Mind.random()

Falling under the category of “I hate Microsoft because its Microsoft”, nothing could enthuse me other than any announcements from the Linux or the Mac circles. And for the last entire week, my only pass time was just to muse at the photographs of the iPhone.

The devil is in the details, they say. And the same devil woke me up from my dreams.

Though iPhone comes with a sexy key-less interface, a full featured powerful Unix based OS, Safari web browser and a couple of widgets, it was lacking on one major thing. Third party software support. Meaning, no real players, word processors, no ringtones other than built-in or from a iTunes purchase. And my worst nightmare is that there is no support for Java (at least yet). With almost all the smartphones supporting Java based software and games, i feel, Apple is wrong in claiming that it is “five years ahead of any other mobile phone”

Here is the list of why iPhone might fail.

1) No 3G connectivity support. 3G is the hottest of the broadband solutions to mobile technology. It now has been exploited to support speeds up to 7 Mbps (14 Mbps in near future). All the smartphones now support this. iPhone has a meek EDGE technology with data rates of 230 Kbps.

2) Third party software support. All competitive phone models either run on Symbian OS, Windows Mobile or a variant of Linux — all of which has support for third party software.

3) Even though camera is not one of the much advertised feature for the iPhone, it has a humble 2 megapixel inside it. On the contrary Nokia and Samsung has a 5 MP and 10 MP in the offing.

4) 1% market share in the US is not a realistic goal holding hands with a single operator Cingular. Verizon has the largest coverage network and there are some areas where Cingular does not literally exist. Sprint and T-Mobile has its own share of followers who would not trade sides just for a handset.

All said, there is simply a place for a iPhone in our heart and thats the touch screen capability and the very look and feel of this feature-anemic handset. In that case you should simply check out the LG KE 850 that is due release very soon.

Looks like a clone isnt it? Thats right. But the phone on the left side is the clone and the ‘original’ is from LG.

More on creepy iPhone

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2007/01/creepy_iphone_i.html

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, quotes “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These (iPhones) are more like iPods than they are like computers.”

Thanks. I am happy with one iPod.

Tags: Apple, iPhone, java