Yesterday the internet went abuzz with excitement at the long rumoured Apple iPhone. And once again the Apple hype stream was flooding the villages. Suddenly everyone wants an iPhone. Despite their current phones possibly being capable of a lot of the features that the iPhone currently has.

My first impressions were “nifty.” A touch screen on a cellphone - who would-a thunk? Well, myself for one many years ago. However with this one you can do little gestures to do things. Like pinching and stuff. To unlock the phone you slide your finger from left-to-right. It plays music, video, surfs the web, oh it even has a 2 megapixel camera.

But then as I heard more, things started getting sour. The iPhone isn’t 3G because the locked-in partner, Cingular, doesn’t support it in many markets. Although, one is coming! (So you can buy a new one and give Apple more money!)

One of the features is Google Maps. Wow-wee. I can get that on my Motorola v360v. I just go to mobile.google.com and download the Google Maps program. The other odd thing is that the iPhone supports “push” e-mail (the e-mail gets sent to you, instead of you checking for mail first) only if you have a Yahoo! Mail account. So, Google for maps, Yahoo! for push e-mail. Any other and you’ll have to pay data charges (which are apparently high on Cingular).

It runs OS X, though the differences are yet to be completely revealed. The system though is closed, so no third-party apps for you. There is no mention of Java support either, which is something greatly missing.

You can’t buy music from iTunes on the iPhone. You can’t even synchronise your music using the WiFi or Bluetooth.

And why has Apple opted (once again) to restrict you to a closed battery? You can’t change it, so you’ll be out of action as far as mobiles go while you wait a number of days for Apple to swap the batteries over. I can’t imagine that going to well with some people, especially with the problems that iPod batteries have had in the past.

Apple has stated that you get 5 hours talk/video/photo time, and 16 hours music time which looks pretty good to me right now. Though, how long does it last on standby? No mention of that little factoid either.

Also the screen is apparently smudge free with some sort of coating, but no word on it being scratch free (remember the Nano incident)?

Gizmodo seem to have a pretty good run down of the events of iPhone. See the iPhone tag on Gizmodo.

Today Cisco sued Apple over trademark infringement. Cisco has owned the iPhone trademark since 2000, and it was registered before then by Linksys in 1997 (before the iMac was around). However, things on the Cisco iPhone front have been quiet - until last month. So either they released the iPhone to protect their trademark, or go with silly people wanting an Apple iPhone but getting a Cisco one and still be happy. But, it is worse that Apple has just gone ahead with the iPhone without confirming the rights to the name. Shame on you Apple.

So the only thing that the iPhone adds to a mobile is a touch screen. Which is what a Smartphone has anyway, so I guess it doesn’t even add that. However the thing is that it is the cool kids Smartphone. Unlike those Windows Mobile phones which are more for business. But the cost and the service lock-in is prohibitive for that market. Though, the same goes for the regular iPod, and look at how many kids have those!

The iPhone isn’t due until 2008 here, and a date is not confirmed.