Why cant iphone record video?

[bavlondon2]

I dont understand why iphone 3g cant record video. Hackers have shown its possible but but yet a year after iphone and still nothing.

[Footloose301]

I know, its ridiculous. Thats one of the 3 things I was waiting for with the 3G and GPS.

[Carniphage]

I dont understand why iphone 3g cant record video. Hackers have shown its possible but but yet a year after iphone and still nothing.

I think it is a type of censorship.

Clearly the hardware can capture video. I think the problem is what happens next.

Compression would have to happen in software. I don't think there's any onboard hardware to squish the capture into a modest file size. And a 30 second video, followed by 5 minutes of "encoding to h264" would be a drag, and a massive battery drain.

And then people would want to mail videos. Upload videos to YouTube, and generally abuse the crap out of their unlimited data accounts. My guess is that AT&T have urged Apple to hold-back on the heavy outgoing data.

I suspect the next big feature in the next generation iPhone will be good quality video telephony. But that will require a chip or two extra. And a US carrier that is prepared to handle the data.

C.

[bavlondon2]

Is iphone 3g not running that SGOLD3 chip? I thought that was capable of capturing video.

[Carniphage]

Is iphone 3g not running that SGOLD3 chip? I thought that was capable of capturing video.

This is the best chip-by-chip teardown I could find.
No sign of the PowerVR chip in here either. Must be on the processor?

http://i.cmpnet.com/techonline/uth/pmiPhone_boardtopBIG.jpg

C.

[mello]

I remembered seeing a camcorder app for jailbroken iPhones that recorded fullscreen at 12-15 fps.
Hopefully the person that developed that will upgrade it to record at 15-24 fps & put it on the App
store.

[jasonfj]

I remembered seeing a camcorder app for jailbroken iPhones that recorded fullscreen at 12-15 fps.
Hopefully the person that developed that will upgrade it to record at 15-24 fps & put it on the App
store.

Yeah, it was by DrunknBass. Anyone know what happened to it?

[bavlondon2]

Was it really 12-15fps?

I thought they only got to like 5 - 10 fps. What was the max length of the clip they could record?

I find it shocking that by the end of this year we will have phones that can record 720 by 480 @ 30fps and this cant do anything.

There must be a reason Apple have not optimised the phone for it right? I mean why blatantly leave out such a useful feature. It just doesnt make sense.

[Carniphage]

Was it really 12-15fps?

I thought they only got to like 5 - 10 fps. What was the max length of the clip they could record?

I find it shocking that by the end of this year we will have phones that can record 720 by 480 @ 30fps and this cant do anything.

There must be a reason Apple have not optimised the phone for it right? I mean why blatantly leave out such a useful feature. It just doesnt make sense.

Apple think different.

Instead of tossing in a mixed bag of features, they implement a much smaller feature set and do them right. When it comes time to upgrade the hardware, they add a few more features and so on.

Video playback is a priority for the device. Video recording is probably at 325 on the list.

Like I said earlier, video recording is a problem for the network operators. Because as soon as someone has recorded a video, the next thing they are going to do is email it to someone. The networks don't want to be moving video for free. They prefer to charge per message.

C.

[nvidia2008]

I think App Store should have at least 10fps video recording in about a few months or even over the next few weeks. There should be enough in the SDK to "poll" several fps off the camera. I'd be very surprised if we don't see some sort of cool video recording thingy by October this year.

[bavlondon2]

Apple think different.

Like I said earlier, video recording is a problem for the network operators. Because as soon as someone has recorded a video, the next thing they are going to do is email it to someone. The networks don't want to be moving video for free. They prefer to charge per message.

C.

Can you back that up? Over here most people if anything upload it to youtube or some other site not send it to anyone.

In the UK the MMS limit is capped at 300kb so unless your shooting in cruddy QVGA you would surpass that in seconds ie your theory would hold no truth.

I really dont believe people would automatically wish to forward their videos to people via email and anyway wouldnt the filesize exceed the maximum amount depending on what resolution its recording in?

[Ireland]

Apple think different.

Sometimes they don't think at all, and refuse to listen to their customers.

[Marvin]

There's an iphone video recorder here:

http://www.iphonevideorecorder.com/

It does 15 fps. I don't think people need more than 15 fps from a camera phone as you usually just take quick clips. The video review on youtube showed some quite nice videos from it.

It should have been built-in though. When Apple make software like ichat that does on-the-fly H264 compression for high quality streaming, they could surely have applied that to the iphone to make it good at taking videos.

Perhaps they are just trying to stagger the features so that they have an upgrade path for the iphone 3.

[mdee4]

Yeah, it was by DrunknBass. Anyone know what happened to it?

Drunknbass is part of monsterandfriends.com . He was working on a video recording app called UShow, but he didn't get along with the people he was working with. So he stopped working with them and that project all together. Now he is working on a new better video recording app. He has not given the name of what it is called yet and don't ask he won't tell. It;s arriving in the app store soon. It should have many features like choosing different sound quality, different video qualities, sending to websites like Youtube and Facebook, and much more. It's probably gonna be 15 fps. You don't really need much more then that. Also some good news is it is supposed to be free. It will be a good app too because he only creates good app's, if it's not good then he won't release it. Don't ask when he'll release it he won't tell. He takes his time with his projects, but makes them well. My guess is it will be in the app store by the end of this month, possibly next month, but it could be longer. If you have any questions just ask me or send me a private message.

[mrochester]

To the person who said that Apple implement few features, but implement them well. The camera app has already been designed, developed and implemented in the iPhone. There is no practical reason whatsoever for Apple to have not allowed the iPhone to shoot video. There must be some reason why Apple wants to control what you do on your phone, and I find that level of control in a personal device very scary indeed.

[wonderbread]

As Carniphage was saying, they probably don't want video recording on the phone because AT&T doesn't want you sending video over the network. This includes emailing it, MMS, uploading it to youtube or uploading it to the web or via something from Apps Store.

I doubt though that upstream bandwidth is very good. Even home broadband providers limit upstream and allocate less of the pipe to upstream data. I'm all for video, but don't expect it until 3rd gen or at least don't expect to be able to send video over the network until then. What about WiFi though, hmmm..

[Carniphage]

Can you back that up? Over here most people if anything upload it to youtube or some other site not send it to anyone.

In the UK the MMS limit is capped at 300kb so unless your shooting in cruddy QVGA you would surpass that in seconds ie your theory would hold no truth.

I really dont believe people would automatically wish to forward their videos to people via email and anyway wouldnt the filesize exceed the maximum amount depending on what resolution its recording in?

Whether you send it to your mates, or send it to YouTube, its a big upload.
How much does your network operator charge you for a 300kb MMS upload?

Scaling that up, how much for a 3MB video?

C.

[mello]

Drunknbass is part of monsterandfriends.com . He was working on a video recording app called UShow, but he didn't get along with the people he was working with. So he stopped working with them and that project all together. Now he is working on a new better video recording app. He has not given the name of what it is called yet and don't ask he won't tell. It;s arriving in the app store soon. It should have many features like choosing different sound quality, different video qualities, sending to websites like Youtube and Facebook, and much more. It's probably gonna be 15 fps. You don't really need much more then that. Also some good news is it is supposed to be free. It will be a good app too because he only creates good app's, if it's not good then he won't release it. Don't ask when he'll release it he won't tell. He takes his time with his projects, but makes them well. My guess is it will be in the app store by the end of this month, possibly next month, but it could be longer. If you have any questions just ask me or send me a private message.

