News is starting to appear this weekend that the Apple iPhone is arriving at stores throughout the UK in readiness for sales to begin on November 9th.
I think it’s going to be interesting. The iPhone did very well in the United States on it’s opening weekend, but then the US has lagged a long way behind europe in terms of mobile technology thus far. While the iPhone has wonderful integration with the Apple OSX operating system, as a straightforward mobile telephone, it’s not that stellar at all.
Looking at my aging Sony Ericsson K800i, I have a much better camera (click here to see a representative photo from it), and massively longer battery life than the iPhone. I can play MP3 files, movies, browse the web via 3G, and use it as a bluetooth modem too.
If the iPhone is compared against the Nokia N95, things start to look even worse - the N95 has wireless, satnav, bluetooth, 3G, and still a better camera than the iPhone.
So how is the iPhone going to compete?
The interface is much easier to use than any other mobile phone.
The operating system is much more capable than any other mobile phone.
The browser (Safari) is by far the best browser on any mobile phone available.
Integration with OSX and productivity applications such as address book and iCal is fast and seamless - making existing Windows smart phone integrations look hilarious by comparison.
Integration with iTunes makes moving music to the iPhone a one click operation.
Given the above list, you might imagine that I’ve been taking happy Apple pills. The iPhone has major drawbacks too.
It has no 3G capability. Unbelievable.
The touch screen keyboard is fiddly to use.
Using the camera is a nightmare due to accidentally touching the screen while using it.
Battery life is just as bad as the Nokia N95 when using all the functions (but then again, this is true of all powerful mobile phone handsets).
Integration with Microsoft Windows productivity applications is virtually non existent.
Thankfully, the iPhone does appear to work very nicely as a telephone - which is the main reason most people carry these devices around, after all.
It strikes me that to extract maximum benefit from the iPhone’s feature set, you almost certainly need an Apple Mac of some description, running Leopard. In the Windows world, the iPhone requires iTunes to both activate, and sync with the computer. It’s no secret that iTunes runs like a dog on Windows - you have to see the Mac version on native hardware to appreciate the difference.
This is all rather complicated, isn’t it. If you subscribe to the Apple product set, pull on your black polo-neck, and your Steve Jobs issue denim jeans, you’re going to be a happy camper. If you live in the Microsoft Windows world however, the benefits of moving to an iPhone are very, very difficult to balance.
Sure, you’ll have a phone with a screen as big as a PSP to play movies on, but do you really want a device that’s quite good at most things, as against a few devices that are very good at each thing?