150 Ampere

Or not.  Well, there is no way you could know just yet if the iPhone could be your next favorite toy.  Unless you were one of those lucky dudes who got to test an iPhone unit and make a review about it since Steve Jobs’ now-historic announcement last January 2007, and unless you camped out at the Apple Store or at your nearest AT&T Mobility place to be the first to lay your hands on the iPhone.

There are certainly a lot of things to be curious about the iPhone and how it is supposed to be different from the usual smart phones available right now on the market.  One feature that makes it a standout among the rest of the cell phone models out there at the moment is its touch sensing capability, which removes the need for an actual keyboard or keypad.  Not even a stylus is necessary to operate the iPhone.  All you need to do is to touch the screen of the iPhone with your bare fingers.  There is a virtual keyboard that will take care of your texting and other inputs; even the scroll bar is manipulated with the fingertips.  The only physical controls on the iPhone are the sleep/wake control, the volume control and the ringer switch.

As for its other features, the iPhone is capable of enabling call conferencing, call holding and call merging.  The caller ID feature is also available.  Your text messages are stored the way emails are in HTML clients.  These messages also appear as speech bubbles, much like that on iChat.

The iPhone multimedia features are stuff to look forward to as well.  But then again, that can be expected from the makers of the iPod.  The iPhone has a 2.0 megapixel camera, although it cannot as yet record video.  It can play videos, however, including those from YouTube.

The Internet connectivity features of the iPhone are also something worth checking out.  The iPhone has a built-in Wi-Fi, which will enable its user to surf the Internet using Apple’s Safari browser, modified for the iPhone.  And unlike most smartphones, it can display full web pages rather than simplified ones.  Connectivity is further enhanced with the built-in Bluetooth.

As everything has a good side and a bad side, the iPhone also has its negatives.  For one, the iPhone’s touch sensing works only with bare hands.  The iPhone is also not capable of making voice dialing or voice recording.  This makes it bad for using the iPhone without gloves in really cold weather.

Avid users of instant messaging services like Yahoo, MSN or AOL will be sad to know that instant messaging is not possible using the iPhone.  In addition, people who love sending and receiving MMS will be sorely disappointed to learn that the iPhone can’t send or receive them.

The Safari browser also does not provide support for Java applications or for Adobe Flash.  A lot of the software that are normally available for other cell phones cannot be used with the iPhone.  Most of all, the iPhone does not have a natural firewall, which makes it vulnerable to whatever cell phone viruses circulating around out there.

So, whether the iPhone will be your next favorite toy or not is up to you.  Remember to choose wisely, so you won’t have to cry after spending $400 and up for your new toy.