The iPod Touch that killed the Cell Phone

The iPhone is very cool, but it’s not as revolutionary as the iPod Touch. It may lack a cell phone, camera, and even Mail.app, and it’s precisely because it lacks these features, among others, that the Touch represents a leap-forward, not only a glimpse of the future, but also the future manifested, tomorrow today. Because you could buy the iPod Touch and give up your cell phone, if not yet your cell service. And if you’re like me, you may even lose weight in the bargain!

The Touch itself is economically designed, extremely simple, and works well. It’s able to capture and keep a wi-fi signal even better than my MacBookPro, and its screen, when displaying lighter objects, is magnificent. There’s room for improvement in the display of darker objects, such as the shadows and darkness common in Sleeper Cell, the TV series my mom recommended I download to watch after I told her how much I don’t like 24. Watching these darker scenes, even while in a dark room, I found myself tilting the screen slightly to try to adjust for the glare, my only material complaint.

At the gym, I was able to place the Touch on its side in a receptacle next to a drink holder on the stairmaster, and at less than two feet from my eyes, the screen was pleasant to watch. The audio was, as expected, exceptional, made more so by sound-isolating earbuds. I found myself sticking around, stepping up to watch a second episode of Sleeper Cell. At 2 hours of hamstering instead of 1, this may be my ticket to staying in some kind of shape over the pending Chicago winter! A way to watch TV that encourages more exercise, there may yet be hope for us North Americans… now if we could only use the energy from my steps to power the Touch, or the air-conditioning at the club… again, the iPod Touch’s excellent antenna enabled 100% connectivity to the gym’s free wifi network.

Getting email on the system does not require hacking, just a decent webmail client. In fact, it seems as if Apple is encouraging us to use a web client for email by not including Mail.app… intentional? In any event, I use the Zimbra “standard” client, which is the lightweight version of the Zimbra Ajax webmail client that provides access to email through the Touch’s built-in Safari web browser. I paused episodes here-and-there to check my email, watch the voice mails roll-in…

What the iPod Touch is, is an elegant, small computer. Battery life seems to approximate Apple’s claims of 5 hours for video play-back. Unlike many other palm devices, it’s snappy and responsive. Surfing the web seems as quick as surfing the web on any computer. Because it does such a good job at what it is, of course it makes you want more..!

From 01.com’s secure Zimbra webmail, I can access voice mails left at my office, which are attached to emails by our office PBX/telephone system, along with basic information, like caller ID and message length. When Zimbra 5 comes out in November, it will ship with iZimbra, which will give us iPhone/Touch users access to a full Zimbra feature set, including chat, calendars, contacts and document sharing, all syncing back to Mail.app, iCal and AddressBook on the MacBook through Zimbra’s iSync connector. That’s good, but discontinuing my cell service would be even better.

I don’t mind paying the cell phone company, or phone company, or my local ISP for the speed at which I’m connected to the internet, on a monthly, flat-fee basis. This encourages them to improve the speed and quality of our connections, which makes sense: they’re infrastructure providers, let them make money improving their infrastructure. We just shouldn’t have to pay on a per minute basis for network access anymore.

To get rid of my cell phone, I forwarded the cell number to the phone number (DID) corresponding to my extension on my office phone system. All calls then either come to my softphone on my computer, or if I’m not available, by voice mail to my email. To make outbound calls, I use the softphone with a Logitech USB headset plugged into the MacBookPro.

If this was more than a test, we could use local number portability to port my cell phone number permanently, directly to our VOIP provider, and by-pass the cell phone company entirely. Then only one step remains to reduce the cell phone company to nothing more than an infrastructure provider, an internet access provider, exactly what they should be doing, and nothing more: get the softphone onto the iPod Touch. That will require some hacking at this point, more on that subject another day. But it does get you thinking that Apple’s iTunes would make a good vector for introducing a simple, complete VOIP solution. Can you see .Mac offering international calling for $.002/minute, and your own 800 number that is aliased to your .Mac website?

While it’s possible to dismiss your cell phone, you still need to stay connected to the internet (most of the time). If you live in a covered area, and don’t spend all of your time at a Starbucks, the best solution so far for this is the Verizon and Sprint highspeed cards. I use the Verizon card to stay connected wherever I’m traveling in the city. The quality of the access is usually good enough so that I can use the softphone on the MacBook Pro to send and receive all my phone calls. And sometimes the quality on the VOIP softphone is even better than that of my cell phone. But not often.

So what’s the iPod Touch missing? For my money, only an express slot for a broadband wireless, whether 3G or wimax, it’s the only thing missing that’s keeping me in the “minutes” game, away from one, sweet, unlimited data plan…

Here’s what the softphone looks like on Mac OS X:

To review, how did I replace my cell phone with an iPod Touch? It’s not yet a recipe for the faint-of-heart. Here are the ingredients:

• 1 Apple iPod Touch (15GB)
• 1 Verizon or Sprint Express Card with unlimited data service
• 1 account on the Apple iTunes music/video store
• 1 Apple MacBookPro (although you may substitute your favorite Wintel system here, warning: it changes the taste of the results, and to each their own)
• 1 License for the EyeBeam softphone by CounterPath
• 1 Asterisk VOIP pbx server software, hosted at your favorite data center on Mac or other linux variant
• 1 inbound/outbound VOIP calling plan
• 1 pair Logitech Premium Notebook Headset
• 1 pair Shure SE310 Sound Isolating Earbuds
• 1 Zimbra hosting account with 01.com

You’ll ask, well, how much did all that cost? Not much. My company already uses most of this equipment, so the only things I had to buy is the iPod Touch, and that was a gift (thanks!).

What’s the difference between a 3g card and being on the cell phone network, aren’t they the same thing, and wouldn’t that make it an iPhone? Perhaps. While it remains the phone company that may be providing a 3G card, the card is only for internet access. And if the iPod touch had an express slot, then you could also use a wimax card, and use a local ISP to connect wherever you happen to be. The goal here is being able to be connected to the internet all the time, but not necessarily the phone network. Do we need a phone, or just a computer that can stay connected to the internet all the time? The iPod Touch is the smallest and most promising computers I’ve used, and just a step or two away from replacing my laptop, too.