A new smartphone OS rival?

fdxd wrote:Uh every colur screen phone has a single button for the menu screen.

Dont tell me only the Ipod is easy to use and everything else in existance is hard. Companies like Nokia do actually have a reputation for being easy to use.

Yes, but Nokia chose not to write menu on theirs! To be fair, this was back in 2004 so he was using a farily primitive handset at the time.

Nokia used to be easy to use, but compared to their old (non smart) phones they have lost a bit of that immediate ease of use. We'll have to wait and see if apple have a better UI, but the biggest mistake Nokia and SE can make is to rest on their laurels. They have Microsoft on one side and now Apple on the other...

svdwal wrote:I think the iPhone does has a lot of potential, especially in the high-end smartphone market that is targeted by the SE P990's, the Nokia Communicators and the BlackBerry's and the high-end S60 devices.

We don't yet know whether the iPhone is a smartphone or not. AFAIK Steve has carefully avoided the issue of third party application and the web site doesn't mention anything about it. I haven't even seen mention of Java support. The fact that it runs OS X doesn't mean that it will allow the installation of third party apps. If it doesn't, i don't see the iPhone competing with high end business phones such as the SE P-series or Nokia's E-series (business users buying high-end smartphones would at least want push-email and PDF/Office support) but rather with the mid-to-high end multimedia devices such as the Nokia's N-series and SE K-series.

If it does allow the installation of native third party apps with a comprehensive API, then there is no doubt that this phone is going to be a killer. The possibilities offered by the large, multi-touch screen with its auto-orientation switch thingy are huge. Sure, there's no 3G but EDGE and wifi will do just fine until iPhone v2 with 3G support.

celios wrote:Yes, but Nokia chose not to write menu on theirs! To be fair, this was back in 2004 so he was using a farily primitive handset at the time.

Erm really its ones of the simplest things in the world to do. Easier than ABC. Its something every phone does.

and MS havent been doing great against Symbian if you check.

Let's analyse this a bit.

The iPhone will be expensive. It is a 2G phone (so data speeds will be lower and data and voice charges will be higher). It is a similar size to an M600i (a little thinner but longer and wider), but has a camera and wifi and is not 3G, and has a bigger screen rather than a keyboard.

Apple's UI demos on it's website reveal the following UI features:

• The UI appears inflexible (from a third party perspective), since it uses a two-tier hierarchy -- categories down the bottom, single-screen grid menus under each category.
• The UI is hard to use single handed (the device is too wide and thin)
• The UI is impossible to use without looking at it (so the demo of the phone functionality is completely misleading, since it implies that a bunch of interaction is done while the phone is NOT in speaker mode, and yet that is simply not possible).
• The UI and applications are very simplistic, a la S60 (and lots of people have complained here about just that). Contacts has no search, just a simple scroll or tap on first letter UI. Note that the demo's contacts list is VERY small. This software will not handle more than a couple of hundred contacts without becoming utterly frustrating.
• The UI looks great with all its sliding and popping up, but these types of things just slow you down (look at the M600 and P990, not to mention Win XP). However, it has that mysterious hiddenness of the iPod about it. To be honest, I found the iPod's UI bizarre and infuriating -- after twenty minutes I was still lost and frustrated. It just hides too much. And this UI seems to do that even more. For example, in the pictures demo, there is a point where the user taps on a blank part of the screen and a menu/dialog magically pops up. Where did that come from? Is that a tap, or a tap on empty? What happens if there is no empty? And what's the difference between a tap and a slide? UIQ does a lot of stuff wrong, but one thing it doesn't do wrong is overloading the pointer interactions with too many meanings. Apple has been making that mistake for a long time, and look likely to continue.
• A lot of the "intelligent" UI features look likely to be heuristic, which leads to unexpected results. Eg. detecting when the phone is put to your head.

