Apple sends out invites for Oct 4th iPhone event

[pm]

There have been a lot of iPhone rumors, and even the Oct. 4th date has been mentioned, but this is confirmation that this rumor is correct.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/27/apple-wants-to-talk-iphone-on-october-4th/

Well, it's about freaking time! Apple has finally begun sending out invites for its upcoming press conference, and the company's being none too subtle with the hints, offering up some familiar app icons in the artwork and the tagline "Let's talk iPhone." As to whether it'll be an iPhone 5, 4S or some other new formation, we'll all have to wait until the event to find out -- and you'd better believe we'll be there at Apple's Cupertino headquarters to find out.

 

[Ns1]

finally JFC

 

[BD2003]

Seemingly confirms the whole voice assistant thing. Which is intriguing and all, but if they can't figure out a more elegant way to launch it besides holding down home for an eternity, what's the point? Its only useful if it helps you do things quicker, and that's about as slow as it gets.

But imagine if it has two buttons...gasp!

 

[pm]

I use voice a lot with my iPhone 4. I ride my bicycle to work at least 3 days a week and when I'm riding, I do everything with voice (much easier than digging out my phone one handed, unlocking my company's mandatory screen lock code, and then navigating to the right menu while riding at 20mph down a fairly busy street). So I'll be riding and will say "call my wife, mobile", or "what time is it" or "play songs by adele" and everything is from the little button on the ear buds and I never have to get out the phone at all.

And then in my car, same deal. I have integrated bluetooth, and there's a button and I just hit the button and the voice assistant chime comes up and I tell it to play music or call people and and it all works pretty well - way better than trying to drive and unlock the screen at the same time. I usually don't even get my phone out of my backpack when I get in the car... just leave it alone and do everything with the bluetooth volume button and voice dial. Any improvements they make in the voice assistant will be a huge help for me because I use it so much.

 

[foghorn67]

When is iOS 5 rolling out?

 

[BD2003]

It seems to activate a great deal faster with the wired or BT headset than the home button. Still, I'm usually just using the handset itself.

I just hope that if they're making such a big push with it that they build the hardware to suit the software. Having a single button do everything is just as complicated as adding more buttons.

I imagine there will be APIs that devs can use to hook voice into their apps. If I can use it to control tomtom, thats a good start.

In the end, it's all going to hinge upon how accurate it is. If I have to repeat myself more than 10% of the time, it's not ready yet. One day I'll be able to just say "navi to work and put on pandora" without having to learn the phones specific phrasing and it'll just work...I don't think we're quite there yet and anything short of that isn't all that useful.

Still intrigued though. It's gotta start somewhere.

 

[pm]

It seems to activate a great deal faster with the wired or BT headset than the home button. Still, I'm usually just using the handset itself.

I just hope that if they're making such a big push with it that they build the hardware to suit the software. Having a single button do everything is just as complicated as adding more buttons.

I imagine there will be APIs that devs can use to hook voice into their apps. If I can use it to control tomtom, thats a good start.

In the end, it's all going to hinge upon how accurate it is. If I have to repeat myself more than 10% of the time, it's not ready yet. One day I'll be able to just say "navi to work and put on pandora" without having to learn the phones specific phrasing and it'll just work...I don't think we're quite there yet and anything short of that isn't all that useful.

Still intrigued though. It's gotta start somewhere.

I'm fine with holding down the button. In my case, I mostly use buttons that aren't actually on the phone anyway - like the pause/play/skip button on the earbuds (hold down for voice commands). It wouldn't matter to me if they added another button... or left it alone. I don't touch the phone to use voice.

As far as accuracy, I have generally been very impressed. It has no tolerance for wind noise, so on my bike, I have to slow way down to use it. But when there's no background noise when I speak, it's accuracy is easily better than 90% correct. I very very rarely have any problem using it as long as there's no background noise. I might even say the accuracy is better than 98%... it's really pretty good. What amazes me is that I can say "play songs by colbie callait" and it will understand the pronunciation of "callait". I have no idea how they do it... or if they just figure that that's the only vaguely close match. I also like that it works without an internet connection - that's very useful too.

