Talk about last minute upgrades: In a press release today, Apple has revealed a number of significant upgrades to both the iPhone's battery life and touch screen. Instead of what I believe was around 5 hours of video/talk and 16 hours of audio playback, Apple has updated the iPhone's battery life rating to the following numbers: up to 8 hours talk time, a whopping 250 hours of standby (over 10 days), 6 hours of internet use, 7 hours of video playback and 24 hours of audio playback. Of course, just like any other mobile phone, these numbers can vary depending on various factors like intermittent use and network configuration (whether features like Wi-Fi or the speakerphone are enabled, etc.).
This is quite the update to drop on anxious customers less than two weeks from launch. I can only wonder what other tricks and unknown or upgraded features (PUSH email? HSPDA instead of EDGE?) Apple could be waiting to announce.
Update: Interestingly, this latest press release also mentions the iPhone's pricing - again at $499 and $599 for 4GB and 8GB, respectively - but makes no mention of contracts being involved with those prices. Since Apple dropped the "2-year activation required" language from their ads after originally airing them, this might offer more hope to those who aren't able to renew a contract just yet to get the discounts.
Update 2: Commenter Greg points out that Apple's competitive chart shows the Nokia N95 as a no-WiFi device, when it actually does do WiFi. We hope this error will be corrected in short order.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
6-18-2007 @ 9:58AM
alexish said...
Hmm... i wonder if those battery life figures are as accurate as their MacBook Pro ones...
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6-18-2007 @ 10:00AM
Mike said...
This is sooo funny...it reminds me when I was head of electronics R&D at a well-known Bluetooth device manufacturer, and we had a meeting to talk about the features of a new product soon to be released. The official value for operating time was 5 hours, based on battery life capacity and measured current consumption...then, the marketing guy boldly stated "but it must be 9 hours, our competitors do 9 hours!".
After some pushing and pulling, talking about physics (you want a small device, the battery is smaller, so you get less time), marketing, public perception, and other fun topics, the decision was taken. The official running time of the device would be 9 hours.
Anyone who has ever used a battery-powered consumer electronics device will be able to confirm what I am saying. You can safely divide the blurb values by two, and get a more precise idea of the performance of the device.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:01AM
Luigi193 said...
Wow some real hateful comments over at engadet! Poor iPhone, it hurts my SOLE when people rag on it.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:04AM
Ed said...
Mike, in my experience my iPod Nano has a battery life longer than the officially specified one. From what I've heard from reviews of other iPods, this is common to all the new iPods.
You may have worked for a company that decided to lie to their customers about battery life, that doesn't mean Apple do...
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6-18-2007 @ 10:04AM
Gregory Andrew said...
The reason the pricing thing went away is that it's going to be sold at retail, no matter what the situation. I was told this by an AT&T Customer Service Manager. She said there will not be a lower price, and the $499 & $599 prices are the retail and ONLY price.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:08AM
Brad said...
Um, don't get your hopes up about the 2-year contract deal. While there might be a pre-paid plan for it - I doubt it, personally - you will need to re-up just to get it. And, if I recall right, the price of the iPhone isn't subsidized at all. That's the full price, no matter what.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:10AM
Tom said...
And the stock is up +3.21
I mean +3.27
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=AAPL
:)
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6-18-2007 @ 10:10AM
Dave Chartier said...
Let's also remember guys that battery lives depend *heavily* on how you actually use the device. Go to the iPhone's tech specs page to see what operating conditions the phone was used in to obtain these numbers:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/specs.html
A lot of people complain when a device doesn't hit claimed numbers, but they rarely pay attention to how those numbers are actually determined.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:16AM
Tonino said...
Nokia N95 is renowed for having WIFI. I hope the the rest of comparative informations isn't as accurate as this.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:17AM
stefan K said...
I would actually hope for the camera to get upgraded as well. Sony and Nokia are coming out with 3 - 5 Megapixel cameras in their phones. Will Apple's 2MP be enough? Also - I hope you can actually cover the lense. Otherwise they tend to get dirty.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:18AM
KeynoteKen said...
I noticed that "2 year" thing missing, too. Could either be good news or REALLY bad news...
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6-18-2007 @ 10:23AM
Greg said...
The press release has false information. In the "iPhone Competitive Data, June 18,2007" section, they list the Nokia N95 as not having WiFi which in fact, it does.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:25AM
alexc said...
David,
The iPhone will have PUSH email supplied by Yahoo! Mail. That was announced at the keynote and again in those AT&T manuals. It also can apparently download your Yahoo! Mail address book, instead of using your native Mac's Address Book.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:26AM
Dave Chartier said...
In terms of the camera, we will of course need to get our hands on it to see how it performs, but companies are more or less jamming higher and higher megapixel cameras into tiny cameraphone lenses simply to go through the paces; the cameras aren't actually getting that much more quality because you can't stuff that large of a megapixel sensor into such a miniscule lense and actually expect that much more performance out of it.
Only phones like Nokia's N95 that literally has a larger lens are seeing significant improvements.
Of course, Apple isn't comparing the iPhone against the N95 because the N95 is primarily a cameraphone, without any kind of real keyboard. Even though the iPhone might lack some smartphone features like PUSH email - unless Apple drops another press release, of course - it really is the most similar to smartphones and not power-user regular phones like the N95.
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6-18-2007 @ 10:39AM
graham said...
anyone notice that the iphone was running google earth (or something that looked like it )when they compared it against other phones
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6-18-2007 @ 10:55AM
Tonino said...
Greg: the lousy trick is Nokia doesn't mention the capabilty in the official pages, and so Apple can pretend they are just citing that. I guess everyone has its style.
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6-18-2007 @ 11:17AM
Chris Brentano said...
Are those battery times minimums, or maximums?
I mean, they say that my MacBook will have *up to* 6 hours of battery life, but under 'normal' usage I get 2 or maybe 2.5 hours out of it.
It sounds great, but I'm skeptical of *all* quoted battery lifetimes, because they're never true.
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6-18-2007 @ 11:18AM
Johnny Thrash said...
Ya know... it's entirely possible that nobody in the press release, development or marketing departments have even bought any Nokia phones... I mean who owns Nokia anymore, really?
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6-18-2007 @ 11:20AM
craig said...
"I can only wonder what other tricks and unknown or upgraded features (PUSH email? HSPDA instead of EDGE?) Apple could be waiting to announce."
Yes, of course, Apple is waiting to announce more new features. They do it all the time in these situations.
What does Apple do in response to criticism of battery life? They up the ratings, of course. That doesn't mean they've upped the performance.
"Of course, Apple isn't comparing the iPhone against the N95 because the N95 is primarily a cameraphone, without any kind of real keyboard."
The iPhone doesn't have "any kind of real keyboard" either but I doubt you would call it primarily a cameraphone, Dave.
Apple did compare the iPhone to the N95. It did so in the most useless of ways in order to suggest that it offers better hardware than everyone else. It emphasized WiFi over 3G, it suggested that others were hiding battery performance, it boasted about its brand new glass screen (not mentioning that others don't have clarity complaints), and makes no mention that every other phone has a better keyboard.
Apple didn't choose the other phones based on whether they were relevant competition, they chose them to make good press.
Frankly, big glass screens break easily. Perhaps Apple needs a better optical screen because its overhyped multitouch sensor degrades image quality more than others. Wonder if they updated the weight specs?
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6-18-2007 @ 11:20AM
JamesB said...
Yeah, who runs Windows anymore, really?
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