My thoughts on iPhone

Unless you're living under a rock, you should know by now that Apple Computers Inc. has released it highly anticipated iPhone. After over two years of speculation, and various "iPhones" wannabies/knockoffs and one that's not even a mobile phone, Apple's iPhone is probably the most hyped Apple product in recent years, and now that it's announced, it seems a bit over-hyped to me.

Firstly, sources say you can't install softwares on it. Now, Apple says it runs OSX, so why not? This severely limits the potentials of the iPhone. For example, that nice screen would make it quite a good ebook reader. I know a lot of people, myself included, uses their Smartphones/PDAs to read ebooks. I wonder if it has an ebook reader. Another example would be GPS. iPHone does have Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR (Enhanced Data Rate), but can it be paired with a Bluetooth device? Even if it could be paired, I don't think there's a map to go with it. Google Map does have driving directions, but it's easier with GPS realtime driving directions, so you could still get to you destination if you missed a couple of turns. In Google Map you'd have to key in your new location to plot the route to your destination.

Speaking of "key in", this brings me to my second point. I have doubts with the onscreen keyboard. Obviously with the new Multi-Touch screen and this being an Apple product, it may become the kest keyboard ever, but from past experiences (not that I had a lot of it), onscreen keyboard usually sucks. Personally, the feedback from the keyboard while typing is very important, which is why, in this respect, I like my Treo180 more than my Treo650. But for an onscreen keyboard, you may have "clickety" sounds, but you don't have any feedback at all. It would be like typing on a table. Your fingertips hit something hard, and that's about it.

Thirdly, remotely related to the first point of the inability to install software, is that the built-in Safari browser is just plainly weird. I hope there's a "normal mobile web browser" mode, because, from the keynote, and this animation, viewing a webpage "the way it was designed to be seen", is just ridiculous. The full sized screens on real computers are for that. For mobile devices, especially a Quad-band GSM with EDGE device, which has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 473.6 kbit/s, you want to keep the webpage as simple as possible. Loading all the graphics and animations would be nice, but slow. What's more, needing to zoom in and scroll around is just annoying. It might be fun at start, but i bet it gets annoying afterwards.

It's also rather expensive, US$499/$599 for a 4GB/8GB version with a 2 year Cingular (AT&T Mobile?) contract. That's roughly HK$3892/$4672, which is quite a bit for a so called "smart" phone without much expansion capabilities. Comparing this to a similarly priced PalmOS smartphone, or, heck, even a WM5 smartphone, they have virtually unlimited expansion capabilities. Yes, it doesn't look as nice, and that the most important thing to some people, but it isn't to me. As I'm a PalmOS fan, I'll quote Treonauts' comparison, Treo680 vs. iPhone. Quote from their conclusion on the comparison,

It's funny that the iPhone should so clearly have helped me to better recognize the terrific accomplishments that Palm has delivered with our Treo. It may not be immediately perceived to be quite as 「cool」 as an iPhone but the fact is that the Treo clearly deserves the praise and success that it has already achieved.

I have no doubt that the iPhone will be an extremely successful device in its own right – one which will continue to help grow the smartphone space with an even younger generation – but for now at least I certainly don't believe that it will be a Treo-killer.

At the same time I am delighted to see Apple enter the smartphone space as the increased competition will certainly help to bring even more and faster innovation to our Treo as all players battle it out to attain the leading market position.

I do agree that the iPhone keeps Palm on its toes, but, it's just not as good as it could be. The onscreen keyboard might be ok, but IMHO, the biggest drawback is the inability to install software. I, too, believe Apple will be highly successful, but it's just not the iPhone that could've been. At least, they certainly did not reinvent the phone.

Update : Shortly after I published this commentary, I stumbled across the initial thoughs from David Pogue, Tech Journalist of the NY Times. His short hands-on session with the iPhone confirmed one of my worries. "Typing is difficult". Also, he seems to like Safari. Click to Read

Another Update : Michael Mace, who used to work in Palm, published his thoughts as well. It's a great, and much more informed article (compared to mine). In it he reveiled that the Visual Voicemail feature was actually discussed in Palm 4 years ago. Pity...

p.s. My first commentary on these topics, so if you did read it, let me know how I could improve. Thanks for reading. Cassio.