What I'd like to see is when you plug-in your iPhone it will copy the videos that you made into the
movies folder of iTunes. Kind of like when your iPhone would automatically open iPhoto if you had
taken new pictures. I'd also like to have the option to record in landscape mode or vertical mode.

[dfiler]

I dont understand why iphone 3g cant record video. Hackers have shown its possible but but yet a year after iphone and still nothing.
Apple is working on a huge feature wish-list. When the features are "ready", they will be released. So the question is... what is apple's definition of "ready"?

Consider the following criteria: The quality of individual frames, responsiveness of the on-screen preview, frame rate, power consumption rate, storage constraints, and the experience of offloading the videos once captured.

While it is technically possible for the iPhone to capture video, if the user experience is shoddy, apple would likely withhold the functionality until it is "ready". This is precisely what I think is happening.

[mdee4]

What I'd like to see is when you plug-in your iPhone it will copy the videos that you made into the
movies folder of iTunes. Kind of like when your iPhone would automatically open iPhoto if you had
taken new pictures. I'd also like to have the option to record in landscape mode or vertical mode.

There is a video recorder already for jailbroken 1.1.4 iphones. It's called iphone video recorder. It is in installer. You can record video in landscape or vertical mode. You can send video to youtube, choose different video quality, multiply volume, change sound quality etc. So yes this is all possible for the iphone. But it's not apple quality. Thats one reason Apple probably doesn't have video recording yet for iphone. It will be in the App Store soon though. Also you can take the videos recorded from the iphone and put them on your computer through SSH. Then since the video is encoded into an iphone format, you can just drag the video off your desktop and put it in the Movies folder in iTunes. So as you see this is all possible, but Apple and AT&T just aren't ready for us to have it yet.

[bavlondon2]

There's an iphone video recorder here:

http://www.iphonevideorecorder.com/

It does 15 fps. I don't think people need more than 15 fps from a camera phone as you usually just take quick clips. The video review on youtube showed some quite nice videos from it.

It should have been built-in though. When Apple make software like ichat that does on-the-fly H264 compression for high quality streaming, they could surely have applied that to the iphone to make it good at taking videos.

Perhaps they are just trying to stagger the features so that they have an upgrade path for the iphone 3.

Thats a start I guess but you have to jailbreak your iphone for that app right? And in reality with a 3.5 inch screen playback of just QVGA sized video would look choppy and grainy. I was playing with a Samsung Tocca yesterday and that only has a 2.8 inch screen. It captures in only QVGA 15fps video aswell and it looked crap to say the least, especailly as you can only play it back in landscape mode.

For something with a screen size of iphone you need VGA 30fps at a minimum. All this Apple concentrate on this or they think differently is a load of bull. If they for once took on board the views of the customers and at least gave the basic features which all other phones have then they could have sold so many more by now so its really a mystery as to what they are playing at.

Drunknbass is part of monsterandfriends.com . He was working on a video recording app called UShow, but he didn't get along with the people he was working with. So he stopped working with them and that project all together. Now he is working on a new better video recording app. He has not given the name of what it is called yet and don't ask he won't tell. It;s arriving in the app store soon. It should have many features like choosing different sound quality, different video qualities, sending to websites like Youtube and Facebook, and much more. It's probably gonna be 15 fps. You don't really need much more then that. Also some good news is it is supposed to be free. It will be a good app too because he only creates good app's, if it's not good then he won't release it. Don't ask when he'll release it he won't tell. He takes his time with his projects, but makes them well. My guess is it will be in the app store by the end of this month, possibly next month, but it could be longer. If you have any questions just ask me or send me a private message.

Good news its coming to the app store but I hope its at least VGA size.

Apple is working on a huge feature wish-list. When the features are "ready", they will be released. So the question is... what is apple's definition of "ready"?

Consider the following criteria: The quality of individual frames, responsiveness of the on-screen preview, frame rate, power consumption rate, storage constraints, and the experience of offloading the videos once captured.

While it is technically possible for the iPhone to capture video, if the user experience is shoddy, apple would likely withhold the functionality until it is "ready". This is precisely what I think is happening.

They have had over a year whilst iphone has been out how much longer do they need?

[dfiler]

They have had over a year whilst iphone has been out how much longer do they need?If the hardware or infrastructure precludes a quality experience, then no amount of software development time will help.

Everyone seems to agree that the hardware is technically capable, or capable enough to add a bullet point to the marketing literature. I for one, am thankful that the iPhone isn't playing the feature list game. If video can only be done at a crappy frame rate, with poor image quality, and then synced/converted to be useful, and sucks the battery dry in no time flat... then it is preferable that apple spend dev resources on features that can actually be done right at this time.

Steve has stated in a couple interviews that Apple waited to get into the mobile handset game until technology had caught up with their vision. In my opinion, this is what is happening with video capture.

Granted, I could be wrong and the software just isn't done yet. Poor management or lack of understanding their customers is definitely not the reason.

Other companies are perfectly content to ship their products with features that nobody uses because the features simply don't work well enough to be useful and/or enjoyable. Half of the features on most smart phones go unused, including web browsers. The iphone however, has purposefully taken the opposite approach. Time will tell, but i'm betting that the iPhone will appear in hindsight as having a superior feature list and upgrade schedule. There isn't a crisis as some seem to be alluding too. Rather, iPhone lust is so high that anything less than perfection is sometimes viewed as failure.

[trumptman]

As Carniphage was saying, they probably don't want video recording on the phone because AT&T doesn't want you sending video over the network. This includes emailing it, MMS, uploading it to youtube or uploading it to the web or via something from Apps Store.

I doubt though that upstream bandwidth is very good. Even home broadband providers limit upstream and allocate less of the pipe to upstream data. I'm all for video, but don't expect it until 3rd gen or at least don't expect to be able to send video over the network until then. What about WiFi though, hmmm..

Pretty much every other phone allows video and when you shoot it for a message, it is limited in length and resolution to limit the size of the message. I can send a 15 sec. video message or record for as long as I as I have memory capacity at 640x480.

[Carniphage]

Pretty much every other phone allows video and when you shoot it for a message, it is limited in length and resolution to limit the size of the message. I can send a 15 sec. video message or record for as long as I as I have memory capacity at 640x480.

They allow you to do this, because they charge you per message. Can you send a video message via free Email?

If you tried to write a good quality video app you would discover....

1 The iPhone shoots crappy looking video because of the rolling shutter. It takes 1/10s to pull the image off the sensor. This means iPhone video looks like jello. It always will, it's not fixable without a totally new camera. So if you are interested in quality (as Apple are) you might as well stop there and hold the feature back until the phone includes a better camera.

2 The lack of hardware compression would limit the clip size to a few seconds. I doubt if the processor is fast enough to compress on the fly. Again, wait for a hardware rev.

3 Ideally video clips would be placed in a new library application of some kind.
"You want us to create a new library for jelly video?" This is doable, but not for a third party.

