Mobile Industry Review - Latest Comments in Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

Steve — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:36:07 -0000

Nobody did the interface so good. But everybody else (well, you know what I mean) has more and better features. I wish PocketPC had got this interface thing figured out 5 years ago, because a 5 year old Pocket PC has more features and functionality than the iPhone.

But it's not all about interface. That's clear from other comments here. Apple has to add more of what's missing before the technophiles move over in large numbers. But meantime, Nokia and others are slowly unwinding their own interface design and develop engines. The next two years are going to be very exciting. I'll be shocked if Apple doesn't take a hammering very soon.

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

Mike42 — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:48:39 -0000

Word, Mr Lane.

There's a great article HERE that pretty much demolishes the 'it's crap because it's only 2MP' argument. I love the term 'Camera Measurabators' to describe those who only count raw MP.

/m

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

danlane — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 10:58:50 -0000

It's worth pointing out that these are two random photos I grabbed from Flickr's camera finder tool... taken by different people on different days (although bizarrely at about the same time of day!).. so the weather plays a big part in the differences between the photos.

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

bensmith — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:03:17 -0000

Oooo. I guess the image on the right is the iPhone, but I agree with your general point... In fact the N82's fancy flash is the biggest improvement in this area, no?

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

danlane — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:23:15 -0000

I wish people would stop assuming that the iPhone camera needs upgrading just because it's only 2 megapixels. Megapixels simply refers to the dimensions of the final photo, higher megapixels supposedly mean that more detail can be captured. In reality the real measure of quality should be the sensor used to capture those details (there are a couple of different types but most camera phones use CMOS sensors).

The truth is, the iPhone has a very capable camera that captures photos just as good as an N95 in good daylight situations. Performance drops off dramatically as light levels drop but that's true of the N95 too. Video capability is simply a matter of software. We've seen 3rd party apps that provide this and we'll, no doubt, see those apps pop up in the app store when it launches.

Can you honestly tell me which of these was taken with an N95 and which used an iPhone: http://invalid.name/iphonevsn95.png

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

Mike42 — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:53:50 -0000

Ah yes, forgot the 'Zu. Had that too, used it for a while, can't remember why I stopped, but there would have been a good reason.

So many apps, so little time for coffee and a lie-down...

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

Mike42 — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 03:50:14 -0000

Steve, no-one ever *has* done what Apple have done with the iPhone. It's nothing to do with specs/features and everything to do with the overall usability.

The industry has had many years and hundreds of models to get a user-friendly interface, and has failed miserably. The fact that we as pundits *need* to understand Symbian, multitasking, .SIS files, Bluetooth paring etc is why Normobs have been singularly unimpressed with the mobile experience to date. Oh, apart from SMS & voice calls. But even there, Apple have trumped everyone with the threaded SMS implementation and the in-call controls. Why, you positively *want* to do multiway calling on the iPhone, just for the lovely experience of switching around and bringing others into the conversation.

...and now they bring that love to email and file sharing/management via mobile. Proof will be in pudding come 11 July.

Cheers

/m

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

Steve — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 20:28:53 -0000

I agree. Nothing to see here, move on. When they give us 32/64++ Gb, a decent camera, video, haptic feedback (where did that go?), removable SD/mini/micro slot then I'll be buying one.

Meantime, I am very impressed with the Apple bullsh1t marketing that tries to make out that no one else ever did what they are doing. They spent how long telling us that the Exchange application works just like web-based Exchange on PC ... woohoo you can drag and drop emails and files.

But the games look good. And there is huge buzz. iPhone 3 might actually have me putting my hand in my pocket and giving ATT/Apple some of my cash :-)

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

bensmith — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:23:21 -0000

With an appropriately-equipped phone is geotagging really a pain. Shozu did it for me automagically and their set-up is normob friendly... Although why you should have to rely on a 3rd party product is another question all together.

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

jonmul — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:18:52 -0000

Agree with that Ben.

And it has to be said, Geo tagging on the N95 is great when it works, but can be a real pain. Ease of use is definatly the key. I liked the point Mike made on another post last week pointing out that the iPhone was the most populr camera phone used on Flickr. Reckon his prediction on geo tagged images will come true pretty quickly.

