In This Chapter
Looking at the big picture
Touring the outside of the iPhone
Checking out the iPhone's applications
Congratulations. You've selected one of the most incredible handheld devices we've ever seen. Of course, the iPhone is one heck of a wireless telephone, but it's actually four awesome handheld devices in one. In addition to being a killer cell phone, it's a gorgeous widescreen video iPod, a decent 2-megapixel digital camera (original iPhone and iPhone 3G) or 3-megapixel camera/camcorder (iPhone 3GS), as well as the smallest, most powerful Internet communications device yet.
In this chapter, we offer a gentle introduction to all four devices that make up your iPhone, plus overviews of its revolutionary hardware and software features.
The iPhone has many best-of-class features, but perhaps its most unusual feature is the lack of a physical keyboard or stylus. Instead, it has a 3½-inch super-high-resolution touchscreen (160 pixels per inch if you care about such things) that you operate using a pointing device you're already intimately familiar with: your finger.
And what a display it is. We venture that you've never seen a more beautiful screen on a handheld device in your life.
Another feature that knocked our socks off was the iPhone's built-in sensors. An accelerometer detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape mode and adjusts what's on the display accordingly. A proximity sensor detects when the iPhone gets near your face, so it can turn off the display to save power and prevent accidental touches by your cheek. And a light sensor adjusts the display's brightness in response to the current ambient lighting situation. (Let's see your Blackberry do that!)
In this section, we take a brief look at some of the iPhone's features, broken down by product category.
On the phone side, the iPhone synchronizes with the contacts and calendars on your Mac or PC. It includes a full-featured QWERTY soft, or virtual, keyboard, which makes typing text easier than ever before — for some folks. Granted, the virtual keyboard takes a bit of time to get used to. But we think that many of you eventually will be whizzing along at a much faster pace than you thought possible on a mobile keyboard of this type.
The 2-megapixel (iPhone and iPhone 3G) or 3-megapixel (iPhone 3GS) digital camera is accompanied by a decent photo management application, so taking and managing digital photos (and videos on iPhone 3GS) is a pleasure rather than the nightmare it can be on other phones. Plus, you can automatically synchronize iPhone photos and videos with the digital photo library on your Mac or PC. Okay, we still wish the iPhone camera took better photos and shot better video but it is still much better than most other phone cameras.
Finally, one of our favorite phone accoutrements is visual voicemail. (Try saying that three times fast.) This feature lets you see a list of voicemail messages and choose which ones to listen to or delete without being forced to deal with every message in your voice mailbox in sequential order. Now, that's handy!
Those are merely a few of the iPhone's excellent telephony features. Because we still have many more chapters to go, we'll put the phone (and camera) coverage on hold for now (pun intended).
We agree with Steve Jobs on this one: The iPhone is a better iPod than almost any that Apple has ever made. (Okay, we can quibble about the iPod Touch or wanting more storage.) You can enjoy all your existing iPod content — music, audiobooks, audio and video podcasts, music videos, television shows, and movies — on the iPhone's gorgeous high-resolution color display, which is bigger, brighter, and richer than any iPod display that came before it.
Bottom line: If you can get the content — be it video, audio, or whatever — into iTunes on your Mac or PC, you can synchronize it and watch or listen to it on your iPhone.
But wait — there's more! Not only is the iPhone a great phone and a stellar iPod, but it's also a full-featured Internet communications device with — we're about to drop a bit of industry jargon on you — a rich HTML e-mail client that's compatible with most POP and IMAP mail services, with support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync. (For more on this topic, see Chapter 11.) Also on board is a world-class Web browser (Safari) that, unlike on other phones, makes Web surfing fun and easy.
Another cool Internet feature is Maps, a killer mapping application based on Google Maps. By using GPS (3G or 3GS hardware) or triangulation (on the original iPhone), it can determine your location, let you view maps and satellite imagery, and obtain driving directions and traffic information regardless of where in the United States you happen to be. You can also find businesses such as gas stations, pizza restaurants, hospitals, and Apple stores with just a few taps. And the Compass application (3GS only) not only displays your current GPS coordinates but also orients Maps to show the direction you're facing. Let's see your Nokia do that!
You might also enjoy using Stocks, a built-in application that delivers near real-time stock quotes and charts any time and any place, or Weather, another built-in app that obtains and displays the weather forecast for as many cities as you like.
The Internet experience on an iPhone is far superior to the Internet experience on any other handheld device.
One last thing before we proceed. Here's a list of everything you need before you can actually use your iPhone:
An original iPhone, iPhone 3G, or the new iPhone 3GS
A wireless contract with AT&T (formerly Cingular) in the U.S.
