Surely what you are looking for is a device called a camera?
I have a horrible feeling that if some people get their way, in five years time, we will be lugging round 'phones with a specification and weight not unlike a RED1. George Lucas will be shooting a movie on it, and people will sit in pubs talking about how good a bluescreen plate they can pull.
For me, if the iPhone's camera could be improved without gaining any weight or thickness I'd be happy. But if I wanted the love-child of a compact camera and an telephone, I'd buy a Viewty.
C.
You do realise that the Viewty is smaller than the iPhone?
12mm shorter, 7mm narrower and the lens adds only 3mm where it sticks out, otherwise it's thinner too.
You do realise that the Viewty is smaller than the iPhone?
Of course to fit in the smaller package with a larger camera the Viewty is subpar in some of the areas the iPhone excels. It depends on what you want. From what I see in the dimensions the Viewty is 14.8mm thick the iPhone 11.6mm thick. The aluminum and glass certainly does not leave the iPhone the lightest of devices. But its solid.
Of course to fit in the smaller package with a larger camera the Viewty is subpar in some of the areas the iPhone excels.
Now that's funny!
AFAICT the only advantage the iPhone hardware has is 8 hours talktime instead of 6 on the 3G Viewty. The Viewty apparently has 200 hours more standby.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TenoBell
It depends on what you want. From what I see in the dimensions the Viewty is 14.8mm thick the iPhone 11.6mm thick. The aluminum and glass certainly does not leave the iPhone the lightest of devices. But its solid.
The Viewty is also aluminium bodied and a glass front, and solid. It's only 14.8mm where the lens sticks out.
Really, is it so hard to believe LG's phone hardware isn't leaps ahead of the iPhone v1 product?
Now with Macworld done, when is the next logical time a new iPhone can be announced? Numerous articles posted here since summer suggested a March/April release date for a new 3G iPhone. Is there another Mac event in the next 2-4 months?
Like others, I am also waiting on an iPhone. I don't want a major upgrade over what they have now. I'd be happy with the current form factor as long as they added 3G and a true GPS (hopefully with realtime nav with google maps). Realtime nav would be a massive selling point for me, not just for driving, but even just for walking around NYC. I think 8gb would be plenty for me, I don’t even really need more space, but longer battery life is always welcome.
I am also waiting for them to allow business account users to add iPhones because I am not switching my account. I assume they will allow this by the time a new iPhone is out. A user on another forum called AT&T and apparently business accounts could be allowed as early as next week.
Actually the stylus isnt even needed. Its not multitouch but at the same time its meant to really be used with just your hands. Infact LG messed up a bit by not creating a slot to hold the stylus. You will probably find that most Viewty owners do not even carry it around. For me the 2 best things about the Viewty are its video capture. And im not talking about the 120fps slow mo crap either. Its 30fps VGA (which actually captures into avi) is even better than say the N95. Stills are good too, they give good colour representation unlike many phones which give that pre processed look. Also it can play Div x.
But despite that it doesnt have the inginuity of the iphones interface. No phone has that right now but wait till the end of 2008 and you may see similiar things from other makes.
Anyway to be honest with the exception of 3G Apple probabaly have it planned to just keeping new functionality to iphone which is fine so long as theyget the main things like A2DP, bluetooth file transfer and video capture. Full flash support would be nice too but thats not essential. The native youtube app plays back the videos in better quality than the Flash encoded ones anyway.
Jobs said at the UK launch he didnt expect Apple to have a 3g powerd device for 18 months so that could even take us up until Q4 in theory.
I wondered about the Viewty's processor and graphics. But could find no information.
Parts of its hardware is better but no not all of it.
Do you honestly think those differences would make the iPhone thicker? I don't think so. The Viewty proves you can fit a decent camera into a thin phone, and a replaceable battery, and a memory card slot.
btw, you're confusing memory with storage. I don't know what the iPhone has for RAM but it's not 8GB. I'd suspect no more than 256MB. The Viewty uses microSD cards for storage up to 2GB but apparently SDHC cards work too as long as you don't format them in the phone.
Do you honestly think those differences would make the iPhone thicker? I don't think so.
I don't know, I'm not an electronics engineer. I don't agree that the Viewty has all of the iPhone's strengths plus its own. Clearly that is not the case.
Quote:
The Viewty proves you can fit a decent camera into a thin phone, and a replaceable battery, and a memory card slot.
So get a Viewty and be happy. What's the problem?
Quote:
btw, you're confusing memory with storage.
The Viewty has to have some type of internal storage. The OS cannot be loaded on SD cards. 100MB is all I could find.
Quote:
The Viewty is a phone with the design focussed on the camera experience.
