About the iPhone in Helsinki

We had a meeting at the Helsinki Airport. The expert was a little late. I was reading e-mails and blog posts. “Some of the smaller details make the iPhone more impressive,” someone wrote. “The 3.5" wide screen ratio screen with the highest resolution yet for an iPod. It has wireless and EDGE for Internet, using a fully-featured Safari.” I read and scratch my head. “Is that going to be enough?” I find myself thinking.

“From partnership with Yahoo it uses Yahoo search and Yahoo IMAP email. From a partnership with Google, it uses Google search and Google Maps (with built-in GPS).” The report informs.

• It supports Widgets. “What is / are Widgets?” I asked myself.
  
  
• It has an accelerometer to orientate the screen as portrait or landscape. “What is that good for?”
  
  
• It has a sensor that knows when you put the phone up to your ear to turn off the screen and any music you are playing to take a call. “I guess that is a cute little feature.”
  
  
• The phone capabilities, like voice mail and conferencing, have an interface to make it easy to use--skip to your fifth voice mail without listening to the others. “Voice mail is a new world. It’s very important to have the ability scan the voice mails.”
  
  
• The battery has five hours of battery life, stretched to 16 hours for music. “OK, I get it. Big screen and four hours of battery life when phoning and 16 hours for music. Not bad. It means half a working day. I need to get it plugged before lunch. But I don’t call people all the time. The battery will last for one or two days. Maybe a week.”

"Hello," he said. "Sorry for being late. There were some problems at the airport in Paris."

I said, "No problem, I'd some time to look at the iPod features. It will be interesting to get your opinions." We were walking to the parking area.

As we got into the car he started talking about the new design features available for future phones. "What do you think about LG Prada mobile," he asked me. "It will be available in Europe before iPhone."

"I know, the high-end designer phones are going to change the market. First the phone's got slimmer and slimmer, smaller and smaller. Now the race is changing. The YouTube generation wants phones that are good for viewing."

"You're so right!" He said. "We tend to think that a phone is used for phoning. Yes, that's true to some extent. The multimedia aspect is so new that we can't grasp it yet. People on the move have time to listen. Here the iPod feature comes into the picture."

"We have been thinking along the same routes." I responded. "Bloggers will not have to write their blogs in the future. I think we will make photoblogs and videoblogs. We can send videoreports to our partners. Complex things can be described with short video clips."

"Yeah, that's a good point." He said. "Mobile workers can write the things they need to write when returning to the hotel or to the office."

"Another thing," I said. "Maybe we will see a renaissance of the secretaries. We can send podcasts to call centres where they are typed and edited. We get professional report writers. They can be located anywhere on the globe," I concluded.