4 Finally, remember that network operators are used to charging for this crap. They think that sending is 15 second video clip (or making a 2 minute video call) is something they should be able to charge for. They don't want services migrating from pay per use - and all ending up in an unlimited data tariff, So if Apple had implemented it, you can bet the network carriers would immediately ask Apple to un-implement it.

C.

[mrochester]

They allow you to do this, because they charge you per message. Can you send a video message via free Email?

If you tried to write a good quality video app you would discover....

1 The iPhone shoots crappy looking video because of the rolling shutter. It takes 1/10s to pull the image off the sensor. This means iPhone video looks like jello. It always will, it's not fixable without a totally new camera. So if you are interested in quality (as Apple are) you might as well stop there and hold the feature back until the phone includes a better camera.

2 The lack of hardware compression would limit the clip size to a few seconds. I doubt if the processor is fast enough to compress on the fly. Again, wait for a hardware rev.

3 Ideally video clips would be placed in a new library application of some kind.
"You want us to create a new library for jelly video?" This is doable, but not for a third party.

4 Finally, remember that network operators are used to charging for this crap. They think that sending is 15 second video clip (or making a 2 minute video call) is something they should be able to charge for. They don't want services migrating from pay per use - and all ending up in an unlimited data tariff, So if Apple had implemented it, you can bet the network carriers would immediately ask Apple to un-implement it.

C.

I love point 1 where you're essentially saying Apple are deliberately holding back video capture because they are deliberately holding back putting a decent camera in the iPhone. You're almost suggesting that Apple went to develop video capture only to discover the camera wasn't suitable for the purpose, when it was there choice to put that camera in to begin with!

And I can imagine the official Apple response being that the iPhone doesn't shoot video because people den't want that in their phones, nevermind the fact that it might actually be because Apple deliberately crippled the phone. This is what bugs me the most - Apple claiming to have authority knowing what people want to mask their deliberate cost and feature cutting.

[Carniphage]

I love point 1 where you're essentially saying Apple are deliberately holding back video capture because they are deliberately holding back putting a decent camera in the iPhone. You're almost suggesting that Apple went to develop video capture only to discover the camera wasn't suitable for the purpose, when it was there choice to put that camera in to begin with!

And I can imagine the official Apple response being that the iPhone doesn't shoot video because people den't want that in their phones, nevermind the fact that it might actually be because Apple deliberately crippled the phone. This is what bugs me the most - Apple claiming to have authority knowing what people want to mask their deliberate cost and feature cutting.

Apple included a fairly basic 2MP camera - good enough to shoot Polaroid quality stills.
It does not have autofocus - and isn't up to to shooting video. That decision was deliberate.

I am sure if Apple wanted to, it could include a RED1 mysterium sensor to shoot 4K. But there are things called design trade-offs. Some people think that Nokia's huge N95 is a better design because it traded image quality for thickness.

Given the current hardware is not going to deliver a best-in-class video experience. Apple would be wasting their time to implement it.

My guess is that the next hardware revision will include video-calling. That feature would need a faster sensor and a video compression chip.

C.

[mrochester]

Apple included a fairly basic 2MP camera - good enough to shoot Polaroid quality stills.
It does not have autofocus - and isn't up to to shooting video. That decision was deliberate.

I am sure if Apple wanted to, it could include a RED1 mysterium sensor to shoot 4K. But there are things called design trade-offs. Some people think that Nokia's huge N95 is a better design because it traded image quality for thickness.

Given the current hardware is not going to deliver a best-in-class video experience. Apple would be wasting their time to implement it.

My guess is that the next hardware revision will include video-calling. That feature would need a faster sensor and a video compression chip.

C.
I don't think that excuse washes anymore as there are plenty of decent camera phones as slim as or slimmer than the iPhone.

[Carniphage]

I don't think that excuse washes anymore as there are plenty of decent camera phones as slim as or slimmer than the iPhone.

Look this is not rocket science.
Any device has a list of features. You put stuff in, you leave stuff out.
The price goes up or down.
The the size goes up or down.
Each manufacturer makes a bunch of trade offs. Then offers up a product.

Apple put "camera" way down on their list of priorities. Basically, they didn't think it was that important for their customers.

I you think Apple got this badly wrong. Then I really really suggest that you don't buy the iPhone. Me, I like shooting video and use a device called a camera, but that's just me.

The market sorts this stuff out. And if the market actually cares more about cameras than iTunes and web and applications, etc . Then a manufacturer who makes a great cameraphone will certainly do well.


C.

[mrochester]

Look this is not rocket science.
Any device has a list of features. You put stuff in, you leave stuff out.
The price goes up or down.
The the size goes up or down.
Each manufacturer makes a bunch of trade offs. Then offers up a product.

Apple put "camera" way down on their list of priorities. Basically, they didn't think it was that important for their customers.

I you think Apple got this badly wrong. Then I really really suggest that you don't buy the iPhone. Me, I like shooting video and use a device called a camera, but that's just me.

The market sorts this stuff out. And if the market actually cares more about cameras than iTunes and web and applications, etc . Then a manufacturer who makes a great cameraphone will certainly do well.


C.
That still doesn't wash though. Other manufacturers have put the same and more into their devices, whilst still being cheaper, so it's not a question of cost at all.

I was never going to be buying an iPhone anyway so there's no need to beg me not to get one :P.

[Carniphage]

That still doesn't wash though. Other manufacturers have put the same and more into their devices, whilst still being cheaper, so it's not a question of cost at all.

I was never going to be buying an iPhone anyway so there's no need to beg me not to get one :P.

Mrochester you are totally right.
No one is buying the iPhone. No one wants that large screen. No one wants a dreamcast-level GPU. No one wants the longest battery life of any 3G device. No one is prepared to pay for seamless syncing with their media collection.

All they want is a great upskirt camera like this slimline baby.

http://www.intomobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/s2.jpg
This is the best in class cameraphone SE 850i


C.

[Bergermeister]

That still doesn't wash though. Other manufacturers have put the same and more into their devices, whilst still being cheaper, so it's not a question of cost at all.

I was never going to be buying an iPhone anyway so there's no need to beg me not to get one :P.

The real power of the iPhone is the apps in the App Store. Perhaps the iPhone doesn't have everything yet, but the developers (4000 odd plus) are working on lots of apps. Maybe one will have video recording, who knows.

All I know is that I have a powerful mini computer in my pocket and I got some serious work done today with it. Again. And I'm looking forward to the new apps that come available over the next couple of weeks/months.

[mrochester]

Mrochester you are totally right.
No one is buying the iPhone. No one wants that large screen. No one wants a dreamcast-level GPU. No one wants the longest battery life of any 3G device. No one is prepared to pay for seamless syncing with their media collection.

All they want is a great upskirt camera like this slimline baby.

http://www.intomobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/s2.jpg
This is the best in class cameraphone SE 850i


C.
Sorry I don't even understand how your post even relates to what I said at all :P. I made the point that other manufacturers offer more for the money. I didn't comment that no one was buying the iPhone...
And if you think the K850 is the best camera phone then you really don't know what you're talking about :P

[Carniphage]

Sorry I don't even understand how your post even relates to what I said at all :P. I made the point that other manufacturers offer more for the money. I didn't comment that no one was buying the iPhone...
And if you think the K850 is the best camera phone then you really don't know what you're talking about :P

What you repeatedly keep saying is:
"Apple got this wrong". They were mean/silly/ignorant by not making the iPhone a better camera.