Personally, I dislike the S60 UI. I think it's slow and clunky. There's simply too little input bandwidth for it to work well for a smartphone. Having said that, it works fine as a phone. Apple has thrown input bandwidth at this UI problem via the big, multi-touch screen. But will the iPhone UI even work well as a phone? Where do you tap to answer a call? Where's the button to activate voice dialing? Where's the camera shutter? Etc.

UIQ 3, while it has issues, too (especially the extra step of popping out editors from the "stand in"s in a form), can easily implement the two-level access hierarchy that's a major part of the iPhone's UI strength, and can also do everything that S60 can. Touch screens are great, and probably even necessary for smart phones. But so are physical keys and real "plastic" (as Apple calls them) keyboards.

So whither the iPhone? I think it'll be a niche success. But Nokia and SE really don't have too much to worry about. And Symbian's key advantages are its robustness, security, and huge software stack. (Even at its worst, the P990 only had application crashes, with only very rare phone crashes.)

That's my 2c.

-Malcolm.

"The iPhone is clearly a paradigm change – love it or hate it."

(sigh)

Can't there be a single Apple launch where people don't spout meaningless sycophantic drivel like this?

The iPhone is a smartphone, it does pretty much what other smartphones have done for many years now, and the only really big thing that distinguishes it is that it has a more sensitive touchscreen than previously used on phones. Everything else, it's been done already. That's not what I'd call a "paradigm change", more of an interesting evolutionary step (assuming the touchscreen works that is).

I'd also be sceptical that everyone would want to write large amounts of text without any physical feedback whatsoever. I'd also wonder what the screen will look like after a year of the user's grubby fingers touching it directly all the time.

Maybe there's nothing to be sceptical about, maybe this will be a really good smartphone, maybe it will sell really well and establish Apple in the phone business.

But Apple seems to bring out people who go way beyond such reasonable optimism and treat the company as some sort of benevolent god incapable of error and whose every action is a blessing upon the peoples of the earth, no matter what that action is, and whose every statement must be greeted with copious words of praise.

Put things in perspective: the only hugely successful highly profitable product Apple makes is the iPod. Take that away and there's not really much else except a niche computer hardware business with a tiny market share, and a barely profitable online music store that the average iPod owner only buys about six tracks from. The iPod has sold very very well for several years now, but that doesn't make Apple omnipotent omniscient beings, it makes them a very successful music player manufacturer. I wish them all the best, but worry about some of their fans. 😊

Basically, Nokia have to make its concepts a reality now. All the iphone has, Nokia has already demoed in concept vids. The recent Nokia Developers Show had a demo of their future touch screen smart OS. for example....you share info between two phones by just touching them together. I really wish i could find that video again, but its there. Don't forget that wearable Nokia concept phone that looks like a maxipad. Everyone was drooling over that.

Apple have taken the plunge and released a concept, Nokia and others should grab their scrotums tight and bring their own futuristic ideas to physical fruition.

Apple didn't have this idea first and they haven't revolutionised anything...they have just been much braver at it. As a technology enthusiast, I commend them for that.

Its time to push boundaries, my friends...........NOW!!!

p.s....Isn't that visual voice-mail already an S60 app. You know the one that records voice mails for you instead of your operator. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

"Apple have taken the plunge and released a concept, Nokia and others should grab their scrotums tight and bring their own futuristic ideas to physical fruition."

I suppose part of the problem is that Nokia and other phone makers have all kinds of phones at all kinds of price levels to deal with, but Apple is (for the moment) just doing one luxury model in one country on one network with one kind of phone standard. The tricky bit is when you have to keep all the different plates spinning for an extended period of time: networks, international issues, phone standards, wireless standards, local tastes, specialised models, cheap models, mid-range models etc.

It's interesting that Apple has never had that large a range of products, they've only released two or three iPods a year and a similar number of Macintoshes. Is that approach workable in the phone world where manufacturers currently bring out 10 to 40 new models each every year?