In much the same way as the iPhone has it's design focussed on the Web experience.
I agree. I got the iPhone for the web and email. Not for the camera. I already have a good camera.
Your missing the point. Yes of course for those special occasions you will use a proper camera but for spontaenous out and about pics do you always have your cam to hand? I would have to think most would not! No ones saying the Viewty should be able to replace a camera but all this "I don?t use it I have a camera" talk is nonsene. This is 2008, there is no excuse to leave out such an important function on a phone these days.
The bottom line is that if iphone had more specs in line with other phones, many many more people would have bought it, EVEN with its steep price tag.
Your missing the point. Yes of course for those special occasions you will use a proper camera but for spontaenous out and about pics do you always have your cam to hand? I would have to think most would not! No ones saying the Viewty should be able to replace a camera but all this "I don’t use it I have a camera" talk is nonsene. This is 2008, there is no excuse to leave out such an important function on a phone these days.
You are just flat out wrong. There is a camera on the iPhone its not a function left out. They just did not attempt to turn the back of the phone into an entire camera.
I don't and I'm sure many people don't want a whole camera on their phone like the Viewty. The purpose of the phone for me is communication. The camera is a nifty add on, but not the primary function of the device.
The primary function of this device is to play videos and music. If you want a phone just for communication then buy a blackberry or other mobile phone. This is a multimedia phone so should really cater from even the camera side of things. How video recording was left out is probably the craziest ommision of all. Although hopefully that will be added at a later stage.
You do realise that the Viewty is smaller than the iPhone?
12mm shorter, 7mm narrower and the lens adds only 3mm where it sticks out, otherwise it's thinner too.
edit: and the Viewty is 28g lighter too.
Well aegis, when I read what you are saying about the thickness of the LG Viewty, it immediately struck me as wrong. My eyeballs were telling me different. So I did some analysis. If you look at this image from LG:
Or this image from trustedreviews.com:
and do a little bit of measuring, you find that, by gosh, the LG Viewty is 14.8 mm thick. But, that's not including the camera lens. With the camera lens, the max thickness is about 17.3 mm.
So, lets do some more math. The volume of the iPhone is 11.5 x 6.1 x 1.16 = 81.375 cm^3. The volume of the Viewty is 10.35 x 5.44 x 1.48 = 83.33 cm^3. So, like many other phones compared to the iPhone, the Viewty has a smaller footprint, but is larger by volume. Not by much, but if you look at the iPhone, virtually all of the edges are rounded, making it feel smaller. Actually, if we did a water test, the iPhone is probably somewhere in the 75 cm^3 range due to the rounded edges. Now, with the Viewty's camera lense sticking out 2.5 mm, it'll make it feel buikier.
The primary function of this device is to play videos and music. If you want a phone just for communication then buy a blackberry or other mobile phone. This is a multimedia phone so should really cater from even the camera side of things. How video recording was left out is probably the craziest ommision of all. Although hopefully that will be added at a later stage.
Somehow, I don't think I'll buy into your definition of a phone device that specializes in multimedia requiring or having a great camera function. Why create the strawman at all? Just take the iPhone for what it is. It's a phone (calls, SMS) with PIM, Internet, and iPod functions. With so much of it's functionality GUI-based, it can more things like a great calculator, electronic dictionary, gaming machine, etc, but that's all untapped potential right now. It's just a phone with iPod and Internet type functions. Camera functions is one of the things the current model doesn't specialize in.
Will it ever? Who knows. Is it mandatory to sell more units? Well, probably not. Certainly not to the level of functionality in the N95, Viewty or SE du jour. The market is really big, and I'd imagine it will be perfectly fine with mediocre camera functionality. I can see Apple adding more camera functionality to the iPhone in the future, but it's not a "crazy omission" in the current model.
Now with Macworld done, when is the next logical time a new iPhone can be announced? Numerous articles posted here since summer suggested a March/April release date for a new 3G iPhone. Is there another Mac event in the next 2-4 months?
Apple doesn't need to have a trade show to announce a new product. It's useful as it would have more media around to drive the marketing of the product, but they can very easily just have media event with a weeks warning so as the media can make travel plans. They've done this multiple times before, and while the media/marketing crescendo isn't as large, it's still much better marketing than most other companies out there.
Summer 2008 is the only time frame as the flash supply rumors say demand is weak in 1H 08 and is anticipated to be stronger in Summer and Fall. Apple uses like 25% of the worlds flash supply, so that means new iPods and probably iPhones. Other clues include next-gen 3G chipsets will be produced at lower power consumption in the 2Q of 08. If Apple is looking for long battery while maintaining the current form factor, they'll need such chips. Summer (as defined as Jun 20 to Sep 20) 2008 is a good time presuming mass production of those chips are available. So, in the Summer we could theoretically see an UMTS/HSPA 16 GB iPhone come out. GPS could be one of the features in it. Maybe.
