Does the Apple iPhone Live Up to the Hype?

In recent times, the Apple iPhone has seen a great deal of hype. Its launch in the latter half of 2007 generated a lot of buzz and the build-up to the launch led to much controversy. Many were looking for something that would be truly path-breaking; others were expecting the Apple iPhone to fall flat on its attractive touch screen interface.

The most attractive part of the Apple iPhone is its 3.5" touch screen display, which has a high resolution of 480 x 320 pixels. One interesting thing about the Apple iPhone is the complete absence of buttons. Is this the way mobile phones are going to become in the near future?

We already have a number of mobile phones with touch screens, but most of these handsets have an accompanying stylus. The Apple iPhone has no such accompaniment. Theoretically, it seems tough to use a mobile phone that is completely devoid of buttons. However, the easy-to-use touch screen on the Apple iPhone has come as a pleasant surprise to even the skeptics. A touch here, a tap there, and you can control its many features. Remember that the Apple iPhone is a smart phone, which uses Apple's OS X operating system. This is what makes the user interface super-responsive.

But there is more to the iPhone apart from the very noticeable touch screen. The Apple iPhone is a phone, an iPod, and an Internet device all housed in the same black metal casing. The iPhone has 8 GB of built-in memory. So if you were worried that being a mobile handset, the Apple iPhone would not have too much storage space, you can heave a sigh of relief. The folks at Apple were serious when they declared that the Apple iPhone would rival the iPod. Playing audio and video on the iPhone is a great experience thanks to the superior sound quality and the magnificent LCD display.

Interestingly, even though the Apple iPhone is a smart phone, 3G has not been incorporated into it. It is a pity that even while downloading music, you have to do so at the speed of a 2G mobile device. This has certainly been an oversight on the part of the developers of the iPhone. At the same time, they have included a Safari web browser, which makes Internet surfing very convenient.

However, not all is well with the Apple iPhone. For instance, it only has a 2 megapixel camera without the flash and auto focus features. Compare these specs with those of Nokia N95's 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, flash, and a 20x digital zoom. A slightly better camera would have added to the appeal of the iPhone. Another disappointment is the battery life of the iPhone. One wishes that the creators of the Apple iPhone had taken into account the power consuming nature of the brilliant LCD screen.

The question that remains is: Has the Apple iPhone lived up to the hype? Well, it has ushered in a whole new generation of mobile phones. However, there are some drawbacks that need to be rectified over time.