I always thought that iPhone has very big potential, not only on what it can do as a phone, but also in terms of serving as a hardheld device. It has been proven again in the new iPhone 3.0 firmware, that how much iPhone can push the boundaries of a handheld device, and that really blew me away. Just thought that wanna share some of the interesting stuffs.
Complimenting Traditional Medical Devices - The 1st Thing That Caught My Attention
In 3.0, there's new API to control peripherals connected via the dock. In the demo, LifeScan presented how iPhone is used to record glucose readings of diabetes patients, and advise patients on the amount of insulin to be injected.To be honest, I never could imagine that you can actually do such thing with a 'PHONE'. Now imagine with the same way, you could diagnose your car, control and view the CCTV in the factory, or even use it as a complete conferencing system in the boardroom. This is no longer a phone, or even a handheld device. This is a... I don't know what to call it, except calling it an iPhone.
As A Musical Instrument? - Interesting & Fun
I'm sure you have seen people playing piano and drum on iPhone, but how about a trombone? These folks from Smule created an application which allows you use iPhone as a trombone by blowing into the mic of the phone, sorry, I mean iPhone. And with the new Bluetooth peer-to-peer connectivity, it allows multiple users to be connected and play music together.
In this video, the 2 Smule folks actually played a duet on Phantom of The Opera. It's pretty amazing.According to the folks, there are more than 1,200 songs for the Smule apps, and many people have used their applications to compose music. What's Good for The Enterprise Users
One of the iPhone targets is definitely the enterprise users, those who can affort the iPhones. In 3.0, iPhone introduced push notifications so that users can be notified when there is something going on from the server, e.g. when inventory is going low, when there is a new ITB, when there is a pending approval.
In the demo, Oracle presented it's application, connecting to a backend CRM over the air.Imagine all my clients are using iPhone, and I could introduce all these cool features to them, e.g. receive notification on request application, and approve on the fly using their phone. When are they going to switch to iPhone?????
And of coz, Games...
In most of the iPhones, more than 50% of the applications installed are games. Why? Because it's just fun to play games with it, given its amazing graphics, sounds and control experiences. In 3.0, it allows user to purchase items while using the application through iTunes Store. In this demo, EA showed how users can buy items for Sim 3.0, e.g. a stereo hifi system.But what I really like is the graphics. I can't even imagine doing this on a Windows Mobile device. I just feel sorry for Microsoft...
Conclusion
Again I must say, it's hard to imagine the boundary of what iPhone can do, except being limited by the hardware capabilities. It has definitely changed parts of my lifestyle, and I'm definitely looking forward to see more changes.
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iFong + iPhone 