An iTunes Store account
Internet access (required) — broadband wireless Internet access recommended
Plus you need one of the following:
A Mac with a USB 2.0 port; Mac OS X version 10.4.11 or later; and iTunes 8.2 or later
A PC with a USB 2.0 port; Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later; and iTunes 8.2 or later
The iPhone is a harmonious combination of hardware and software. In this section, we take a brief look at what's on the outside. In the next section, we peek at the software.
On the top of your iPhone, you'll find the headset jack, the SIM card tray, and the Sleep/Wake button, as shown in Figure 1-1:
The Sleep/Wake button: This button is used to lock or unlock your iPhone and to turn your iPhone on or off. When your iPhone is locked, you can still receive calls and text messages but nothing happens if you touch its screen. When your iPhone is turned off, all incoming calls go directly to voicemail.
SIM card tray: The SIM card tray is where you remove or replace the SIM card inside your iPhone.
Headset jack: The headset jack lets you plug in the included iPhone headset, which looks a lot like white iPod earbuds. Unlike the iPod earbuds, however, the iPhone headset has a microphone so that you can talk as well as listen.
Warning
The headset jack on the original iPhone is recessed, so most third-party earphones (such as those made by Shure, Etymotic, and Future Sonics) won't work with it. However, you can buy an adapter (starting at around $11) from companies such as Belkin that enables you to use just about any brand or style of earphones you like with your iPhone. Fortunately, Apple listened to customers. The iPhone 3G and 3GS don't have a recessed headset jack and don't require an adapter.
On the bottom of your iPhone, you'll find the speaker, dock connector, and microphone, as shown in Figure 1-2:
Speaker: The speaker is used by the iPhone's built-in speakerphone and plays audio — music or video soundtracks — if no headset is plugged in. It also plays the ringtone you hear when you receive a call.
Dock connector: The dock connector has two purposes. One, you can use it to recharge your iPhone's battery: Simply connect one end of the included dock connector–to–USB cable to the dock connector and the other end to the USB power adapter. Two, you can use the dock connector to recharge your iPhone's battery as well as synchronize: Connect one end of the same cable to the dock connector and the other end to a USB port on your Mac or PC.
Microphone: The microphone lets callers hear your voice when you're not using a headset.
On the front of your iPhone you'll find the following (labeled in Figure 1-3):
Ring/Silent switch: The Ring/Silent switch, which is on the left side of your iPhone, lets you quickly switch between ring mode and silent mode. When the switch is set to ring mode — the up position, with no orange dot — your iPhone plays all sounds through the speaker on the bottom. When the switch is set to silent mode — the down position, with an orange dot visible on the switch — your iPhone doesn't make a sound when you receive a call or when an alert pops up on the screen.
Note
The only exceptions to silent mode are alarms you set in the built-in Clock application, which do sound regardless of the Ring/Silent switch setting.
Volume buttons: Two Volume buttons are just below the Ring/Silent switch. The upper button increases the volume; the lower one decreases it. You use the Volume buttons to raise or lower the loudness of the ringer, alerts, sound effects, songs, and movies. And during phone calls, the buttons adjust the loudness of the person you're speaking with, regardless of whether you're listening through the receiver, the speakerphone, or a headset.
Receiver: The receiver is the speaker that the iPhone uses for telephone calls. It naturally sits close to your ear whenever you hold your iPhone in the "talking on the phone" position.
Warning
You should be the only one who hears sound coming from the receiver. If you have the volume set above about 50 percent and you're in a location with little or no background noise, someone standing nearby may be able to hear the sound, too. So be careful.
Tip
If you require privacy during phone calls, the included Apple headset (or an optional Bluetooth headset — as discussed in Chapter 13) is a better bet.
Touchscreen: You find out how to use the iPhone's gorgeous high-resolution color touchscreen in Chapter 2. All we have to say at this time is . . . try not to drool all over it.
Home button: No matter what you're doing, you can press the Home button at any time to display the Home screen, which is the screen shown in Figure 1-3.
Application buttons: Each of the 19 (iPhone and iPhone 3G) or 20 (iPhone 3GS) buttons launches an included iPhone application. You'll read more about these applications later in this chapter and throughout the rest of the book.
On the back of your iPhone is the camera lens. It's the little circle in the top-left corner. For more on the camera, see Chapter 9.
The status bar, which is at the top of the screen, displays tiny icons that provide a variety of information about the current state of your iPhone:
If you have only one or two bars, try moving around a little bit. Even walking just a few feet can sometimes mean the difference between no service and three or four bars.