 

[Fire&Blood]

Wonder if Gizmodo got an invite, probably not. Speaking of Giz, has anyone been to that site in the last year, I sure haven't. Will visit now to remind myself why I stopped to begin with.

 

[BD2003]

I'm fine with holding down the button. In my case, I mostly use buttons that aren't actually on the phone anyway - like the pause/play/skip button on the earbuds (hold down for voice commands). It wouldn't matter to me if they added another button... or left it alone. I don't touch the phone to use voice.

As far as accuracy, I have generally been very impressed. It has no tolerance for wind noise, so on my bike, I have to slow way down to use it. But when there's no background noise when I speak, it's accuracy is easily better than 90% correct. I very very rarely have any problem using it as long as there's no background noise. I might even say the accuracy is better than 98%... it's really pretty good. What amazes me is that I can say "play songs by colbie callait" and it will understand the pronunciation of "callait". I have no idea how they do it... or if they just figure that that's the only vaguely close match. I also like that it works without an internet connection - that's very useful too.

Still, a feature that primarily functions as a way to have some basic control over the phone when you can't touch it is niche at best. It's nothing to get terribly excited over. Unless this is a full blown revolution in speech recognition, I still dont know how relevant it is beyond a tech demo. I dont know anyone who's been itching to get into a full blown conversation with their phone. I'm certainly not going to talk to a device like that in public or at work. I already get aggravated enough dealing with voice recognition when I call any customer service line. I can barely think of anything I could want it to do that I couldnt do faster with the touchscreen.

I hope there at least one other impressive thing about the new iPhone. All I really want is one that's faster, maybe a bigger screen.

 

[badb0y]

 

[theeedude]

Will be interesting what they say about the pull down notification bar they stole from Android. Did they already file a patent for it? 😀

 

[Ns1]

Still, a feature that primarily functions as a way to have some basic control over the phone when you can't touch it is niche at best. It's nothing to get terribly excited over. Unless this is a full blown revolution in speech recognition, I still dont know how relevant it is beyond a tech demo. .

I'm hoping that it is.

 

[Oyeve]

Ooh, voice controls. Really? Whoop-dee-effing-doo

 

[kaerflog]

Wonder if Gizmodo got an invite, probably not. Speaking of Giz, has anyone been to that site in the last year, I sure haven't. Will visit now to remind myself why I stopped to begin with.

I only stopped going to that site because of the god-aweful new design.
WTF were they thinking when they changed it to the new design.
Its hard to navigate as hell

 

[Aikouka]

And then in my car, same deal. I have integrated bluetooth, and there's a button and I just hit the button and the voice assistant chime comes up and I tell it to play music or call people and and it all works pretty well - way better than trying to drive and unlock the screen at the same time. I usually don't even get my phone out of my backpack when I get in the car... just leave it alone and do everything with the bluetooth volume button and voice dial. Any improvements they make in the voice assistant will be a huge help for me because I use it so much.

I wish my car's integrated voice command capability was decent at all. 😛 I sometimes accidentally hit the voice command button on my steering wheel, and you would logically think that saying "cancel" would cancel the voice command input. Unfortunately, when I did that earlier today, it thought that I meant "cancel route guidance" and changed me to the GPS (from CD audio). :\

Voice command is definitely one of those things that needs to be implemented well or not at all. It's good to hear that Apple's technology, which I've never tried on my iPhone, does work well.

 

[zerocool84]

Still, a feature that primarily functions as a way to have some basic control over the phone when you can't touch it is niche at best. It's nothing to get terribly excited over. Unless this is a full blown revolution in speech recognition, I still dont know how relevant it is beyond a tech demo. I dont know anyone who's been itching to get into a full blown conversation with their phone. I'm certainly not going to talk to a device like that in public or at work. I already get aggravated enough dealing with voice recognition when I call any customer service line. I can barely think of anything I could want it to do that I couldnt do faster with the touchscreen.

I hope there at least one other impressive thing about the new iPhone. All I really want is one that's faster, maybe a bigger screen.

I use voice on my Nexus S all the time. From texting to directions to restaurants, I use it a lot. Much faster than typing it in. It works pretty damn well. The iPhone getting something more than just choosing your song and who to call would be awesome. It really is handy.