What you don't seem to understand is that all designs are a bunch of compromises and trade offs. Apple's iPhone is like it is because Apple put photography WAY DOWN ON THE LIST.

Presumably you disagree with that priority list? In your mind a better device would have a better camera. So please - we are all dying to know -which is this better device out there of which you speak?

C.

[mrochester]

What you repeatedly keep saying is:
"Apple got this wrong". They were mean/silly/ignorant by not making the iPhone a better camera.

What you don't seem to understand is that all designs are a bunch of compromises and trade offs. Apple's iPhone is like it is because Apple put photography WAY DOWN ON THE LIST.

Presumably you disagree with that priority list? In your mind a better device would have a better camera. So please - we are all dying to know -which is this better device out there of which you speak?

C.

The point I'm making is that if other manufacturers can make slim, full touch screen devices with decent cameras and all the other trimmings, it doesn't take a genius to work out Apple are shafting customers somewhere.
I'm happy for anyone who wants to be taken advantage of to give them their money but I will keep my money until Apple give us a spec we deserve.

[Bergermeister]

Apple is not shafting anyone. Customers who don't like the iPhone's cam can choose one of those other phones. The iPhone is selling like hotcakes, however, so it seems like a lot of people don't care about the cam and that Apple's choice was right.

Give us what we deserve? Wow. That's pretty big. "Want" might be better. Apple is under no obligation to you to make anything.

I have an iPhone 3G and use it as an ultra-portable computer. It works great. I am a very happy customer.

As for the cost... The iPhone saves me from lugging around my MBA every day in 95 degree heat. It allows me to jot ideas on an elevator. More than worth 200-odd dollars over two years and a lot better than complaining for a day.

[mdee4]

For you guys who want to know whether there is going to be a video recorder for the iphone, there will be. The only reason there won't be one is if Apple denies the app from going in the app store. Someone has submitted a video recorder into the app store already and he is waiting to see if it gets excepted. It might be $10 though. But don't worry Monsterandfriends have created a video recorder app too. He's waiting to see if the other guys gets excepted. It will be free and record in landscape mode with up to 15 fps. That is possibly the max fps you can get from the iphone. The $10 app has faster encoding though which is why you may want that one, but Monsterandfriends app's are always created with good quality so you can know his app will be good. Besides it's free and that is great. I hope I helped.

[mrochester]

Apple is not shafting anyone. Customers who don't like the iPhone's cam can choose one of those other phones. The iPhone is selling like hotcakes, however, so it seems like a lot of people don't care about the cam and that Apple's choice was right.

Give us what we deserve? Wow. That's pretty big. "Want" might be better. Apple is under no obligation to you to make anything.

I have an iPhone 3G and use it as an ultra-portable computer. It works great. I am a very happy customer.

As for the cost... The iPhone saves me from lugging around my MBA every day in 95 degree heat. It allows me to jot ideas on an elevator. More than worth 200-odd dollars over two years and a lot better than complaining for a day.

Apple is under no obligation to make anything, and if they don't, they simply won't get my money. That's their choice, there are plenty of other fantastic phones out there all after my money. Apple don't make = Apple don't get - no loss to me whatsoever as a consumer since I can pick from a thousand and one other products.

Anyway, this is distracting from the point. The main explanation is, Apple didn't want the iPhone to record video, so the iPhone doesn't record video. At the end of the day, it's more money in their pocket by not having to spend the resources developing it. End of story.

[Bergermeister]

For you guys who want to know whether there is going to be a video recorder for the iphone, there will be. The only reason there won't be one is if Apple denies the app from going in the app store. Someone has submitted a video recorder into the app store already and he is waiting to see if it gets excepted. It might be $10 though. But don't worry Monsterandfriends have created a video recorder app too. He's waiting to see if the other guys gets excepted. It will be free and record in landscape mode with up to 15 fps. That is possibly the max fps you can get from the iphone. The $10 app has faster encoding though which is why you may want that one, but Monsterandfriends app's are always created with good quality so you can know his app will be good. Besides it's free and that is great. I hope I helped.

If this is true then maybe peace will return to the forums.

[trumptman]

They allow you to do this, because they charge you per message. Can you send a video message via free Email?

I think you are talking about some habits created almost exclusively by iPhone usage. I will admit that I haven't tried using my email application on my phone to attach a video. However that is because the size of the video is very large. I think the video I shot of my kiddos little school play was 100 megs. I suppose I could try to email it to myself, but since my Dare allows me to remove the memory, I just pop it into the card reader and copy it over it around 10 seconds.

If you tried to write a good quality video app you would discover....

1 The iPhone shoots crappy looking video because of the rolling shutter. It takes 1/10s to pull the image off the sensor. This means iPhone video looks like jello. It always will, it's not fixable without a totally new camera. So if you are interested in quality (as Apple are) you might as well stop there and hold the feature back until the phone includes a better camera.

2 The lack of hardware compression would limit the clip size to a few seconds. I doubt if the processor is fast enough to compress on the fly. Again, wait for a hardware rev.

3 Ideally video clips would be placed in a new library application of some kind.
"You want us to create a new library for jelly video?" This is doable, but not for a third party.

I really don't care about the hardware limitations of the iPhone. It just underwent a revision. Apple had the ability to improve the hardware. They choose not to and that reasoning has nothing to do with why so many other phones can shoot video and pull it onto the computer.

4 Finally, remember that network operators are used to charging for this crap. They think that sending is 15 second video clip (or making a 2 minute video call) is something they should be able to charge for. They don't want services migrating from pay per use - and all ending up in an unlimited data tariff, So if Apple had implemented it, you can bet the network carriers would immediately ask Apple to un-implement it.

Again since the iPhone is so closed up, you keep getting stuck on the network issues, which is quite ironic to me since I cannot buy the iPhone due to the terrible network it happens to be on. Everyone who is not Apple has no problem whipping their memory card out and putting it into the computer to copy over gigabytes if necessary. Most have no problem just attaching the phone either. You are describing Apple specific problems to rationalize away Apple specific problems The reasoning is circular.

What you repeatedly keep saying is:
"Apple got this wrong". They were mean/silly/ignorant by not making the iPhone a better camera.

What you don't seem to understand is that all designs are a bunch of compromises and trade offs. Apple's iPhone is like it is because Apple put photography WAY DOWN ON THE LIST.

Presumably you disagree with that priority list? In your mind a better device would have a better camera. So please - we are all dying to know -which is this better device out there of which you speak?

C.

