What is iphone really?

Sure, Iphone is one of the coolest devices around. What makes it so cool? what does iphone burn down to, really?

I have spent several years working on reverse engineering machine tools. However complicated it is, a machine or a gadget usually always burns down to a few simple features that can be reconstructed equally well by alternate means. Let me try an attempt at breaking down what an iphone really is:

An iphone is an interesting combination of:

• Touch screen.
• Intelligent user interface.
• Visual voice mail.
• A music player.
• A tabbed web browser
• An interesting and intelligent keyboard interface and
• A Suite of sensors that faciliate intelligent use.

If you think about it, all these elements exist individually. What Apple has really done is to put together all these interesting features into one single device. (Ofcourse, that is a little disparaging of Apple, considering that nobody has ever done it before.)

Microsoft has been working on an interesting project called "the surface". The surface is basically a interesting user interface. Does it measure upto iphone? Not only that it does - it goes two or three generations ahead. I encourage readers to check it out. However, there are no plans as of new to use those features in mobile phones. However, if history is any indicator, we can expect some elements of the surface UI to be incorporated into windows mobile devices.

What about the rest of the features? I hear you ask. Looks like a few experts out there have been reading your minds. see the interesting links below.

• CBSNews article
• Downloadsquad article
• Second download squad article