Larry’s Personal & Tech ramblings

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The obligatory iPhone blog entry

Let me start by saying that I’m not a big fan of Apple. Through the years I have always felt that they extracted a few too many dollars from their customers and left them with a few too few options. I’m glad Apple released the iPhone because it will stir up the mobile market a little and inject a few new ideas into the mix. The truth is that the iPhone is very much a 1.0 release - missing several important features and designed to be more of an improved iPod than a good phone.

1) As a music player it falls short of being usable; 8GB of memory is not enough to store even a fraction of most people’s music collections.

2) As a phone, using a touchscreen is a mistake. A phone shouldn’t require 2 hands to operate nor require your eyes to be focused on it to make a simple call. Get ready for iPhone-related car accidents.

3) Choosing AT&T was a big mistake if you’re touting your device as a great wireless web browser. EDGE network speeds can be OK, but they’re never great.

4) Most of today’s expensive smartphones come with a much more reasonable price tag when you’re roped into a high priced data plan for a minimum of 2 years. For the rate plans that the iPhone offers, it should be free with the 2-year contract.

5) Apple fanboys will drink the kool-aid as always and flaunt their wondertoy.

Even though HTC won’t admit they released the “Touch” as a response to the iPhone, I think we can see through the smoke. The Touch is a nice little Pocket PC, but it has the same issues as the iPhone; in other words, I would never carry one around as my main phone.

For me, the HTC S710 (Vox) is the epitome of SmartPhone design. It’s small, light, tough (no touchscreen) and has a convenient slide out keyboard. This is the phone I’ve been waiting for since Microsoft released the “SmartPhone” platform.

Let the flaming begin…

The ultimate SmartPhone

June 30, 2007 - Posted by bitbank | iPhone, smartphone, tech | | 2 Comments

2 Comments »

  1. I am glad that we share the same feeling about HTC S710. I am going to buy it in less than a month after I decided it has the best price/advantages ratio.

    Low power Omap CPU+qwerty keyboard but slim design (compared to other qwerty devices)+an interesting price and relative high battery standby for a WM device( for the lst one at least i hope :)

    Comment by Catalin C | September 3, 2007

  2. Hello!
    I think this try.

    Comment by Floroskop | March 19, 2008

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