16 GB SDHC sized flash packages should be available very soon as well, this quarter. This could mean an EDGE 16 GB iPhone could come out in the next couple of months too.
This is all assuming they want to maintain the current iPhone form factor and battery life. They could sell a HSPA 32-GB flash or 80 GB HDD 4" iPhone with GPS right now if they wanted to. It would be 18+ mm, probably weigh 12 oz though, and cost $600+. They just choose not to.
Anyways, you know those times when you are in a conversation and somebody walks up acting like they know what is going on? Yeah, that's you.
You know those times when a kid taunts you just to see if you'll get all bothered and keep arguing with him? About the details on a telephone? That, that's you.
You know those times when a kid taunts you just to see if you'll get all bothered and keep arguing with him? About the details on a telephone? That, that's you.
Pay no attention to him chewby. I think he must be on school holidays or something.
Anyway back to iphone. I dont know how literal Jobs words should be taken but at the UK iphone launch he said he didnt envisage seeing a 3G iphone not for another 18 months. That would have taken us up until Q4 08 which is still probably the best time to release it.
Given how much attention they tend to draw when announcing new products and also given how many high end monsters will be announced at 3GSM this year (Nokia N96, SE P5/experia/and some 10mp phone whos brand is yet unknown), is it possible Apple may try it differently this year and announce it at 3GSM?
Personally I think thats a long shot but it would be interesting still as it would surley divert attention away from the other big makes.
I would be happy with the current one so long as they bump up the storage space to 16gb, put in video capture, add some BT profiles and a proper 3.5mm jack. Oh and speaking of video capture, I remember reading not to long ago that there was an app available for video recording on iphone and that it supposedly captured in 2mp reolution (amazing!!!!!) al be it at 10 fps. I am yet to see a sample of this (has anyone seen it yet?) but if thats true then iphone must have a motion sensor already built in. That in turn could mean that video recording is on Apples list of future functionality to add. What say you lot? :-)
I'd rather have EDGE with good battery life than 3G with awful battery life, so I'm quite happy with the iPhone I have now, I think Apple will release it in the US around the original release of the iPhone or a couple of months after to accommodate people having 18 month contracts.
Comments
Surely what you are looking for is a device called a camera?
I have a horrible feeling that if some people get their way, in five years time, we will be lugging round 'phones with a specification and weight not unlike a RED1. George Lucas will be shooting a movie on it, and people will sit in pubs talking about how good a bluescreen plate they can pull.
For me, if the iPhone's camera could be improved without gaining any weight or thickness I'd be happy. But if I wanted the love-child of a compact camera and an telephone, I'd buy a Viewty.
C.
You do realise that the Viewty is smaller than the iPhone?
12mm shorter, 7mm narrower and the lens adds only 3mm where it sticks out, otherwise it's thinner too.
edit: and the Viewty is 28g lighter too.
You do realise that the Viewty is smaller than the iPhone?
Of course to fit in the smaller package with a larger camera the Viewty is subpar in some of the areas the iPhone excels. It depends on what you want. From what I see in the dimensions the Viewty is 14.8mm thick the iPhone 11.6mm thick. The aluminum and glass certainly does not leave the iPhone the lightest of devices. But its solid.
Of course to fit in the smaller package with a larger camera the Viewty is subpar in some of the areas the iPhone excels.
Now that's funny!
AFAICT the only advantage the iPhone hardware has is 8 hours talktime instead of 6 on the 3G Viewty. The Viewty apparently has 200 hours more standby.
It depends on what you want. From what I see in the dimensions the Viewty is 14.8mm thick the iPhone 11.6mm thick. The aluminum and glass certainly does not leave the iPhone the lightest of devices. But its solid.
The Viewty is also aluminium bodied and a glass front, and solid. It's only 14.8mm where the lens sticks out.
Really, is it so hard to believe LG's phone hardware isn't leaps ahead of the iPhone v1 product?
Like others, I am also waiting on an iPhone. I don't want a major upgrade over what they have now. I'd be happy with the current form factor as long as they added 3G and a true GPS (hopefully with realtime nav with google maps). Realtime nav would be a massive selling point for me, not just for driving, but even just for walking around NYC. I think 8gb would be plenty for me, I don’t even really need more space, but longer battery life is always welcome.
I am also waiting for them to allow business account users to add iPhones because I am not switching my account. I assume they will allow this by the time a new iPhone is out. A user on another forum called AT&T and apparently business accounts could be allowed as early as next week.
