Quick Quotes: iPhone 3.0 Edition
What have I got to say about iPhone 3.0, available today, and iPhone 3GS, coming on Friday? Here is my quick take.
“The 3.0 version closes the gap Apple left open for competitors. The iPhone will get features, like search and copy and paste, that are standard on competing smartphones.”
“Too many new iPhone 3.0 features play catchup with other regular handsets or smartphones. Today, the Twittersphere is aflutter with tweets praising copy and paste. Yeah? This is a basic operating system function available for decades. The original iPhone released in 2007 should have had the capability.”
“Apple’s handset distracts from the real meaning of today’s iPhone 3.0 software release. Smartphone users get some valuable, but still fairly modest, new features. By comparison, iPod touch gets a huge upgrade. What other media player or handheld game console sports features like copy and paste or universal search? The 3.0 upgrade sets iPod touch appart from every other non-3G portable media device sold by any company, anywhere.”
“Most early reviews call iPhone 3GS an ‘evolutionary’ rather than ‘revolutionary’ device. They should also have called the 3GS divisive. Feature differences between iPhone 3G and iPod touch caused some fragmentation in the App Store. Increased fragmentation is now inevitable, as application developers support features like video that are standard on the iPhone 3GS, but not the 3G.”
“The iPhone is not the gold standard by which all other smartphones are measured. Too many reviewers dismiss other excellent smartphones, such as the Palm Pre, simply because they don’t have the same features as iPhone. Of course they don’t have the same features. Competition is about differentiation.”
“Flash isn’t missing from iPhone 3.0 by accident. Apple has embarked on an insular strategy, tying video content to the App Store, QuickTime and H.264. No one should expect Flash anytime soon, if ever, on iPhone. Apple is gambling that iPhone/iPod touch and App Store will become the platform for consuming the mobile Web. Rather than the Web browser, people will use iPhone applications. No Flash required.”
“The $99 price for iPhone 3G is likely to do more for the smartphone than release of the 3GS. The price is magical, sure to spike sales volume, and will put tremendous pressure on other smartphone manufacturers to heavily discount their handsets to compete.”
“AT&T is being extremely generous in changing iPhone 3GS upgrade pricing. Too many 3G customers claimed entitlement to something undeserved.”
“AT&T shouldn’t have caved to iPhone 3G customers whining they didn’t qualify for lower subsidized pricing. The little iPhone whiner revolt is ripe to spread. If iPhone upgraders are so entitled, why shouldn’t BlackBerry users be? AT&T had best watch for spreading customer rebellion about subsidized phone upgrades, or gasp, lawsuits.”
“The foundation for Apple’s mobile platform play is 40 million devices—iPhone and iPod. The $99 iPhone 3G will rapidly extend the install base. The question to ask: What number of devices will give Apple critical mass of applications and developers? The Nokia N97 and Palm Pre could answer that question over the next three to four months. If Nokia and Palm don’t get the developers, Apple can claim that its platform has reached the critical tipping point.”
Do you have a smartphone story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.
This is the closest any smart phone has tempted me so far, but the moths are staying in my wallet a while longer. I’ll get bound in for 2 years, but I when I ask myself this – will something **significantly** better arrive in the next two years, and I think the answer is Yes!. But maybe not in the next year, so I guess the people who got an 3G a year ago got it right.
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Hi Joe,
I have to say I can’t disagree with any of the quotes. I am disappointed that Apple have not got round to improving the calendaring and email functionality which really lets the phone down compared to the competition. Why support Activesync and Exchange and then not implement so much of the functionality.
I heard someone say that with Apple it is not the ‘what’, it is the ‘how’.
[...] iPhone 3.0 OS: More of the same, only better. Sure, developers can now charge customers from within apps, but they’ve still got no Flash (from Adobe). [...]
I’m crazy, Nick. While the world welcomes iPhone 3GS, I delight in the Nokia N97.
The people buying last year, whined and complained their way into a sweet deal over here. AT&T caved on upgrade pricing. They’re not entitled, I say.
What handset are you using now, and what’s keeping you back from that new iPhone?
My current handset is a Sony Ericsson Z600 – its a 5 year old GSM phone – but it works, and its costing me €5 a month to run. The call quality is good, the battery lasts days, I always get a signal. I don’t really want to increase my monthly payments by an order of magnitude just to get a phone that doesn’t last the day without recharge, has margin reception where I am, and poor vocie quality when it does get a signal.
In a nutshell: who needs a slick multitouch UI and 50,000 apps if the basics are a step backwards over the phone I got 5 years ago?
(I don’t mean to single out specifically Apple here. Nothing currently available has really caught my eye, but if I had to choose now, I’d go the the iPhone).
What EAS functionality are you missing the most Martin?
As in not “what the fuck!”, but “how the hell!”