of sensors... and that's just the beginning. It's as slim as Samsung's Ultra series phones, as stylish as a MacBook Pro and more expensive than John's brand new laptop (the latter didn't require a two-year contract either). It has widgets, an excellent screen and can switch into landscape mode if the user has it positioned horizontally.
What does it not have?

No 3G. Nokia was quite surprised by this, but it makes sense. It's very easy to add this functionality once it's required and the US market (where the iPhone will be released first) won't be saturated by third-generation networks for quite some time.

No GPS. Not to say it's a necessary feature, but location awareness is almost a must for next-gen applications.

No over-the air music downloads or iTunes integration. Hopefully, a patch will solve that.

No third-party apps (not even J2ME, maybe). This is a biggie... I want custom widgets!

More importantly, what are the implications of this announcement?

 Even though Cingular has exclusive access to the iPhone until 2009, I'm sure Apple will find away to provide devices to anyone who's willing to pay the price - otherwise the competition will steal the market. So the cellular carriers will have to provide better data plans or lose their customers who want to use the iPhone freely.

Nokia, Samsung and other major players will have to rush their versions of touchscreen devices within the next year. Even if it's not perfectly usable, the iPhone makes all other phones look outdated... And noone wants an "old" phone, even if it performs!

The mobile software developers will face a tough time with a lot of rapid change. If the iPhone proves to be successful, noone's going to be interested in traditional j2me applications. New tools, new environments and paradigm shifts won't be easy, but in the long run we will see better applications.

Good luck, iPhone... See you soon!