AFAICT the only advantage the iPhone hardware has is 8 hours talktime instead of 6 on the 3G Viewty. The Viewty apparently has 200 hours more standby.
Screen Resolution
Viewty 240 x 400
iPhone 320×480
Touch screen
Viewty - Pen
iPhone - Multi-touch
Memory
Viewty 100MB
iPhone 8GB
I wondered about the Viewty's processor and graphics. But could find no information.
Really, is it so hard to believe LG's phone hardware isn't leaps ahead of the iPhone v1 product?
Parts of its hardware is better but no not all of it.
But despite that it doesnt have the inginuity of the iphones interface. No phone has that right now but wait till the end of 2008 and you may see similiar things from other makes.
Anyway to be honest with the exception of 3G Apple probabaly have it planned to just keeping new functionality to iphone which is fine so long as theyget the main things like A2DP, bluetooth file transfer and video capture. Full flash support would be nice too but thats not essential. The native youtube app plays back the videos in better quality than the Flash encoded ones anyway.
Jobs said at the UK launch he didnt expect Apple to have a 3g powerd device for 18 months so that could even take us up until Q4 in theory.
Screen Resolution
Viewty 240 x 400
iPhone 320×480
Touch screen
Viewty - Pen
iPhone - Multi-touch
Memory
Viewty 100MB
iPhone 8GB
I wondered about the Viewty's processor and graphics. But could find no information.
Parts of its hardware is better but no not all of it.
Do you honestly think those differences would make the iPhone thicker? I don't think so. The Viewty proves you can fit a decent camera into a thin phone, and a replaceable battery, and a memory card slot.
btw, you're confusing memory with storage. I don't know what the iPhone has for RAM but it's not 8GB. I'd suspect no more than 256MB. The Viewty uses microSD cards for storage up to 2GB but apparently SDHC cards work too as long as you don't format them in the phone.
So if you use an 8GB card only fill up to 6gb ect.....
The Viewty is a phone with the design focussed on the camera experience.
In much the same way as the iPhone has it's design focussed on the Web experience.
If I wanted a pocket web device, I'd get an iPhone. Ok?
If I wanted a pocket camera device, I'd get a Viewty....
or actually I might just go and buy a, you know, a proper camera or something.
C.
Do you honestly think those differences would make the iPhone thicker? I don't think so.
I don't know, I'm not an electronics engineer. I don't agree that the Viewty has all of the iPhone's strengths plus its own. Clearly that is not the case.
The Viewty proves you can fit a decent camera into a thin phone, and a replaceable battery, and a memory card slot.
So get a Viewty and be happy. What's the problem?
btw, you're confusing memory with storage.
The Viewty has to have some type of internal storage. The OS cannot be loaded on SD cards. 100MB is all I could find.
The Viewty is a phone with the design focussed on the camera experience.
In much the same way as the iPhone has it's design focussed on the Web experience.
I agree. I got the iPhone for the web and email. Not for the camera. I already have a good camera.
The bottom line is that if iphone had more specs in line with other phones, many many more people would have bought it, EVEN with its steep price tag.
Your missing the point. Yes of course for those special occasions you will use a proper camera but for spontaenous out and about pics do you always have your cam to hand? I would have to think most would not! No ones saying the Viewty should be able to replace a camera but all this "I don’t use it I have a camera" talk is nonsene. This is 2008, there is no excuse to leave out such an important function on a phone these days.
You are just flat out wrong. There is a camera on the iPhone its not a function left out. They just did not attempt to turn the back of the phone into an entire camera.
I don't and I'm sure many people don't want a whole camera on their phone like the Viewty. The purpose of the phone for me is communication. The camera is a nifty add on, but not the primary function of the device.
You do realise that the Viewty is smaller than the iPhone?
12mm shorter, 7mm narrower and the lens adds only 3mm where it sticks out, otherwise it's thinner too.
edit: and the Viewty is 28g lighter too.
Well aegis, when I read what you are saying about the thickness of the LG Viewty, it immediately struck me as wrong. My eyeballs were telling me different. So I did some analysis. If you look at this image from LG:
Or this image from trustedreviews.com:
and do a little bit of measuring, you find that, by gosh, the LG Viewty is 14.8 mm thick. But, that's not including the camera lens. With the camera lens, the max thickness is about 17.3 mm.
