DISQUS

Mike42 · 1 year ago

Agree 100% Jonathan.

GPS is a complete distraction. Hardly anyone uses it on the N95, and even with the new Nokia Maps Walking release, GPS is still just too slow/battery-hungry to be a mass-market, often-used feature. Apple/Google nailed it with the Skyhook Wireless system that gives 'good enough' location.

Better camera? It doesn't need to be 5MP with a Zeiss lens to be Good Enough. Apple don't need the >=5MP cachet to shift units the way Samsung do. Better low-light/moving subject performance is all most people will want. I have some moderately stunning images taken in good light, captured on the iPhone, and Flickr is full of what a pro can do with one.

The iPhone is now the most popular cameraphone on Flickr, beating out the N95, with its 5MP and Zeiss lense. If the rumours are true, iP2.0 will include Google-based geotagging...now THIS is something I want, and the masses will use in spades. It will be set-and-forget, and will just work (where you can get a GMaps lock that is, which is still a much nicer experience than GPS, in both Time To First Fix and battery life). Combined with Flickr Maps it will be downright addictive, with no excuse not to geotag all of your images. I'm confident it will be this easy because It Has To Be To Be Appealing.

Some say the Flip now has 13% of the camcorder market. Regardless, the high-end camcorder market is in freefall as people wake up to Youtube/Flickr/embedding video in blogs etc as means of sharing snippets of Good Enough video with family & friends. It is now much less about quality and more about timeliness. I have 3 years of baby footage languishing on MiniDV tape, and will sadly, probably, never get around to iMovie/iDVD-ing it into an easily accessible format. But any future child will be Flickr video'd on a weekly if not daily basis - just as the current offspring are.

So I expect Good Enough video capability, with auto upload to Flickr / post to .Mac via Mac sync built right in.

The tech press and analysts will fret themselves silly doing shortfall tables against the N95 8GB / N96 / Secret, but they will again miss the point. Only the geeks care about spec pissing contests, and they will buy an iPhone anyway for the cachet.

/m

MartinSFP · 1 year ago

Yeah - sharing online will be a big part of iPhone 2.

I'm going to Japan for a holiday in a couple of months. I want to set up a blog that will feed photos, videos, Twitter posts etc so that people back home can follow what I'm doing there. iPhone 2 will be the ideal device providing it does indeed do all of that. Apple's 'it just works' functionality will mean that I should be able to hop onto wifi whenever it's available and just get on with it.

Not long to wait to find out!

Olternaut · 1 year ago

Your argument seems logical. But, if an iphone nano (or whatever they call it) is to succeed its gotta have 3G. So the analogy doesn't totally parallel the ipod. I suppose they could fit an iphone into a smaller unit with 3G if they reduced the size of the flash drive along with not putting in GPS.
Its really going to be interesting to see what Steve Jobs does on June 9th.

Ewan · 1 year ago

Does it really have to have 3G? I think many an ipod fan would be happy with a 2G iPhone at 99 pounds?

jonmul · 1 year ago

My gut feeling is that there are many, many normobs who care very little about 3G. Amongst my friends and family I can think of quite a few who would buy an iPhone if it were cheaper regardless of the connectivity speed it provided. Doesn't O2's recent price cut and the subsequent boost in sales reflect this?

Back to the iPod mini analogy – there would be similarities if Apple released an ‘iPhone nano’ without 3G. I remember the iPod mini being slated in reviews for not having at least as big a hard drive as the original. The point you’re making sounds similar to me.

Ben Smith · 1 year ago

Agreed about 3G as a feature in it's own right, except that if this is the handset you plan to introduce normobs to mobile browsing on - and all the indicators are that it is - it better be as fast as the desktop and that really means 3G (even with the iPhone's excellent and speedy presentation).

MartinSFP · 1 year ago

Possibly, but I'd see 'iPhone nano' as being more about being an accessible combination of iPod and phone rather than being a serious web device - a 'cheap and cheerful' way of getting normobs on the iPhone bandwagon.

I'd say to most of the public, the iPhone brand is first and formost about status and good looks. If they can buy into that by forgoing some of the online capabilities (and getting better battery life to boot) they will.