If Apple does expand its range of phones to match the range offered by rivals, these kinds of prestige projects may suffer as the company will have to spread its attention far more thinly. They'll also have to worry about more than one network in each country, and more than one phone standard in each country (the iPhone doesn't support 3G, yet 3G is an important feature in European luxury phones). And they can probably forget about ever selling the iPhone in Japan, unless they agree to brand it under a phone network's name and model number rather than their own.

Alternatively, Apple could remain a luxury phone maker in which case they'll steal customers from the existing companies but won't be directly comparable rivals. The iPhone might just be an attempt to keep the iPod alive in the face of increasingly sophisticated music phones that can download music directly from the internet, rather than an attempt to take over the entire phone world.

Most people aren't technology enthusiasts and most will not buy $500 phones with touchscreens when all they want to do is make calls, so the real question is what happens in the future. Will Apple stay at the top end, or will we see mid-range and low-end iPhone equivalents of Nanos and Minis?

I have a feeling that Jobs wants to keep the Apple brand name special, and won't get involved in the bread-and-butter business of making phones that do little more than calls, and we won't see more than two or three iPhone models a year.

celios wrote:I handed my 6630 to my brother who works in technical support and he couldn't work out how to get to the menu screen. This is a major failing for a mobile phone!

from engadget mobile

And the reality slowly sets in about what the iPhone is and is not. Noted analyst and Engadget pal Michael Gartenberg stated that the iPhone is first party software ONLY -- i.e. not a smartphone by conventional terms, being that a smartphone is a platform device that allows software to be installed. That means hungry power-users -- you know, those people ready and willing to plunk down $600 for an 8GB musicphone -- won't be able to extend the functionality of their phone any more than Apple (but thankfully not Cingular) dictates. Other unfortunate realities about the device:

* No 3G. We know you know, but still, it hurts man.
* No over the air iTunes Store downloads or WiFi syncing to your host machine.
* No expandable memory.
* No removable battery.
* No Exchange or Office support.

Hi guys, don't be too defensive. More competition is always better for end-users 😊

Now about iPhone, if they get the UI/UE (user interface/experience) right (read here: a step ahead of what exists today), they have already 50% probability of success. The rest is all about the marketing and distribution. Apple being damn good about that...

Another thing: this is the 1st iteration of a new product of Apple (remember the first ipod...). So those of you that already complain about lack of 3G, GPS and other whistles, this does not matter. In 2008, they may well release the iPhone2 with 3G, Wimax (only another network connectivity layer, not a big deal to subcontract when you already have a very good UI) or what they think is good to add.

Lastly, about the SW/OS platform and developers. Although Symbian is shipping 100million phones, their SW/developer ecosystem is still far from a mature phase (if you compare to PC/laptop world). Not to mention, how much the basic user knows about installing 3rd party SW to his symbian phone...
By using OSX, in the Iphone, Apple does not start from scratch in the mobile OS world. Now I agree we don't know how straight forward is it to port current Mac OSX apps to the iPhone...

Don't take me wrong I still go for the N95 in the meantime, but I may well switch to the Apple iPhone v2 in 2008-9... Unless of course Nokia makes the Next-gen gaming platform right...

PS: anyone of you has info how the iPhone support VoIP/internet telephony? Skype may well be ready for iPhone before it hits S60...

Forgot one thing to say:

E61 (my current phone): 117 mm x 69.7 mm x 14 mm. Weight: 144g

Apple iPhone: 115 mm x 61 mm x 11.6mm. Weight: 135g

The specs are extremely mediocre by today's standards, but I predict it will be huge, particularly in the 'States. The iPod is, and it's nothing more than an MP3 player that is DRM'd to buggery but is stylish and heavily-hyped. The iPhone will do the same. Celebrities will be walking around saying, "Look at this, I can play music on my mobile phone!" while AAS readers will be screaming at their TV sets in exasperation, "So what? I've been doing that for years!"

Never forget that most of us who read and contribute to forums such as AAS are geeks and early-adopters; we are not marketing people and not Joe Public. The VCR lesson continues to be repeated again and again: VHS was arguably the worst of the three contending formats and is the one we ended up being stuck with for decades.