You can start to see the begining of a set of princeples that outline the 'iPhone mobile economy' - ease of use, unmetered access etc. I want to see operators start to pick these up an run with them. That's the way to compete with the iPhone - usability not feature set.

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

bensmith — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:17:30 -0000

I do agree on that last point. Sure, push notifications are a good way to avoid listening to the network for notifications, but what if you want an upload to complete in the background or webpages to continue to download as you swap back to change tracks. I guess this means there'll be a jail-breaking scene around for a bit (network unlocking aside).

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

bensmith — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 19:02:40 -0000

Ahhh Whatley... they'll have to prize that N95 out of your hand... :-)

In the short term nothing but the price matters. After that... just watch. Repeat of the 'ipod sales curve' anyone?

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

Mike42 — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:02:32 -0000

Just how many people geotag images on the N95? And I mean *ON* the N95 - not taking an image and matching it to a track later on your PC. Ricky - when was the last time you geotagged and posted an image on your N95? I can do loads of things like Geotagging with my N95-3, but it's just_too_painful for me to do regularly, let alone Normobs.

There have been a few apps that can do this, notably ZoneTag from Yahoo!, but after nearly 2 years and with all of Yahoo!/Flickr's power behind it, it's still a niche of a niche. My bet is that in the *first week* of the new functionality coming out for i3G and iP2.0 upgrades, there will be more geotagged images from iPhones uploaded than the entire base to date.

It's all about how easy it is, how to get the OS out of the way. With Symbian you know you are using it because it's in your face every 30 seconds asking for permission to do something you've done a thousand tiimes before.

We saw it with the Google hits over last Christmas - put a bog standard, 'me too' technology enabler with a beautiful UI in the hands of Normobs and they will prove the industry pundits utterly wrong.

I don't quite get the multitasking issue. The iPhone already 'multitasks' - my email checks itself in the background, so do SMS, I can put iPod tracks in the background and pause/play/skip at will while in other apps. Is it a case of what Apple allows to multitask?

/m

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

Ricky — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 17:01:30 -0000

I'll have more thoughts online elsewhere later today, but to me, everything in the announcement - save for the AppStore, which we already knew about anyways, was a whole lot of 'me too'. The N95-3 in my pocket has had 3G and GPS built-in since last September. That's nothing new. The interface is still a year old, nothing new there.

You've still got a piss-poor 2 MP cam, no A2DP, no video (that we know of), and there's still no copy/paste.

I did think it AWFULLY brazen to denounce multitasking completely. I disagree that it's a poor choice, but *do* think this push business is....interesting. As I heard it, though, you'll still need to be online to use it, is that correct?

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

Mike42 — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:20:47 -0000

Geotagging photos.

This I'm excited about. I want to know detail, but if the Mobile Me integration runs deep enough, snap-upload-view on map on your homepage. That's it. No arseing about with Flickr scripts, KML files, dates/time GPS track sync etc.

Now admittedly I'm already a .Mac convert, and have been paying Apple for the last 6 years or whatever to host our family webpage. Videos and piccys, nicely laid out, dead simple to upload/edit and view. Everything else was just too hard, too fragmented. So I'm happy to part with 70 quid a year or whatever to have Apple do all the hard work for me. And 20GB of storage too, up from 10 now. That's a whole lot of piccys.

Yup, paying the man 70 quid a year does mark me beyond Normob, but just how easy/seamless does it need to be before it does become mainstream? Have Apple just created a new revenue stream - iPhone users who get a 60-day Mobile Me trial, get hooked on geotagging/uploading seamlessly, build a base of images/maps etc and then can't bear to let go? Hmmm......Nokia utterly failed that ask with Club Nokia. Can Apple pull it off?

But, sigh, still 2MP. As we know, it's not all about headline pixel counts. Hopefully the aperture, ISO & shutter speed management will be better. Interestingly, no mention of shooting video, but there are 3rd party apps that can do that now pretty well.

Those Australians and Americans are well sorted, with UMTS850 support in the chipset. Nice. 3.5G speeds in-building and in the woods.

And the pricing, if indeed it is $199, er, that's a hundred quid. Blimey. look how they shifted at 169. That is actually the biggest piece for me.

/m

Re: Whatley on the iPhone: “Meh. Next.”

jonmul — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:05:59 -0000

I'll still buy one though...