11. The IPhone As An iPod

Apple owns the multimedia player market with the iPod and they've integrated full iPod functionality into the iPhone, though moving from iPod-men-to-iPod-menu sometimes requires using a slightly different interface. To get to your music and videos, you press the orange button with an iPod icon on it on the Home screen. There are five icons on the main iPod screen.

I listened to four songs I bought on iTunes with the speakers, with the included earbuds and with a pair of over-the-ears stereo headphones. The speakers, which are on the bottom of the iPhone are too small to produce good sound. Use them when you want to quickly play a song for someone. Using the earbuds and the headphones, "Hush" by Rae & Christian & Texas presented clear and clean base with voices and all instruments easily heard. Mid tones in "Supersonic" by Oasis were very good on both the earbuds and the headphones. The treble tones in "'Spring': Allegro from "The Four Seasons" with Mela Tenenbaum violinist were pretty good with the earbuds and somewhat better with the headphones. Finally, I checked out the iPhone's dynamic range with "Under the Influence" by The Chemical Brothers. I could hear everything from the quietest to the loudest sounds. Again the headphones were a little better than the earbuds.

This image does not do justice to the almost HDTV quality of movies you watch on the iPhone.

I watched parts of three movies I purchased on iTunes, "Armageddon," "The Italian Job" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl." The videos were very sharp with excellent color and took every advantage of the iPhone's wide screen. Resolution was good enough that scenes had a pronounced three dimensional look reminiscent of HDTV images. That was a pleasant surprise. Sound was quite good, especially using my high quality over-the-ears stereo headphones. The included earbuds were a bit tinny, but still easy enough on the ears that you could watch an entire movie using them.