Wanted to put size comparison between E61-62 and iPhone, but as I have only two post, I am not allowed:

Thus check the link: img243.imageshack.us/img243/6421/iphonevsnokiae61e62sizezf8.jpg

Cheers - cooli

IPhone is the first phone from Apple. Without 3G and with all knew technologies already on market. So, for that side, nothing special. But one thing is sure, a little company like Apple put a lot of people to talk about a phone and about it�s skills and great capacity, even if nobody have already touch such phone or work with it. How many crash�s it have :con? and software upgrades that phone gonna need:con?

N/A wrote:My kids got S60 phones when they were 10-12 years. They figured out their use without any assistance, and they're normal/regular kids. If an adult, technical support professional can't figure it out, but untrained children can, what does it mean? 😉

You've given birth to a couple of geniuses? 😊

Of course my brother did figure it out, but only after a few minutes of bemusement - he was expecting a softkey with 'menu' on. I guess he didn't just start hitting the buttons willy nilly as he didn't want to accidently delete anything.

neilhoskins wrote:The specs are extremely mediocre by today's standards, but I predict it will be huge, particularly in the 'States. The iPod is, and it's nothing more than an MP3 player that is DRM'd to buggery but is stylish and heavily-hyped. The iPhone will do the same. Celebrities will be walking around saying, "Look at this, I can play music on my mobile phone!" while AAS readers will be screaming at their TV sets in exasperation, "So what? I've been doing that for years!"

I would imagine that after the first month or two, Apple will start to bundle the iPhone with free tunes and movies, etc. from the iTunes store. Buy an iPhone and get $50 worth of free downloads anyone?

I would agree that it is doomed to fail if there is no support for software from vendors other than Apple. It needs an office document reader at the very least. I guess Apples answer might be to develop mobile apps using the browser, but that won't fly, especially in the US where network coverage lags behind Europe.

Read this: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/the-iphone-is-not-a-smartphone/

1* No 3G. We know you know, but still, it hurts man.
2* No over the air iTunes Store downloads or WiFi syncing to your host machine.
3* No expandable memory.
4* No removable battery.
5* No Exchange or Office support.

1* no 3G -> this is primarly a phone for US (see the E62 there). Agree this is major drawback for other market (Europe).
2* sure about this, it's running OSX, what would prevent an update?
3* frankly speaking guys, don't you thing 4Gb or 8Gb are not enough for most users of such smart/iphone? You normally (an average user) buy a big micro/mini/... SD card when you get a new smartphone, put it in the slot and keep it there till your next phone upgrade.
4* same as above, few users I think carry a 2nd battery with them
5* this is not an enterprise phone, mainly intended for mac users and Yahoo/Gmail alike. A bit like your Ipod has nothing to do with you work stuff 😉

I am not particularly a Mac fan, but let's discuss the real pro/cons of this iPhone considering its target market/purpose.

hargs48 wrote:Read this: http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/the-iphone-is-not-a-smartphone/

Yeah, I saw that. I guess that means they are essentially selling a really cool iPod with some phone/organiser functionality! 🙄

I am sure they will need to develop some kind of viewer for Office/PDF/etc. Although this phone might not be aimed at enterprises, most people have a little bit of work/life overlap!

Add a few viewers and run some kind of 'Apple certified' programme aloowing for 2nd/3rd party software and it would be much more of a success.

