If you were looking to purchase an iPhone (News - Alert) today, you were startled to learn that Apple had closed its retail stores at 2 pm local time, only to reopen at 6 pm for the Great iPhone Sale. Even Apple’s partner in hyperbole, AT&T, closed its stores at 4:30 pm before reopening later to begin selling the iPhone at the magic hour of 6 pm.
Aside from its sophisticated touchscreen, the iPhone in itself is not terribly revolutionary, and it’s not even the first device to be called an iPhone. Soon after the Apple iPhone announcement in January, Cisco sued Apple for commandeering the iPhone name, which Cisco owns as a result of its acquisition of Infogear in 2000, which filed to trademark “iPhone” in March 1996 and had sold iPhone products for several years. Cisco’s Linksys (News - Alert) division has been shipping a whole family of seven “iPhone” products since early last year.
Both Apple and Cisco eventually settled the lawsuit, the provisions of which allow for both companies to use the name “iPhone” but with the corporate names preceding them, thus: “Apple iPhone” and “Linksys iPhone”. Moreover, both companies say that will explore interoperability among their products in terms of security, consumer and business communications (well, that’s what they say, anyway).
The Cisco/Linksys iPhone family consists of the following:
• CIT200 Cordless Internet Telephony (News - Alert) Kit, an entry-level cordless VoIP phone that includes call waiting, caller ID, and a speakerphone. The CIT200 can display your contact list and presence on the handset and supports SkypeIn, SkypeOut, Skype (News - Alert) and Voicemail.
• CIT300 Dual-Mode Internet Telephony Kit, a more sophisticated, full-featured cordless phone that’s also a dual-mode phone capable of both VoIP and landline calling. It also supports SkypeIn, SkypeOut and Skype Voicemail.
• CIT310 Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger, another dual-mode phone but one that supports Internet services (e.g. weather forecasts and local phone number seaches) and Yahoo! Messenger with Voice, Phone In/Out and Voicemail. Like its brethren, your contact list and presence are visible on the handset.
• CIT400 Dual-Mode Internet Telephony Kit for Skype, a dual-mode cordless phone phone that allows both Skype and landline calls and doesn’t require a PC to use.
Other Cisco/Linksys iPhones include the three members of the Linksys WIP (Wireless Internet Phone) family, which enable users to make low-cost calls over WiFi networks without a PC. These particular Linksys iPhones sport large screens to view web content. Most of them include standard cellphone features including caller ID and call waiting.
• WIP300 Wireless-G IP Phone, a standards-based SIPv2 compliant phone that doesn’t require a PC, also allows you to use any ITSP you like. It work with with 802.11b/g wireless networks, has a portable candy-bar style form factor, and is equipped with a site survey AP (Access Point) finder.
• WIP320 Wireless-G Phone for Skype, a device that requires no PC, supports WiFi and SkypeOut, SkypeIn and Skype Voicemail. It also can display your contact list and presence information right on the handset.
• WIP330 Wireless-G IP Phone with Web Browser, is a WiFi and SIPv2-enabled device like the WIP320 but it also offers Hotspot authentication and a built-in web browser running on Windows Mobile OS. It can access stored multimedia files and supports home monitoring — it can stream live video from wireless IP cameras.
iPhone “killers”
Even more amusingly, there are already “iPhone killers” entering the market. Verizon Wireless, for example, has been readying the LG Prada (aka KE850) which, like the iPhon, has a camera, plays music and videos and can view documents remotely. Not to be outdone, Samsung (News - Alert) has announced the Ultra Smart F700 a neat device which has a 2.78-inch color display and its own keyboard gimmick: a slide-out full, QWERTY touchscreen keyboard based on what’s called VibeTonz technology (an answer to Apple’s Multitouch screen technology), enabling a user to feel the virtual buttons via responsive vibrations. The screen also supports drag-and-drop. There’s also a five megapixel camera (vs. Apple’s two megapixels). It offers an impressive 7.2 Mbps HSDPA connection to the Internet to move email, videos, songs and photos, much faster than the AT&T EDGE network upon which Apple’s iPhone currently relies.
Many would argue that the Nokia N95 is also an iPhone killer, since it has a 5 megapixel camera (with Zeiss optics, no less), and allows you to access your MP3 music and emails. You can also engage in some impromptu iPhone-like web browsing along with some GPS mapping, navigation, and location-based searches. And it should, considering its $749 price tag.
Richard Grigonis is an internationally-known technology editor and writer. Prior to joining TMC, he was the Editor-in-Chief of VON Magazine from its founding in 2003 to August 2006. He also served as the Chief Technical Editor of CMP Media’s Computer Telephony magazine (later called Communications Convergence (News — Alert) from its first year of operation in 1994 until 2003. In addition, he has written five books on computers and telecom (including the Computer Telephony Encyclopedia and Dictionary of IP Communications). To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) | X | | High Speed Downlink Packet Access was released in 3GPP-Third Generation Partnership Project Release 5 for indoor and urban outdoor high speed data access at 10 MBPS-Mega Bits Per Second range (14.4 MB...more |
Voice over IP (VoIP) | X | | A real-time communications system that converts voice into digital packets containing media and signaling data that travel over networks using Internet Protocol....more |
Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) | X | | The IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN standard is usually referred to as Wi-Fi-Wireless Fidelity or RLAN-Radio Local Area Network. The 802.11 standard has evolved into a number of sub-standards 802.11a/b/g/n....more |
Internet Protocol (IP) | X | | IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
Hotspot | X | | Hotspots are the term used to describe WiFi-Wireless Fidelity IEEE-Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (www.ieee.org) 802.11a/b/g PAN-Personal Area Networks. Operating on unregulated FCC...more |
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