A cruddy little picture has surfaced on Apple Insider, showing what might be the first glimpse of the fabled Motorola and Apple “iPhone”—or as I think it’s probably better to call it, the “iTunes Phone.” I actually talked to the Moto exec who showed it off last night and he wasn’t real hep on discussing it, but he did say to expect the product announcement in Q1ish of this year. The interface is “just like an iPod,” except you use the phone’s joystick instead of a built-in scroll wheel. Basically you’ll just hook it up via USB as a secondary device with a special playlist in iTunes and it will sync up just like a regular iPod would.
There are even plans to purchase songs via cellular, if that floats your boat. The phone will be carrier independent, and is essentially a traditional Motorola phone with a special iTunes/iPod program running on top (and it’s Java). It really sounds like it’s just an iTunes program, which means it’s quite possible that most Motorola phones next year will have the program, as well. Hopes of an phone-wide Apple-designed UI are premature, it seems.
Motorola previews iTunes phone (images [AppleInsider]
