The 2000 visitors at MacWorld went into a complete frenzy as Steve Jobs announced that the widescreen iPod and iPhone were going to be one product.

Apple will no doubt sell bucket loads of the device to yuppies, thus printing money however I have serious reservations about it:

If you want to surf the net out in the wild, like Jobs made a song and dance about, the iPhone relies on EDGE for mobile data transfer.
It allows for maximum download speeds of 473Kbytes/sec but typically users only see 100-200Kbytes/sec.

Edge is big in the USA and sometimes referred to as 2.75G – not as fast as 3G and no where near the capability of HSDPA, sometimes called 3.5G that allows for 1.8Mbits/sec downloads.

Orange is the only UK operator to support EDGE, having about 80 per cent coverage. T-mobile is hoping to support it in all territories soon but right now I bet the farm on Apple choosing Orange as the exclusive iPhone operator in the UK.

Steve Jobs said he wants a 1 per cent market share of handset sales by the end of 2008 and Nokia has already gone on the defensive by banging the drum about the lack of 3G in iPhones, making data transfer slower than what its handsets are capable of.

It is a quad band phone so it can be used world-wide. Wi-Fi 802.11b/g and Bluetooth 2.0 complete the connectivity.

I've previously speculated that any widescreen iPod will be prone to vast amounts of scratches and cracks causing further controversy about the build quality of Apple's products.

$499/$599 and a two year contract makes it astonishingly expensive – Apple went to great lengths to avoid mobile phone operators subsidising the phone so their iPod line up wouldn't be affected by cheap iPhones.

Many people have been dismayed by the speculation that you can't open the device (like all iPods) to change the Sim card.

Finally, it's not as attractive as previous mock ups and texting will become a painfully slow task since there are no keys and no stylus.

For more pics take a look at the official iPhone webpage.