Dan's Papers - July 13, 2007

Because I run this newspaper, I sometimes get an advance model of the latest technology to review. Last week, I got a chance to review the second generation iphone, called the iphone2. They expect to have it on the market next spring.

The iphone2 is the exact same size as the iphone, but it is one ounce lighter. It also has four new features that the current iphone does not have, each accessible with an additional button on the screen when you turn it on.

The first of the buttons, when pressed, allows you to change the color of the iphone2. It comes preset with six different colors to choose from, but there are advanced settings in this mode that will allow you to devise a color of your own making from a sort of photo-shop like palette that you can touch. Match the color of your phone to your clothing or accessories for the day.

The second button, when pressed, causes a cover on one side to retract, revealing an electric shaver. This feature is particularly useful when you are on the go and want to do a little touch up. Men can get rid of the five o'clock shadow. Women can shave their legs while on the go. I thought this a very smart feature and found the shaves to be quite as close as any other electric shaver I have tried, although the iphone2 is a bit awkward to hold properly while doing it. It's possible, using the first of the new buttons, to make the iphone2 pink if you're a girl, blue or mahogany if you are a man and then re-set default. You'll make it yours and then shave yourself clean.

The third button activates a camcorder. You can take videos of friends and associates for up to ninety seconds and then save the videos to your phone. But there is a very interesting and unique advanced mode. With one setting - labeled X for X-Rated -- the camcorder will take videos of people that pass in front of it, but without their clothes on. A second advanced setting, labeled R for Restricted, takes videos of people but only in whatever underwear they have on. These advanced settings can be password protected.

Another advanced setting of the camcorder, accessible through the "phone" button, will allow you to see people as they talk to you on the telephone. You will see whatever it is they are wearing and doing at the time they are on the phone with you. And they don't have to be talking on their iPhone2.

I found this feature a pretty nifty idea, but there was a glitch in the model they sent me. As long as I called people in the immediate area, it worked fine. But when I called a friend of mine in New Zealand, the image appeared upside down. I had a special help number at Apple to call so they could talk me through anything I didn't understand, but when I told them about this problem they asked if they could transfer me to a more advanced support level and I said fine. Soon, I was talking to an iPhone2 service office in Brussels who appeared on my screen sitting at desks at about a 45-degree angle. They said that the iPhone2 that I had been sent had apparently been equipped with a solar-system positioning chip rather than a global positioning chip and it would have to be returned.

When I pressed them for an explanation -- there was no way to fix this -- they explained that those with solar-system positioning chips showed images in correlation to where they were in the solar system. So people on the other side of the globe would appear upside down, while people half way around, such as where they were in Brussels, would appear sideways to me.

"You are appearing to us at a 45-degree angle," Brussels told me.

My iphone2 needed to have its chip removed and replaced with a global positioning device chip.

The final new button on this iPhone2 prototype was called "cloak" and, frankly, I had been very hesitant to press it. The manual for the iPhone2 said that when you pressed it, it caused the iphone to become invisible. You would use this mode, for example, if you were to leave your iphone2 in a car when you left it with a car parking attendant. He wouldn't see it.

With the help of Brussels, though I feared the worst, I did press it. I haven't seen it since.

The iPhone2 is expected to be available nationwide next May for $650 at which time the current iphone will have a reduction in price from $500 to $450.

I hope someday soon this particular one will turn up. Brussels told me that will happen when the battery runs down.