I'll speak of it because I own it. LG Dare. It has the same size battery as the iPhone. It is physically smaller than the iPhone and has a 3.2MP camera with autofocus, flash and will shoot VGA quality video. It is not some brick crushing the iPhone like you show.

http://www.phonearena.com/htmls/showimage.php?m=Reviews.Images&f=name&id=35824&v=

Understand that this doesn't mean the iPhone isn't going to be a great platform, doesn't have a positive future, won't sell well, etc. The thread is about video and you appear to be contending that it simply can't be done. It can. LG Dare has done it in a smaller package on a phone with roughly the same size battery.(1100 mAh, I believe iPhone is either 1100 or 1150)

It isn't impossible. It is a choice. People have to react to Apple's choices and the answer each time cannot be software either. Some of these design decisions have ramifications. If I feel like the battery life is terrible on my Dare, I can choose to go buy a 1400 mAh extended battery and use it on the phone with a slightly thicker door. I can choose to do that over a three day weekend and put the 1100 back in for the week, etc. If I want to shoot a trillion photos or lots of video, I can bring along additional microSDs and swap them out. I don't need to ponder if the network will let me transfer a gig at a time over email. It exists. It works. It can be done. Stop with the circular reasoning.

[Carniphage]

I'll speak of it because I own it. LG Dare. It has the same size battery as the iPhone. It is physically smaller than the iPhone and has a 3.2MP camera with autofocus, flash and will shoot VGA quality video. It is not some brick crushing the iPhone like you show.

The thread is about video and you appear to be contending that it simply can't be done. It can. LG Dare has done it in a smaller package on a phone with roughly the same size battery.(1100 mAh, I believe iPhone is either 1100 or 1150)

It isn't impossible. It is a choice.

Exactly!
It *can* be done. It *is* a choice.

Apple chose not to do this. Because Apple's priority list was different to LGs.

Does this mean Apple are SHAFTING THE PUBLIC?

No. But to be fair, that's the funniest thing I read all day.

Perhaps Apple got their design priorities wrong. Or perhaps they juggled the design trade-offs and came up with a better product than Sony Ericsson or LG.

Only the market can decide.

C.

Here's an LG Dare Video clip
http://www.flickr.com/photos/redban/2616840556/

[Marvin]

Here's an LG Dare Video clip
http://www.flickr.com/photos/redban/2616840556/

Here's a video clip taken from an iphone for comparison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38DgduC4J04

It's hard to tell exactly what the quality is like due to youtube compression but it looks pretty decent nonetheless. As the software improves, they may even be able to improve the quality further.

[Carniphage]

Here's a video clip taken from an iphone for comparison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38DgduC4J04

It's hard to tell exactly what the quality is like due to youtube compression but it looks pretty decent nonetheless. As the software improves, they may even be able to improve the quality further.

You can buy an HV20 for $500 and shoot in 1080p!

(Of course it's not great for making calls.)

C.

[Frank777]

Shouldn't we ask for audio recording before we start asking for video recording?

[bavlondon2]

You can buy an HV20 for $500 and shoot in 1080p!

(Of course it's not great for making calls.)

C.

Please spare us that same old "if you want good video get a camcorder" rhetoric.

LG recently launched a mid range cheapo 5Mp cam phone that shoots video at 720 by 480. Mid range!!!!

Apple have no excuse end of story. They are either very stupid or very stupid to leave out such a useful feature. Pics and video have become an integral to the modern mobile phone user. I suspect the problem is that as its an American company they thought with you guys in mind first. And of course you lot get crap for phones most of the time so Jobs must have thought everyone else didnt use it either.

[dfiler]

The point I'm making is that if other manufacturers can make slim, full touch screen devices with decent cameras and all the other trimmings, it doesn't take a genius to work out Apple are shafting customers somewhere.
I'm happy for anyone who wants to be taken advantage of to give them their money but I will keep my money until Apple give us a spec we deserve.... an amazing expression of blind entitlement and self victimization.

Various companies offer products with various features and tradeoffs. You'll have to learn to deal with it. Either that or continue to call companies evil for failing to conform to your personal vision of the optimal feature set.

Hint: It is reasonable to simply disagree with apple's prioritization of features. You're expression of displeasure is something entirely different than that.

[bavlondon2]

Or maybe the USA is simply behind the rest of the world in respect to what features are more important and widely used.

mrochester the Veiwty is a good example of what you are talking about. Slim smart touch screen device. HSDPA, decent screen, 5MP cam with AF. VGA 30fps plus QVGA upto 120fps for slo motion. And it overtook iphone in sales in less than 2 months. Its just another example of how everyone else is moving forward and Apple are trying to hold everyone back.

Sure they have a nice fancy UI but thats about it. Once others start using OpenGL in their OS Apple will be forced to step up.

[dfiler]

Apple are trying to hold everyone back.

You're seriously saying that apple is holding the mobile phone industry back? :rolleyes:

Oh why bother; I'm done. And yes I'll let the door hit me in the ass on the way out. ;)

[Carniphage]

Or maybe the USA is simply behind the rest of the world in respect to what features are more important and widely used.

mrochester the Veiwty is a good example of what you are talking about. Slim smart touch screen device. HSDPA, decent screen, 5MP cam with AF. VGA 30fps plus QVGA upto 120fps for slo motion. And it overtook iphone in sales in less than 2 months. Its just another example of how everyone else is moving forward and Apple are trying to hold everyone back.

Sure they have a nice fancy UI but thats about it. Once others start using OpenGL in their OS Apple will be forced to step up.

That funny!
OpenGL is easy. GUI software is not.

You don't really know what NextStep is. But it's why Apple has a massive collection of developers making money and LG has ...er.. what exactly? Yet another Windows Mobile device.

Listen, its really, really simple. Mobile phone companies are desperate for people to buy their shit. And for years and years they have been shoehorning gadgets and widgets into them to convince people to buy their product rather than someone elses.

Sony Ericsson have been putting nice cameras in their phones for years. It's a great novelty! But what kind of cretin would fall for buying one phone over another, because it takes better photographs! That's as stupid as picking your make of car based on the quality of the carpets!
It's a dumb marketing ploy, and it is amazing people fall for it. It's not as if anyone who is serious about photographs would ever consider taking one with a phone.

Phones are for communicating. They are portable network devices. Creating a better phone means making a better communication device. The iPhone has just jumped up the ladder in how incredibly useful it is. Push email is great. I have wireless syncing with a notebook (Evernote) and I can press a button and find the nearest pub. And Twitter is very cool.

Apple have disrupted the phone industry by saying, all that shit you have been pushing at people for the last ten years a waste of time. What people want in a phone is this.

It is very similar to what Nintendo have done with the Wii. Instead of copying, they innovated. Instead of offering full screen antialiasing and more vertex buffers, they offered fun.

Clever eh?

C.

Disruption Ahoy!

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB121298426625656639.html?mod=googlenews_barrons

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Sony-Ericsson-Cuts-2000-Jobs/

[trumptman]

That funny!
OpenGL is easy. GUI software is not.

You don't really know what NextStep is. But it's why Apple has a massive collection of developers making money and LG has ...er.. what exactly? Yet another Windows Mobile device.

LG has a whole slew of design awards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Electronics) and while I'm not their greatest fan, you have to keep your eyes peeled for the next great threat down the pipe.

Listen, its really, really simple. Mobile phone companies are desperate for people to buy their shit. And for years and years they have been shoehorning gadgets and widgets into them to convince people to buy their product rather than someone elses.

Every consumer electronics company has been shoehorning "shit" into their products to improve them. The reason Apple jumped in here is because it wised up and realized that cell phones are likely our next true computing platform.

