With the release of the iPhone, a lot of people have been really excited about not just the phone aspects, but also the potential rammifications of having such an extremely complex and feature-studded personal music player. With the most popular model sporting 8 gigabytes of storage capacity and a wealth of playback features, the iPhone very nearly trumps Apple's former dominating item in the personal music market.

So what exactly makes the iPhone a better iPod? 8GB can hold a lot of music, but it's hardly the 80GB of some of the iPods out there. So why is it considered superior?

The answer isn't in the raw storage capacity, but in all of the other features that the iPhone has. Not only does it possess innovations specifically for music playback, but also all of the other things that makes an iPhone an iPhone. Most cellular phones have some sort of audio playback generally confined to the classification of "ringtones," but the iPhone has not only an enhanced version of those audio features but also enhanced versions of most other "commonplace" cell phone features.

Not the least of these is of course the phone service itself, which runs exclusively through AT&T. But there are people who don't even subscribe to the phone service and continue to enjoy all of the other features, such as a revolutionarily-complete Internet browser connection via Wi-Fi (wireless broadband network) and a shockingly powerful digital camera. The Internet is available more completely than on any other simple cell phone, and the camera puts all other "cameraphones" to shame with incredible capacity for some vividly clear and truly beautiful photographs.

Let's not forget the outstanding user interface of the iPhone. With the entire interface being accessed through the unitwide touchscreen, navigation is smooth and visually intriguing. Sorting through massive lists of songs or videos becomes more of a thrill and less of a chore, as it can be accomplished much more rapidly and it looks better while doing it.

With a cancelled subscription to AT&T's phone service, you can enjoy almost all of the benefits of the iPhone without the rather expensive monthly phone bill. The only feature you really lose out on by taking this path is the phone service itself...and cheap cell phones aren't hard to come by, which can eliminate the need for the iPhone to be a phone at all. You still retain the use of the WiFi internet, camera, video/audio playback, and innovative selection of other features.