Many people have been asking for my opinion of the iPhone from Apple. Here’s my take in no particular order:
- Touch Screen: Unless they have invented some new protective surface, they will be doing many recalls of this phone. Where do phones live? Next to keys in pockets. Look at other phones with touch screens: the P800 and 900 from Sony Ericcson sucked and always developed scratches that meant recalibration or in some cases parts of the screen became non touch sensitive.
- No need for a keyboard: Debatable. I had the option of using a keyboard or no keyboard on my Sony Ericsson. Guess what? I ended up using the keyboard. Why? Because tactile feedback is useful. Touch screen is cool but how many other touch screen things do we see around using them? Not many. You TV remote control could be a cool Philips pronto touch screen. Why is it not? Because in the dark it’s nice to feel what you are pressing and not to have to look down all the time.
- Its not out yet: June. Really? Somehow I can’t see this phone shipping in large numbers before September.
- Handcuffed by carriers: And apple is working through Cingular. What if Apple want to do something Cingular don’t like. Sucks to be Apple. Look at what Cingular did to the great Nokia E61. Called it an E62 and disabled the wifi part of it. Like it or not, the carriers still have some clout.
- Media on the phone. Great! But with only 8Gb, you are not going to be carting around that much media. Perhaps they can solve this using some intelligent syncing software that only uploads what you think you will be interested in.
- SIP/Wifi. You would think that if Apple was including this, they would have made some noise about it. See note “Handcuffed by Carriers”. Sip is cool. Sip works. Sip saves me LOTS of money. No thanks, I’ll pass on the Skype phone monstrosities.
Should Anyone Ask 