You knock companies that have experience managing dozens of different handsets with multitudes of features and also designing the software for them simply because Apple has managed to come up with one phone. Even if an LG, Nokia or whoever screws up in one area, it doesn't matter because they have another 30 phones you can choose from to keep brand loyalty.

Sony Ericsson have been putting nice cameras in their phones for years. It's a great novelty! But what kind of cretin would fall for buying one phone over another, because it takes better photographs! That's as stupid as picking your make of car based on the quality of the carpets!
It's a dumb marketing ploy, and it is amazing people fall for it. It's not as if anyone who is serious about photographs would ever consider taking one with a phone.

At first it is a novelty and then at some stage it becomes a tipping point. I'm sure the first radios in cars were novelties. If you tried to sell a car without one now you would look like an idiot.

The other thing wrong with your analogy is that the iPhone itself isn't that great of a phone. It isn't like people have remarked about its incredible battery life, the ability to find and hold weak signals or the incredible audio quality the calls. It has the best browser in the business. It has better than average media management. It is a mediocre phone and mediocre camera.

Phones are for communicating. They are portable network devices. Creating a better phone means making a better communication device. The iPhone has just jumped up the ladder in how incredibly useful it is. Push email is great. I have wireless syncing with a notebook (Evernote) and I can press a button and find the nearest pub. And Twitter is very cool.

Yes and the iPhone makes decent calls while others have better audio quality, better signal and better battery life. Apple has map based GPS and others have turn based. Apple isn't terrible but the others aren't standing still. My last phone didn't have a touch screen or full HTML browser. My new one does. Apple's "improvement" this round is adding 3G which again, they are catching up on compared to most companies.

Apple have disrupted the phone industry by saying, all that shit you have been pushing at people for the last ten years a waste of time. What people want in a phone is this.

It is very similar to what Nintendo have done with the Wii. Instead of copying, they innovated. Instead of offering full screen antialiasing and more vertex buffers, they offered fun.

Apple's disruption was a little less than you manage. They clearly wanted to make the carriers secondary and instead now have AT&T subsidize the phone just like everyone else. They wanted the phone to be something you buy and the later can take from carrier to carrier. Instead you now sign a long contract with AT&T, just like everyone else.

Nintendo with their motion controllers took their console in an entirely different direction, but also made a smart bet that HDTV penetration wasn't high enough yet to hurt them with regard to graphics. I would mention myself that even if the family does have a 60 inch HDTV, who is going to allow the kids to monopolize it all day? It was a safe bet for this generation but I would not make it next generation of consoles. I doubt Nintendo will as well.

Now back to the topic at hand.... why does Apple include Photo Booth and video conferencing on every computer, but not on their next generation computing platform? It is clear they consider it a priority with one but not the other.

[Carniphage]

Apple made a bet. That as far as cameras go, all people want from phones is a Polaroid style snap. Anything more is a waste of time. I happen to agree. You probably don't, but it is comical that the most popular phone on Flickr is the iPhone.

If you read my links, SE are hurting. Nokia are hurting.
You might have read that RIM is being downgraded. And Palm is close to death.
It might have something to do with the potential of the device I am using right now.

C.

[bavlondon2]

How is Nokia hurting? They are the market leaders and have just solidified their position by buying out the rest of Symbian.

[Carniphage]

How is Nokia hurting? They are the market leaders and have just solidified their position by buying out the rest of Symbian.

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB121298426625656639.html?mod=googlenews_barrons

Nokia dominate the low-end and sell a hell of lot of the cheap handsets.
But Nokia struggle in the high-end of the market. And it's the high-end where the big profits are.

Nokia was wrong to tie themselves to Symbian. It is not a great development platform.
This is the reason why.

In 1997 Symbian was this:
http://www.convergence.org/platforms/psion/graphics/series5.jpeg
In 1997, Cocoa was this:
http://www.blakespot.com/list/images/slab.jpg

C.

[mrochester]

Nevermind the fact that their market share continues to increase. They sell about 1.2million phones everyday. It took Apple a massively overhyped launch weekend to achieve anywhere near that figure.

[mrochester]

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB121298426625656639.html?mod=googlenews_barrons

They have a lot of the low end and sell a hell of lot of the cheap handsets.
But Nokia struggle in the high end of the market. And it's the high end where the actual profits are.

I think Nokia was wrong to tie themselves to Symbian. It's not a great development plaform.
This is the reason why.

In 1997 Symbian was this:
http://www.convergence.org/platforms/psion/graphics/series5.jpeg
In 1997, Cocoa was this:
http://www.blakespot.com/list/images/slab.jpg

C.

LOL, love to see you with that 'Cocoa' example in your pocket LOL. What a ridiculous post!

[Marvin]

LOL, love to see you with that 'Cocoa' example in your pocket LOL. What a ridiculous post!

True all those years ago but I think he meant Apple made a better bet taking a desktop OS and making a phone to run it than taking a mobile OS and pushing it forward.

Pushing from the top down vs the bottom up have different advantages. Symbian was already optimized to run well on low-end devices, OS X had to be optimized.

However, OS X is a full unix OS with much richer development capability than Symbian will ever have and has been for a while.

I used to own a Psion computer. I loved it and it was more powerful than my graphics calculator but there were very few apps for it that I found useful. Great keyboard though - the one I had was like the Macbook keyboard. Removable Flash memory too - I think I had 4MB or something.

[Carniphage]

LOL, love to see you with that 'Cocoa' example in your pocket LOL. What a ridiculous post!

Dude, I hate to say this, but you are an what experts call an idiot. That's exactly what we have now.

Symbian was a compromised OS designed to run on low-power low-memory systems.
It answered this question. "How can we squeeze a GUI onto a low-power handheld?"

NextStep was based on a different premise.
"$10,000 is cheap for a workstation, but, how the hell can we bring down the cost of building expensive software."

NextStep begat Cocoa, and Cocoa became the iPhone API.
Because of Cocoa, you can build a really nice iPhone App in minutes. And if you hadn't noticed, Moore's Law means that there is much more CPU power in the iPhone as in that Next pizza box.

From Wikipedia:
The NeXT Computer was based on the new 25 MHz Motorola 68030 central processing unit (CPU). It included between 8 and 64 MB of random access memory (RAM), a 256 MB magneto-optical drive (MO) drive, a 40 MB (swap-only), 330 MB, or 660 MB hard drive, 10Base-2 Ethernet, NuBus and a 17-inch MegaPixel grayscale display measuring 1120 by 832 pixels.

Go ask a Symbian developer about Cocoa, and once they stop crying, see what they have to say about ridiculous.

C.

[bavlondon2]

And you are what experts would call a fanboy.

Nokia have probably sold more 6300's than iphones and iphone 3g put together 20 times over. And your going to sit there and insist Nokia are hurting.

When iphone was priced at £269 you were sitting here saying "its an expensive model". Only Apple could market something at that price and everyone slated them for it.

What happened next? Apple were forced to lower their price for the follow up model becasue they knew they couldnt afford to be that greedy 2 times in a row. Sooner or later they will also learn you need a wide ranging feature set to attract consumers as well. The iphone is nice and I will still get one as a 2nd phone but by todays standards it simply cant be called a mobile phone. Its just a ipod with nice eye candy and basic phone features.

