The Doc’s Lab: iPhone

Getting a scoop on today’s technologyDren AhmetajChronicle Staff WriterInnovation continues to change the world. Welcome to another edition of the Doc’s Lab; hope you all had a great summer and are ready for another terrific year. In this edition of the Doc’s Lab, we will be looking at the Apple’s iPhone which has gotten a lot of attention since it was announced back in February. Apple Inc. is known for their popular ipod music players, among other technologies. The iPhone is truly amazing by combing the ipod and a phone into one but is it truly worth the $500 price tag? Let’s see what this beast is packing.The iPhone comes in two versions which are the 4GB model and the 8GB model, the only difference being is more memory and $100 more for the 8GB model. The design of the iPhone is very attractive and slim. One of the many unique features of the iPhone is the touch screen which takes up the whole 3.5 inch screen. The pixel Resolution of the phone is 480×320 is also impressive. The iPhone supports photos, music and videos for multimedia purposes. Switching from the iPhone to the integrated ipod, there is nothing out of the ordinary. The whole ipod is controlled by touched screen. The user simply touches a song which he/she wants to play and plays. The user can also organize play lists, etc. The music can be played through the ear buds or through the external speakers so you can let everyone else listen in to your music. The music and video quality are good compared to recent fifth generation iPod. The iPhone also works with itunes software for managing your music. In the photo section, since the iPhone is a multi-touch screen, a user can actually zoom in a photo by simply moving your fingers across and vice versa to zoom out is just one example. It also has a 2 mega pixel camera. It features Bluetooth 2.0 which supports wider ranges and faster transfers. For text messaging and emailing this is where the iPhone really blooms by implementing a virtual keyboard. It is like typing with a keyboard and very easy to use. For accessing the web, Safari browser is truly remarkable. It displays websites in the way they are seen if a user was to access the same website from a computer. The only downfall is the web browser doesn’t support flash or java. On with most important feature of all, using it as a phone. The call quality is good but not excellent. The iPhone Visual voicemail is the unique feature this device has. The voicemail is organized in which it displays recipient’s phone number and time. What’s so incredible is that a user can listen to the message of the any individual by the push of a button without having to call voicemail and going through them one by one. The battery life varies depending how a user uses the iPhone. It includes 8 hours of talk, 24hours of music playback and 6 hours of video (if a user decides to use it for that specific feature only).The iPhone truly is a revolutionary device but as with all the good there is also some downfalls to this device. The phone has all basic features as many cell phones which are alarm clock, calendar, etc. What really disappointed me is that a user can’t use an MP3 file to be used as a ringbone, only polyphonic. The web experience is good if a user uses in wi-fi based network, if not a user is stuck using the much slower AT&T edge network. The call quality doesn’t always satisfy. There is also a hot of ways to “pimp” the iPhone out which includes adding features created by users. In the end the iPhone is indeed a remarkable piece of technology and extremely user friendly. The Doc gives the iPhone 4.3/5 bear paws.