Apple was not even close to inventing the smartphone. And the iPhone has several major limitations compared to the best smartphones out there. It has limited multitasking. The camera is mediocre and without a flash. Limited bluetooth support . No flash support in the browser No physical keyboard, no user-replaceable battery and so on. It does do some things well and I give it credit for creating excitement and attracting developers though in the long run I suspect Android will be a much more successful OS. There are plenty of reports of developers getting annoyed with Apple’s restrictions.
There is no perfect smartphone out there. Blackberry's probably have the best keyboards and push-mail features. Samsung's Omnia HD has an amazing screen which blows the iPhone out of the water. The Nokia N900 which runs Linux is probably the closest to having a PC in your pocket. The Droid combines a great OS with great hardware features. And so on.
It’s basically because they want to push their $100/year MobileMe service. It syncs the things you allude to, calendar, contacts, e-mails, files, etc. But not pictures or music or videos. It syncs your information via the cellular network to any Internet connected computer and also makes it available online via the Web. So you can access it on the Web at any computer on the Net, on your iPhone, or in the apps on your main computer.
What I really like is how FAST it is. Screw checking for bluetooth 10 times a day. The other day I was leaving for an off-site meeting late in the day and decided I would order a pizza after leaving the meeting, knowing it would be ready in time to stop on my way home. Well I didn’t have the pizzeria’s number on my phone so I looked it up on my computer and tossed it in my Address Book, knowing MobileMe would quickly sync it to my iPhone so I’d have it when I was ready. By the time I had gotten my stuff packed and my coat on I decided to check my phone to make sure it had arrived (I really wanted that pizza) and sure enough it had already been synchronized.
You can also shut your phone off and lock it remotely if it’s lost and located it all via me.com. I like their photo album sharing too.
Maybe I’m being unfair about it, but to me, when they say “this is the new iPhone, and it lets you do some pretty incredible things…” - then go on to describe standard copy/paste operations, it still seems to me as if they’re implying they thought of it first, or that no competitors have the feature. It’s that word incredible.
I think you’ve missed my point - some people love styli, some despise them, some people absolutely want a slide out keyboard, others explicitly do not want one.
It’s not possible to make a phone that meets everybody’s ideal, because people want different things (but still want it to be generally a smartphone).
Agreed, though that’s only one aspect of the gap between iPhone sync and Palm sync.
I can’t justify paying $100/year for that service. They just don’t seem to offer that much more than can be had elsewhere.
For example, I use BusySync to keep my Mac synchronized with Google Calendars and then I use Google Sync to instantly update the iPhone, achieving much the same thing for free.
The remote locking feature is the one thing I really need, but it’s overpriced for just that feature. It smacks of being included in MobileMe just to sell more MobileMe subscriptions.
Anyway, I agree with folks who are discussing the different tastes that abound. I think the amazing popularity of the iPhone is due to Apple finding a sort of middle ground, where every can grumble a bit about a half dozen missing features, while they still are enjoying the polish and smoothness that Apple’s device presents.
Clearly they weren’t the first with most features, and for efficiency it’ll never beat my old Treo: some months back I charged it up and tried out the contacts and calendar apps I used—they respond so quickly, before your finger is off the button the app is up.
I had a utility that allowed me to program each hard key on the keyboard for a different launch action, if I held it down for a couple of seconds. This made speed dial very easy: Hold down “J” for “John” and “B” for “Beth”
There was even an app that allowed me to send a SMS to the Treo that would cause it to immediately wipe its memory and do a hard reset. The app cost $10 or so, and required no subscription.
Even lacking these kinds of features, I love the iPhone.
I have the 1.5 year old Samsung i760 and it’s pretty craptastic at this point vs the iphone. I think one of the major stumbling blocks for a lot of corporate smart phone users is that if you require seamless Outlook syncing and interoperability you are tied to Windows Mobile OS which other than syncing to MS Outlook is so incredibly awful on so many levels it’s literally an embarrassment to Microsoft. Useful browsing is incredibly difficult with widows mobile and it’s a resource hog.
Any smart phone using Windows mobile is pretty much crippled from the outset regardless of the hardware. Add Verizon’s (pay extra for virtually any data transfer) policies and generally insular attitude toward 3rd party stuff and you have match made in hell.
Smartphones have leapt exponentially in operation in the last several years, but dont expect the perfect one to come along anytime soon. The current stable of phones are an evolutionary process, manufactures just dont have enough data on what exactly we as a consumer want.
Oh hell no, and I speak as the owner of an Iphone that was second generation and still did not have cut and paste and limited bluetooth support until about a year after I got it. That may be the maturity you speak of , but for folks who bought the first gen iphone this should have been a no brainer from the start, but Steve…
You want a bit of advice, turn in the smart phone you ordered and get a 3g normal handset, buy a netbook and set up a bluetooth or data cable network connection for about the same price data plan as the smartphone.
For a slightly larger footprint, your going to get the majority of the same features, better web browsing and a real keyboard.
This is certainly true for me. I am very happy with my current mobile phone: it does everything I want it to do in a very small, easily pocketed form. Why am I spending my hard earned dosh on a smartphone then? I exemplify that consumer you mention who doesn’t know what he wants. I’m getting one to see what it can do for me. I know I want internet access on the move, which my current phone can do but displayed on a screen that it is too small to be practical. I’m not sure that I will be able to cope with a device that probably won’t fit comfortably in my jean’s pocket, but there’s only one way to find out.
But that isn’t really portable without using some sort of bag. I do have a netbook, and I have come to the conclusion that it’s not really portable enough. I want to whip something out of my pocket, check my emails, and go on my way.
As far as cost is concerned, I have an unusual plan that was available briefly years ago that gives remarkably cheap calls. The calls are charged to my credit card, so no contract and so no payment upfront. For internet access, I can add on a £5 per month 30 day rolling contract. I’ve bought the phone SIM free, so if I decide I don’t like the whole smartphone thing, I can sell the phone on eBay and cancel the 30 day contract, and I’m back to where I was, without ongoing commitments and hopefully at a not very high cost.
In my case, the virtual disappearance of such an object as a proper PDA that’s ***not ***a smartphone, and the recent final failure of the one I used to have, are what’s pushing me in the direction of getting one of these damned devices. In exquisite timing, of course, the carriers here are now phasing out their pay-as-you-go data plans and forcing you to take a full data services up-front plan if your handset is a smartphone, whether or not you use the web features.
The internet encompasses a wide variety of functions, so if all you want to do is check email and twitter/facebook and occasionally surf the web, most of the smart phones will do that with varying degrees of success. If you do more portable web browsing like I tend to do , the iphone can be limited. The netbook idea is more of a stepdown from the fullsize desktop/laptop. Smaller footprint and better battery life and I can leave it in the car and carry the iphone for its more limited abilitys and battery life.
Declan