Note
Wireless (that is, cellular) carriers may offer one of three data networks. The fastest is a 3G data network, which, as you probably guessed, is available only on the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. The device first looks for a 3G network and then, if it can't find one, looks for a slower EDGE or GPRS data network.
Wi-Fi networks, however, are even faster than any cellular data network — 3G, EDGE, or GPRS. So all iPhones will connect to a Wi-Fi network if one is available, even if a 3G, GPRS, or EDGE network is also available.
Last but not least, if you don't see one of these icons — 3G, GPRS, EDGE, or Wi-Fi — you don't currently have Internet access.
Note
You need an optional Apple iPhone TTY Adapter (suggested retail price $19) to connect your iPhone to a TTY machine.
The Home screen offers 19 (iPhone and iPhone 3G) or 20 (iPhone 3GS) icons by default, each representing a different built-in application or function. Because the rest of the book covers each and every one of these babies in full and loving detail, we merely provide brief descriptions here.
To get to your Home screen, tap the Home button. If your iPhone is asleep when you tap, the unlock screen appears. Once unlocked, you'll see whichever page of icons was on the screen when it went to sleep. If that happens to have been the Home screen, you're golden. If it wasn't, merely tap the Home button again to summon your iPhone's Home screen.
Tip
Three steps let you rearrange icons on your iPhone:
Press and hold any icon until all of the icons begin to "wiggle."
Drag the icons around until you're happy with their positions.
Press the Home button to save your arrangement and stop the "wiggling."
If you haven't rearranged your icons, you'll see the following applications on your Home screen, starting at the top left:
Messages: The Messages application lets you exchange text (SMS) and multimedia (MMS) messages with almost any other cell phone user (as described in Chapter 5). In any event, We've used a lot of mobile phones in our day and this application is as good as it gets.
Calendar: No matter what calendar program you prefer on your PC or Mac (as long as it's iCal, Microsoft Entourage, or Microsoft Outlook), you can synchronize events and alerts between your computer and your iPhone. Create an event on one and it's automatically synchronized with the other the next time they're connected. Neat stuff.
Photos: This application is the iPhone's terrific photo manager. You can view pictures that you took with the iPhone's built-in camera or transferred from your computer. You can zoom in or out, create slideshows, e-mail photos to friends, and much more. Other phones may let you take pictures; the iPhone lets you enjoy them in many ways.
Camera: Use this application when you want to shoot a picture with the iPhone's 2 (iPhone and iPhone 3G) or 3-megapixel (iPhone 3GS) camera.
YouTube: This application lets you watch videos from the popular YouTube Web site. You can search for a particular video or browse through thousands of offerings. It's a great way to waste a lot of time.
Stocks: If you follow the market, this application lets you monitor your favorite stocks, which are updated in near-real time.
Maps: This application is among our favorites. View street maps or satellite imagery of locations around the globe, or ask for directions, traffic conditions, or even the location of a nearby pizza joint.
Weather: This application monitors the six-day weather forecast for as many cities as you like.
Voice Memos: New in iPhone OS 3.0, this handy little application turns your iPhone into a convenient handheld recording device.
Notes: This program lets you type notes while you're out and about. You can send the notes to yourself or anyone else through e-mail or just save them on your iPhone until you need them.
Clock: This program lets you see the current time in as many cities as you like, set one or more alarms for yourself, and use your iPhone as a stopwatch or a countdown timer.
Calculator: The Calculator application lets you perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Period.
Settings: Use this application to adjust your iPhone's settings. If you're a Mac user, think System Preferences; if you're a Windows person, think Control Panel.
iTunes: Tap here to access the iTunes Store, where you can browse, preview, and purchase songs, albums, movies, and more.
App Store: This icon enables you to connect to and search the iTunes App Store for iPhone applications you can purchase or download for free over a Wi-Fi or cellular data network connection.
Compass (iPhone 3GS only): Kind of like having a magnetic needle compass inside your iPhone, but better.
Phone: Tap this application icon to use the iPhone as a phone. What a concept!
Mail: This application lets you send and receive e-mail with most POP3 and IMAP e-mail systems and, if you work for a company that grants permission, Microsoft Exchange accounts, too.
Safari: Safari is your Web browser. If you're a Mac user, you know that already; if you're a Windows user who hasn't already discovered the wonderful Safari for Windows, think Internet Explorer on steroids.
iPod: Last but not least, this icon unleashes all the power of a video iPod right on your phone.
Okay, then. Now that you and your iPhone have been properly introduced, it's time to turn it on, activate it, and actually use it. Onward!