I have a bunch of videos on my 8GB iphone. a 111 minute movie rendered in .mp4 at 320x240 is about 255MB. The quality is good. Movies should never be GB.

wow that's pretty impressive.

The only thing I use Itunes for is to organize and upload my songs to my current Ipod.
At one point I downloaded the U2 collection from Itunes for a hundred dollars, a friend and I split the cost and I let him upload them, only to find out that It has limited uploads and burns encoded in the files. After about 5 years of having it and a few different computers, the songs are now locked again and require me to pay for them again to "release them".
For that reason alone I will never buy anything from Itunes again.

I was hoping by waiting a little while they will upgrade the Iphone again, better camera, bigger memory or like the blackberry storm - expandable memory. My contract is due in another month, so I have to make a decision.
Thanks for the insight.

Apple has said very clearly that they will not release a new iPhone model this year. I don't expect an update until sometime in spring.

I feel sorry for L8R, sharing a U2 collection with friends and running up against the limit of not being allowed to burn the whole collection to unprotected CDs more than SEVEN times!

Down with Apple!!!! Only SEVEN sets of direct copies to fully unprotected CDs, what a bunch of greedy bastards!

As for the video quality on the iPhone: I thought I would never watch video on such a puny screen, but I was shocked by how good the picture quality is.

Video is indeed amazing, and many of the "video games" are absolutely jaw dropping.

All phones at this level are compromises, you just have to choose what you're willing to give up.

If you need a good as opposed to a barely acceptable phone camera or want to keep several dozens of gigabytes (as opposed to 16 GB) in your pocket, you need to look elsewhere (and give up what the iPhone is unique in offering).

I never have any problems with the iPhone keyboard, even though I have oversized hands. Some other people are complaining that they can't hit the keys. I haven't analyzed what they're doing wrong but there are free Appstore apps that give you a larger horizontal keyboard for e-mail.

Unlike with a Blackberry, I'm not dependent on a mail server in Toronto being up and running, so as long as I have an internet connection via Wi-Fi or 3G), I'm good to access my POP3 and IMAP4 servers.

Also, the 3G is nearly three times as fast as on the new Blackberry Storm for example.

Not bad for $30 per month for unlimited data.

I also like getting live updates of my iPhone calendar and my desktop calendar without any manual syncing ever.

And being able to hold up the phone to my ear and ask any question into it and get a quick answer from Google: priceless!

You can't get that on a Blackberry or an Android.

iPhone is an amazing tool for viewing movies. I always have several movies on it at any given moment... when I'm waiting for my wife or kids to finish shopping somewhere or have a sports lesson, out comes the iPhone/headphones and I have my own personal theater. As Coursedesign stated, the picture quality is amazing.

Regarding rendering/compressing: definitely do it right inside Vegas. Steps: Render As, Save As Type MainConcept AVC/AAC MP4. For regular footage, just use the "Apple iPod 640 x 480" template. For 16:9/widescreen, use that template as a foundation, but click Custom, Video Tab, Custom Frame Size, 640 x 360.

Regarding iTunes music: I was downloading mass amounts of the iTunes music, but I didn't have a good flow to back up the music, and I lost a lot of songs when my computer crashed. Also, when I wanted to pull a copy of the songs onto a WMP-based mp3 player in my kitchen, I had to use an excessive process to get mp3 copies onto that. Now, I buy music off Amazon: no DRM, and when I download it, it's set up to automatically import into iTunes. And the music is usually cheaper: when music just comes out, often they have crazy sales like $3.99/album, or choose from 5 different albums every Friday for $5.

I like my iPhone!
I wish it had a longer battery life though. It seems if you do not put it on the charger at least once a day, it will run out of battery power quickly.
I also don't like the fact I cannot change the battery myself.
I live in a populated area, but I am constantly finding that the 3G network is not available, at which point the phone defaults back to the standard network which slows the internet browsing down to a crawl.

Regarding video, I have to agree, the unit is quite good, and the large LCD display really shows it off well.
Thanks CClub for your workflow on how to make videos for the iPhone.
I have not done that yet, but will give it a try.
I assume you use iTunes to download to the phone?

Ted

I think you HAVE to use iTunes to DL to the iPhone. Regardless, all that I do is render the video file to my desktop (or any folder on the hard drive), click & drag the file from Explorer into the Movies folder in the iTunes Library. Once that shows up there, you click on your Device tab on the left of iTunes, then over to the right side of iTunes click on the Video tab, click the video files you want on your iPhone, and Sync. Should be all set. The only glitch I've had is when I didn't use the iPod template to render to the mp4 file. iTunes won't take it otherwise... there must be settings within that template that are essential for iTunes to accept.

You've got the regular cell phone radio, the 3G radio, Wi-Fi radio, and the Bluetooth radio all sucking power.

If you don't use a Bluetooth headset, you can save a lot of juice by turning BT off (in Settings>General).

If you don't get much 3G where you live, consider turning that off too. (You can check with AT&T when they are planning to upgrade your area.)

If you use Wi-Fi and still don't get enough battery life, get a Richard Solo battery, available just about everywhere.

Other alternatives include a car charger (abt $5-10 depending on where you buy it), and charging via a USB port on your laptop if nearby.