Evolutionary Smart Phones vs Revolutionary iPhone
I was amazed at the cool and elegant interface iPhone brings to Mobile Phones which are so far equipped with cluttered and bulky interfaces. For once, the whole Wireless Community is shocked at the amazing free style and quite intuitive interface Apple designed in iPhone. Many immediately reacted with natural tendency to find faults and failures to write it off as a fancy but useless phone or almost to that effect.
There are two reasons for many people to do so. One to stand out from the crowd. Other genuine reason, I guess, is to hide their lack of Imagination and capability to design such an cool interface. Its a damn shock for a typical evolutionary mind, which boasts of incremental changes all its life so far and still got to be respected in the world as an innovative mind. I see it in many places, articles about Why iPhone would not succeed.
Whatever they say, I truly believe that iPhone has truly reinvented the phone with a revolutionary interface. Whether iPhone succeeds in the market or not, its interface is far beyond excellence. We have been searching for a better interface to mobile phones for a long time. And Apple has delivered. I would just go and embrace it.
But I would like to see a few comments people said about iPhone else where and say what I think about it. First one that I found was a I-love-sensation heading 'An iPhone Reality Check' from Businessweek, that earlier caused a similar sensation about Digg's revenues by announcing 'How this kid made $60 million in 18 months' while Digg was barely making 3M. Read about the nonsense at 37Signals blog that explained why it is such a ridiculous story. (Emphasis in underlines by me)
The iPhone isn't really a smart phone. I have a simple working definition of a smart phone. It's a handset with an open operating system can load software of their choice without the cooperation or approval of the wireless carriers. Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and, to a somewhat limited extent, BlackBerry devices qualify. The iPhone does not.
Smartphone is typically a phone that integrates multiple functions in one device. Not necessarily its 'openness' is what defines its 'smartness'.
The iPhone certainly isn't a computer. For one thing a computer lets me install the programs i want (see above.)
Ability to install whatever you like on the device is just one aspect of a computer. But thats not all about a computer. Disqualifying iPhone as a computer for this reason is unfair.
No 3G wireless. This will be a nuisance in the U.S., but it will make the iPhone all but unsellable in Europe and Asia in its current form--the carriers simply won't accept advanced devices without a 3G radio.
I also like to see a 3G enabled iPhone. Now iPhone is Quadband, so can work literally any where/on any GSM network. I think it makes business sense. 3G footprint is still very less in any part of the world and GSM+EDGE is the most leading broadband connection throughout the world, as it is easy to upgrade to EDGE than 3G networks. Over 213 GSM/EDGE deployments in 118 countries. I guess, once 3G technology is matured, we can expect a 3G iPhone. I too love to see a 3G device. But that is not a big deal.
10 million iPhones in a year? The reasonableness of this goal depends on context. The problem is that at least for the first six months or so, Apple will be selling only in the U.S. through Cingular (soon to be renamed AT&T Wireless.) Cingular has about 50 million customers, and maybe 5 million of them own high-end smart phones. The iPhone may be revolutionary, but just in arithmetic terms, 10 million is a staggering revolution.
I love this kind of 'unreasonable shocks' to reasonable minds. Every body thinks of iPhone as a smartphone and hence only business people will use it. But iPhone will break the myth. Smartphone so far is a bulk and cluttered phone only business users carry, since they have to. iPhone will change that. Smartphones are for everybody who checks email and takes a photograph and listens to music. And there are plenty of us who want to have all three in one sexy device.
What about the battery? One decision that clearly detracts from the brilliance of the design is the lack of a user-replaceable battery.
Many have complained about it when iPod came for the first time. And so many people embraced iPod because of its elegance and lovely features. Battery life and lack of replaceable battery is not at all an issue for iPod for 99.99% of people. And won't be an issue for iPhone as well.
The iPhone as BlackBerry killer. for some reason, Jobs seems to think BlackBerry fans are the iPhone's target market. Nonsense.
Yes it is nonsense. Because, Blackberry is a non-sense phone that business users carry because they have to, not that its a choice or they love it. Checking email doesn't have to be that bad and painful. iPhone will change that. And iPhone target is not bland and geeky business people but stylish youngsters and trendsetting individuals. Your Blackberry is safe. We don't want business people to carry iPhones. Why a business should pay for an iPod phone for you while all you need is to check for emails. A blackberry would do. We just like it that way. (:-)
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