 

[PeeluckyDuckee]

Apple's once a year cycle no longer cut it in a market drowned with Android devices being pumped out once every couple of months. I was an avid iPhone 3GS/4 user, but Samsung has got my attention for now. I am excited about the S2, but even more interested to play around with the Samsung Note.

The new iPhone would need to be at least 4" for me to even consider it. We are at a time where there's a convergence between tablets and smartphones, and that's where my attention is drawn.

As for the new iPhone I assuming it'll be thinner and come with 4G, along with better camera/video recording. With the cloud coming into play I kind of doubt storage will get much bigger, though it would be nice to see 64GB as an option.

 

[MrX8503]

I probably won't update my iPhone4 unless the iP5 has a bigger screen. Unless it has some other major feature update. I guess we'll see Oct 4th.

 

[QuantumPion]

if I'm not thoroughly impressed with what they have to offer I'm headed straight to the store to grab a SGS2. 🙂

 

[Ns1]

if I'm not thoroughly impressed with what they have to offer I'm headed straight to the store to grab a SGS2. 🙂

think a lot of us are in the same boat

 

[Kenmitch]

if I'm not thoroughly impressed with what they have to offer I'm headed straight to the store to grab a SGS2. 🙂

I'm kinda thinking the same thing. I've been in iPhone eco system from launch having all generations. Wait and see for me is my stance for now. No matter what tho my iPhone 4 will pay for my next phone thanks to the resale value 🙂

I'm on AT&T family plan so it's cheapest carrier for me anyways. The samsung sgs2 hits AT&T around same time as iPhone announcement does so it's an option for me.

I'm kinda liking wp7 tho so might just see what AT&T will be offering with wp7. I think I'm leaning more towards wp7 currently tho. Just need to see phones in hand before I start deciding.

I could care less who has more apps I'm not gonna buy anyways. This go around it's all about screen size/quality and browser support!

 

[Aikouka]

think a lot of us are in the same boat

At this point, I think the biggest thing to keep me in Camp Apple would be the loss of my paid apps. I don't have anything huge like one of the $20+ navigation apps, but I do have some that cost a bit more than 99 cents ($5-10).

Although, my biggest gripe with the 3GS is probably the god awful camera on it. I stopped using my digital camera for awhile, but I got tired of how grainy and utterly awful my iPhone's pictures were. The inclusion of flash alone should be helpful as even my digital camera is pretty bad with the flash turned off (low light shots mostly).

Another thing I would be interested in is faster speeds. Even HSPA+ would be okay, because I doubt that we're going to see LTE. But if I remember correctly, the Galaxy S2 doesn't support LTE either since Samsung just unveiled their LTE-supporting models a few days ago.

 

[zinfamous]

Another thing I would be interested in is faster speeds. Even HSPA+ would be okay, because I doubt that we're going to see LTE. But if I remember correctly, the Galaxy S2 doesn't support LTE either since Samsung just unveiled their LTE-supporting models a few days ago.

yep, SGS2 is only HSPA+; which is why Verizon didn't pick it up and opted for the Galaxy Prime--or Galaxy Nexus, whatever they are calling it.

it will have LTE, exynos (clocked at 1.5ghz? did I read that correctly?) and all the things that people seem to love about SGS2. I think that is what has been reported...still little confirmed, though.

 

[Ns1]

At this point, I think the biggest thing to keep me in Camp Apple would be the loss of my paid apps. I don't have anything huge like one of the $20+ navigation apps, but I do have some that cost a bit more than 99 cents ($5-10).

$30 logmein ignition :'(

at least I still have em all on my iPad. iCloud FTW.

 

[poofyhairguy]

At this point, I think the biggest thing to keep me in Camp Apple would be the loss of my paid apps. I don't have anything huge like one of the $20+ navigation apps, but I do have some that cost a bit more than 99 cents ($5-10).

Thank goodness for the Evil Amazon Appstore. Despite having an iPhone since the first year I now have a much higher value Amazon Appstore account than iTunes account, and not all those apps are crap.