So, lets do some more math. The volume of the iPhone is 11.5 x 6.1 x 1.16 = 81.375 cm^3. The volume of the Viewty is 10.35 x 5.44 x 1.48 = 83.33 cm^3. So, like many other phones compared to the iPhone, the Viewty has a smaller footprint, but is larger by volume. Not by much, but if you look at the iPhone, virtually all of the edges are rounded, making it feel smaller. Actually, if we did a water test, the iPhone is probably somewhere in the 75 cm^3 range due to the rounded edges. Now, with the Viewty's camera lense sticking out 2.5 mm, it'll make it feel buikier.
The primary function of this device is to play videos and music. If you want a phone just for communication then buy a blackberry or other mobile phone. This is a multimedia phone so should really cater from even the camera side of things. How video recording was left out is probably the craziest ommision of all. Although hopefully that will be added at a later stage.
Somehow, I don't think I'll buy into your definition of a phone device that specializes in multimedia requiring or having a great camera function. Why create the strawman at all? Just take the iPhone for what it is. It's a phone (calls, SMS) with PIM, Internet, and iPod functions. With so much of it's functionality GUI-based, it can more things like a great calculator, electronic dictionary, gaming machine, etc, but that's all untapped potential right now. It's just a phone with iPod and Internet type functions. Camera functions is one of the things the current model doesn't specialize in.
Will it ever? Who knows. Is it mandatory to sell more units? Well, probably not. Certainly not to the level of functionality in the N95, Viewty or SE du jour. The market is really big, and I'd imagine it will be perfectly fine with mediocre camera functionality. I can see Apple adding more camera functionality to the iPhone in the future, but it's not a "crazy omission" in the current model.
Now with Macworld done, when is the next logical time a new iPhone can be announced? Numerous articles posted here since summer suggested a March/April release date for a new 3G iPhone. Is there another Mac event in the next 2-4 months?
Apple doesn't need to have a trade show to announce a new product. It's useful as it would have more media around to drive the marketing of the product, but they can very easily just have media event with a weeks warning so as the media can make travel plans. They've done this multiple times before, and while the media/marketing crescendo isn't as large, it's still much better marketing than most other companies out there.
Summer 2008 is the only time frame as the flash supply rumors say demand is weak in 1H 08 and is anticipated to be stronger in Summer and Fall. Apple uses like 25% of the worlds flash supply, so that means new iPods and probably iPhones. Other clues include next-gen 3G chipsets will be produced at lower power consumption in the 2Q of 08. If Apple is looking for long battery while maintaining the current form factor, they'll need such chips. Summer (as defined as Jun 20 to Sep 20) 2008 is a good time presuming mass production of those chips are available. So, in the Summer we could theoretically see an UMTS/HSPA 16 GB iPhone come out. GPS could be one of the features in it. Maybe.
16 GB SDHC sized flash packages should be available very soon as well, this quarter. This could mean an EDGE 16 GB iPhone could come out in the next couple of months too.
This is all assuming they want to maintain the current iPhone form factor and battery life. They could sell a HSPA 32-GB flash or 80 GB HDD 4" iPhone with GPS right now if they wanted to. It would be 18+ mm, probably weigh 12 oz though, and cost $600+. They just choose not to.
Anyways, you know those times when you are in a conversation and somebody walks up acting like they know what is going on? Yeah, that's you.
You know those times when a kid taunts you just to see if you'll get all bothered and keep arguing with him? About the details on a telephone? That, that's you.
You know those times when a kid taunts you just to see if you'll get all bothered and keep arguing with him? About the details on a telephone? That, that's you.
Pay no attention to him chewby.
Anyway back to iphone. I dont know how literal Jobs words should be taken but at the UK iphone launch he said he didnt envisage seeing a 3G iphone not for another 18 months. That would have taken us up until Q4 08 which is still probably the best time to release it.
Given how much attention they tend to draw when announcing new products and also given how many high end monsters will be announced at 3GSM this year (Nokia N96, SE P5/experia/and some 10mp phone whos brand is yet unknown), is it possible Apple may try it differently this year and announce it at 3GSM?
Personally I think thats a long shot but it would be interesting still as it would surley divert attention away from the other big makes.
I would be happy with the current one so long as they bump up the storage space to 16gb, put in video capture, add some BT profiles and a proper 3.5mm jack. Oh and speaking of video capture, I remember reading not to long ago that there was an app available for video recording on iphone and that it supposedly captured in 2mp reolution (amazing!!!!!) al be it at 10 fps. I am yet to see a sample of this (has anyone seen it yet?) but if thats true then iphone must have a motion sensor already built in. That in turn could mean that video recording is on Apples list of future functionality to add. What say you lot? :-)
I'd rather have EDGE with good battery life than 3G with awful battery life...
So turn 3G off when you don't need it. That way you can have your good battery life and 3G when you want faster surfing.