It seems like it will not have user installable software:

http://www.tuaw.com/2007/01/09/iphone-will-not-allow-user-installable-applications/

I thought I should make time to watch Jobs's keynote over lunch. Bad idea because I'm alternating between nausea and hysterical laughter. He actually got a round of applause when he announced that it was going to be GSM.
<pause - he's going to show us something incredible>
...Oh, he showed us a browser over WiFi. No indication of how fast it will be over EDGE.
<fast-forward through more marketing BS>
...Demonstration of multitasking. Gosh. I think I'm going to wet myself.
...Comparison with the competition. Apparently the iPhone is far superior because it shows you an album cover and doesn't have a 'cut down' mode on the browser for when you have a slow connection. (In a real life scenario that browser is going to seem pretty bloated.)
...Blatant generalisation about the competition. Apparently nobody uses existing smartphones for music because it's not very good. I guess I'm unique, then. (I'd better tell the OggPlayer developers that I'm their only user.)
...Does an existing smartphone really cost $300 with a two-year contract in the States? Blimey, and they talk about ripoff Britain.
...More marketing droids wetting themselves.
...Mediocre rock star.
...The end.

I stand by what I said about this product doing well as a result of marketing and "fashion", but technologically it's about two years behind the competition.

1 This phone ain't gonna change the viewpoint of s60 enthusiasts
2 Its gonna be hell of a lot more expensive, making it unreachable to the mass market
3 Having just one button makes it very gaming unfriendly, gaming enthusiasts would most probably run it over while buying their Next Gen Gaming devices.

Only market thats left available for them would be rich professionals, a niche market currently captured by the likes of Blackberrys and v3is.

All in all, I don't really see this phone taking the market by any kind of a storm.

celios wrote:The price isnt too bad. $499 with a 2 year contract, so �250 or �380,

You're having a laugh, right? Since when did $500 = �250 by the time it's made over the pond? More like �350 to �400, which puts it on an even footing with the likes of the W950i, it closest obvious cousin.

If Iphone has a hard disk, its gonna be bugged with same old N91 hard disk problems all over again.

Steve, surely you can come up with something better then "doncha just love the Apple fanboys?" Aren't you the real fanboy around here, a Symbian fanboy that is!? Again you're trumpeting the Symbian gospel with "100 MILLION smartphones" which, by the way, isn't the point.

A paradigm shift took place, a new phase in the way we interact with machines, and the iPhone represents this radical shift. A demonstration of what I'm talking about can be seen on the TED organization web site � the Jeff Han presentation.

Therefore your call for "please have some perspective" is redirected to you: please take a broader look at the arrival of the iPhone, think outside the Symbian box, enjoy the iPhone and Mac OS X 😊

Almost forgot, I'm a Symbian user (Nokia 9500) at present...

dovale

Hardeep1singh wrote:If Iphone has a hard disk, its gonna be bugged with same old N91 hard disk problems all over again.

It's flash memory not a hard-disk I think.

celios wrote:It's flash memory not a hard-disk I think.

Yep, flash based. You'd never get a 1.8 inch hard disk in such a tiny case and the hit on the battery would be horrendous so flash was their only choice really.

Bassey wrote:You're having a laugh, right? Since when did $500 = &#163;250 by the time it's made over the pond? More like &#163;350 to &#163;400, which puts it on an even footing with the likes of the W950i, it closest obvious cousin.

I was just thinking that any more than this and it will be totally uncompetitive. I wouldn't get fixated on the prices shown in their presentation either. $499 is not that outrageous for decent phone in the US - they seem to get overcharged buying phones on contract, they will be aware that the competition in Europe is more intense (for once!) than the US. Also, don't forget that the phone is supplied with 4Gb or 8Gb of memory. Not the silly 128Mb or 64Mb miniSD card that Nokia supply. So that's a &#163;50 saving.

I would say that this is looking fairly impressive for iPhone 1.0. If they can keep it fast, responsive and usable, then iPhone 2.0 might be interesting. Maybe Europe will only see iPhone 2.0, the rumour is that they are already working on it...

No, matter how dumb a Moto V3i may be, there is a certain set of users who would still buy it just because its SHINY, the IPHONE would appeal to the same group. This topic has received 57 comments already, don't know how many more it'll receive. No matter what many people might say but this is the truth nobody can deny. Only appeal this phone has is thats its created by apple and its so SHINY.

I agree with Hardeep. I think that sums it up nicely. In fact, that sums up modern marketing. People will buy it because it's shiny.