Apple Announces iPhone

The Macworld Expo kicked off today in San Francisco with the keynote address of Apple CEO who, along with Apple TV, announced the arrival of the iPhone. I’m way too excited to be writing this post right now so I’m just gonna jump right into the specs.

A 3.5-inch 480 x 320 touchscreen display with multi-touch support and a proximity sensor to turn off the screen when it’s close to your face, 2 megapixel cam, 4GB or 8 GB of storage, Bluetooth 2.0, auto-detecting WiFi, and quad-band GSM radio with EDGE. It runs OS X with support for Widgets, Google Maps, Safari, and iTunes with CoverFlow. A partnership with Yahoo will allow all iPhone customers to hook up with free push IMAP email (similar to the functionality of my current TMail account). Apple says 5 hours of battery life for talk or video and 16 hours in music mode, with no word on standby time yet. The 4GB iPhone is a Cingular exclusive for $499 on a two-year contract, 8GB for $599. The iPhone will be available in June, Europe in fourth quarter, Asia in 2008.

I couldn’t be happier on the timing of this announcement. I was planning on putting some of the money I’ve been saving from the $30 for 30 toward a Zune, but now I am going to save up for one of these come June, as this will accomplish all of my needs, iPod, mobile phone, and pocket computer.

The major downfall obviously is its exclusivity to Cingular. I am hoping to unlock and use with my T-Mobile when the time comes, but if it means I will suffer a loss of any functionality I might have to put aside my dislike for Cingular and sacrifice my pride for an iPhone on a Cingular plan. Even Carin was impressed. I pitched the idea to her during the day while at work and she immediately shot it down. However, upon viewing the iPhone this evening and me outlining some of its functionality she too is now sold on it.  June can’t get here soon enough!