Perhaps when Apple announce a serious competitor to say the N95. (and when I say competitor I mean something that can match it in specs, not just in a few UI tricks) then maybe you will have something to shout about but until then they are still learning and still have a long way to go. I dont even know why im going on about this. They only have made 2 phones to date lol I think the facts speak for themselves.

PS Did you read Nokias Q2 market share results?

122 million phones totally worldwide. (kind of puts in perspective what the iphone sold and even that was after the most hyped up campaign ever) Out of that you might be interested to know 4.5million of those were sold in North America (up +78%).

:lol:

[Carniphage]

And you are what experts would call a fanboy.


I certainly am a fan. I use the iPhone more than any device I have ever owned. It's just an amazing bit of kit. It makes every phone I have owned by Nokia, SE look like it was made in the 80s by Sinclair.


PS Did you read Nokias Q2 market share results?

122 million phones totally worldwide. (kind of puts in perspective what the iphone sold and even that was after the most hyped up campaign ever) Out of that you might be interested to know 4.5million of those were sold in North America (up +78%).

:lol:

I think Nokia will continue to survive for a long time. They totally own the bottom end of the market. And I am sure they can make a good business out selling billions of handsets to Africa.

I don't think Apple will every go into the bottom end, because there is very little profit to be made there. Dell sells more computers than Apple. But Apple is more profitable than Dell.

The battle is not in the past. 2007 and 2008 sales are not in dispute. The top-end is where the battle is going to be. It's not going to be about value-added hardware features. *Anyone* can buy components and glue them together.

The battle is going to be about software.

This means before it starts, Nokia is screwed. Because of Symbian. If Nokia wants a part of the top-end, their only chance is going over to Android.

C.

http://www.changewave.com/assets/alliance/reports/smart_phone_20080708/future-smartphone-buyers.gif

[a_greer]

i.

And then people would want to mail videos. Upload videos to YouTube, and generally abuse the crap out of their unlimited data accounts. My guess is that AT&T have urged Apple to hold-back on the heavy outgoing data.


Pardon me, but I would like to explain how the free market works: a company such as ATT, puts a service up for sale, us users agree to the terms set forth and agree that their price is acceptable to us.

ATT said that they would be willing to do unlimited phone data for $30/Mo, now, lets define unlimited...that means no limit (hell, I am at a little over a gig in my first week...) I listen to pandora, watch youtube and MLB vids, surf the net, look up showtimes and ticket info, do email, and sometimes even make a phone call. Do you really think they would care about a 2MB video upload of the costumed assholes who sat in front of us at the Friday 12:01 AM Batman show?

the sick part is a friend shot it with a FREE PHONE...a FREE, cheap ass crap phone and proceeded to make fun of me for spending so much on a pathetically weak phone...I kinda agree with her.

[Carniphage]

Pardon me, but I would like to explain how the free market works: a company such as ATT, puts a service up for sale, us users agree to the terms set forth and agree that their price is acceptable to us.


Sure but although they call it unlimited, they want to limit what you can do with it.

Carriers make most of their money by charging you for making calls, sending SMSs etc. When you get charged for sending a SMS it's equivalent to $24000 per megabyte.

The carriers are restricting what phones can do, until they can update their business model.

There are parts of the world where the telecom companies sell you broadband, but block VOIP - because their business is based on selling calls.

It's bad. The carriers need to update their business model.

C.

Act 1

The AT&T Presentation..

Jobs: You gotta see this, the iPhone has this neat video camera in it.
(he demos by shooting Phill Shiller do an impression of Steve Balmer - everyone laughs when he plays the video back)

Jobs: This is awesome. And now it just press send and ... Boom.

(Everyone smiles and applauds)

AT&T Dude: Video MMS. Very cool. We make 3 bucks on each video MMS sent

Jobs: Er. No. What's an MMS? I am sending it as an email attachment. So folks can send pictures of their kids to grandparents and they can include them in iPhoto. It's awesome.

(The AT&T guys all look at each other. )

AT&T Dude: I'm sorry. But no. We can't have people sending video clips for *free*. We are a business here.

Jobs: But if you charge them three bucks, no one will use it.

AT&T Dude: The idiots will.

(The AT&T guys all laugh. )

Jobs: I see...

(Jobs starts typing an email on the phone: Dear Betrtrand, Let's hold back video sending until these bozos understand they are in the data shipping business. )

[tonton]

I think Nokia will continue to survive for a long time. They totally own the bottom end of the market.

I'm sorry but low-end Sony-Ericssons run circles around low-end Nokias. I honestly don't understand why anyone would choose Nokia for a free-with-contract or low cost "handset only" phone. The public is going to realize this and Nokia will lose market share quickly.

[bavlondon2]

Carniphage your talking crap now. Nokia only good at low end phones? I dont see SE or Samsung or anyone else for that matter able to compete with Nokia when it comes to top of the range phones.

Bottom line is your not always going to be carrying a camera around with you. Say for example I am chilling out with my gf or any friend for that matter. Some event occurs for which I would like to capture those events on video. Can you really see me carrying a camera with me everywhere I go just to have it ready? Mobile phones have reached the stage where they can take decent pics and vids. Of course a dedicated unit will produce better results but you don’t get the convenience factor with a dedicated unit. Its all about convergence devices these days and iphone doesn’t converge enough gadgets!

[mrochester]

Dude, I hate to say this, but you are an what experts call an idiot. That's exactly what we have now.

Symbian was a compromised OS designed to run on low-power low-memory systems.
It answered this question. "How can we squeeze a GUI onto a low-power handheld?"

NextStep was based on a different premise.
"$10,000 is cheap for a workstation, but, how the hell can we bring down the cost of building expensive software."

NextStep begat Cocoa, and Cocoa became the iPhone API.
Because of Cocoa, you can build a really nice iPhone App in minutes. And if you hadn't noticed, Moore's Law means that there is much more CPU power in the iPhone as in that Next pizza box.

From Wikipedia:
The NeXT Computer was based on the new 25 MHz Motorola 68030 central processing unit (CPU). It included between 8 and 64 MB of random access memory (RAM), a 256 MB magneto-optical drive (MO) drive, a 40 MB (swap-only), 330 MB, or 660 MB hard drive, 10Base-2 Ethernet, NuBus and a 17-inch MegaPixel grayscale display measuring 1120 by 832 pixels.

Go ask a Symbian developer about Cocoa, and once they stop crying, see what they have to say about ridiculous.

C.

I'm afraid you're the idiot for comparing a 1997 desktop OS to a mobile OS. Show me the Apple mobile phone OS from 1997 compared to the Symbian OS of 1997. Then we can start talking. Wait, no, you say that doesn't exist and it took Apple 10 more years to produce a mobile OS? Well bully me.

It might be true that Cocoa is wonderful to develop for, but there are 2 main sticking points. Firstly, Symbian has a vast advantage in the amount of software and applications available for it. Second, developing for the iPhone is only targetting a very tiny audience.

And to say that Nokia are struggling at the high end is a total farce and you know it. The N95 alone topped nearly 10million unit sales and that is but one of the many high end Nokia phones available. All in all, the figures at the high end for Nokia are going to be many multiples of what Apple has achieved. BTW, having just looked, Nokia sold 11 million N-Series devices in the 4th quarter of 2007.

And not only that, but Nokia do really well at the bottom end of the market too, which just goes to show how they have all the bases covered.

I honestly don't understand why anyone would choose Nokia for a free-with-contract

Free with contract means N95-8GB so there are plenty of reasons to choose it ;)

[BRussell]

You're a whiner! You're a fanboi!

Sorry, but that seems to be the only purpose of this thread.

Everyone wishes it could do video recording. No one knows exactly why it doesn't, whether it's technical or political or something else. I'm sure it's not that it's technically impossible, and I'm sure it's not Apple just deciding to be mean to us. My personal theory is that it's harder than you'd think to have cross-platform video files that integrate well on both Mac and PC, but I have no idea. It could be that, given the hardware, the video sucks so hard that Apple figures that having it would be more of an embarrassment than not having it. Who knows?

[Carniphage]

Carniphage your talking crap now. Nokia only good at low end phones? I dont see SE or Samsung or anyone else for that matter able to compete with Nokia when it comes to top of the range phones.


Nokia are a funny company. They seem to do well wherever American companies ignore. In the US, no one is buying.

They do have a lot of market share.

But I think the next phase of phones is all about the software.
And being tied to Symbian in a software race, is like being tied to a ship's anchor in a swimming gala. We can't decide now. Come back in a year and see what's happened!



Its all about convergence devices these days and iphone doesn’t converge enough gadgets!

I thought convergence was last year?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3200/cameras/2_graph_main_f4af4e329c.png
It's Flickr's cameraphone graph. The pink line is iPhone.
The Yellow line is the N95.

Without a doubt, the N95 takes better pictures. But I think that people really don't care that much.

Here's an iPhone pic
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1370/1460396838_fefe8db516_b.jpg

Here's a N95 pic
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2261/2207687033_cf4b13b135_b.jpg

The Nokia is sharper. But if you actually cared about the final few percent, you'd care enough to get a proper camera. For most people, I think a Polaroid-quality snap is good enough.
Which is exactly what all phones give you.

And probably why Polaroid are stopping making instant film.

C.

[mrochester]

The Nokia is sharper. But if you actually cared about the final few percent, you'd care enough to get a proper camera. For most people, I think a Polaroid-quality snap is good enough.


C.

Why should wanting the 'final few percent' make you any more of less likely to care about getting a proper camera? And when you have the choice, why settle for less?

And I'm sick of people quoting Flickr usage stats. With the iPhone you are *forced* to have a data plan whether you like it or not. With an N95, you *choose* to have a data plan. Even then, there are still enough N95 users who have chosen to have a data plan to match all of the iPhone users who are forced to have the same plan. That sounds like a clear win for the N95. If you force people to take out certain services, they are more likely to use them since they have no choice as to whether they are there or not. Please, don't embarrass yourself quoting these stats unless all the players are on a level playing field.

Let me dream up something totally stupid to make my point...

There are 2 men. One man is giving away chocolate bars for free (iPhone and included data plan). The other man is charging 50p per bar (N95 and optional data). Customers can choose whichever they want.

The first man gives away 100 bars of chocolate. The second man sells 50 bars.

As per the above Flickr stats, you're response to this would be, 'wow, the first man clearly has the best product because he's moved twice as many as the other person'.

In actual fact, this is the conclusion. The second mans product is clearly superior since 50 people have been willing to pay for it instead of choosing the free item.

[bavlondon2]

Thats the thing I dont get. People wont admit that some of these omissions are plain stupid on the part of Apple. And it cant be to do with hardware either. All this "5 years ahead of any phone" and yet they also perhaps didnt fit in the right hardware for recording video? Please thats almost as cheeky as SE passing of Sony digi cam pics as the k850s :lol:

[BRussell]

People wont admit that some of these omissions are plain stupid on the part of Apple.
:lol: I sincerely doubt it's stupidity. It may be that it just didn't make the cut of features they had time to implement, or it may be that there are technical reasons, or something else. But I don't think they are ignorant about video or feel that it's unimportant. This is the only computer company that includes video cameras on (almost) their full line of computers, and make a whole line of leading video-editing software. They're heavily invested in video. Why they don't do the obvious and put it in the iPhone, I don't know, but I doubt it's "stupidity."

[bavlondon2]

Yes perhaps I was a bit harsh to brand it stupidity but no one seems to know. Has anyone ever asked Jobs or anyone from Apple for that matter?

[Carniphage]

Why should wanting the 'final few percent' make you any more of less likely to care about getting a proper camera? And when you have the choice, why settle for less?



But you *do* have a choice.
You can chose to forgo.
....a nice screen capable of viewing video.
....a best-in-class web browser
....a dreamcast-level games GPU

and replace it with that few extra percent of image quality. Buy a Viewty or an N95 instead of an iPhone.
It's a reasonable trade-off. Given the choice, you might think that is a good trade off. And pick a better camera over all this other stuff.

But I bloody wouldn't. Not in a million years.

Yes, there are are people out there that care massively about that extra 5 percent. image quality, They are a minority. But an important little market. But here's the thing. Those people use cameras to take their pictures.

A five megapixel camera on a phone is like a speedometer on a pushbike that goes up to a hundred. It's cool but, not it's really necessary. Its a gimmick.

C.

[mrochester]

But you *do* have a choice.
You can chose to forgo.
....a nice screen capable of viewing video.
....a best-in-class web browser
....a dreamcast-level games GPU

and replace it with that few extra percent of image quality. Buy a Viewty or an N95 instead of an iPhone.
It's a reasonable trade-off. Given the choice, you might think that is a good trade off. And pick a better camera over all this other stuff.

But I bloody wouldn't. Not in a million years.

Yes, there are are people out there that care massively about that extra 5 percent. image quality, They are a minority. But an important little market. But here's the thing. Those people use cameras to take their pictures.

A five megapixel camera on a phone is like a speedometer on a pushbike that goes up to a hundred. It's cool but, not it's really necessary. Its a gimmick.

C.
N95 has a nice screen you can watch videos on.
It also has a great browser.
I'd argue that being able to play dreamcast style games on your phone is a gimmick. I'd bet you that more people use their phones for photography than for games, so the extra 5% in the camera department is going to be better value for the majority of people. Regardless, Symbian phones have an excellent range of games anyway. So with the N95 you get all those plus points you point out, and more.

[bavlondon2]

Exactly. I never use my phones for any decent games. Maybe chess or something silly to pass time but id never bother myself with decent games. They are too big a drag on the battery. Also I think you are selling the camera part of a phone short. I think there is more than just a '5%' increase overall in quality when comparing iphones camera capbilities to the N95. Its probably more in the region of 75%.

I think your points may be valid in the states as sadley they get decent phones there. 2MP is probably enough for to quench your thirst but over here in Europe we have been used to more for a longer time so iphones camera is nothing short of a joke. By the end of this year we will have at least 3 8MP camera phones in Europe. Do you really think only a small portion of the entire mobile user spectrum is interested in the camera function? I think probabaly only a samll % of iphone customers in the UK ever use the weather function.