iPhone Contrarians

Sometimes, a blog entry engages you at such a fundamental level that your comments in response almost end up being a blog entry of their own. (This has yet to have happened on these pages, but eh, my random babble is probably less engaging than that found elsewhere.) Also sometimes you'd rather pig out on store-brand chocolate-chip cookies than write an original blog entry.

An excellent example of this happening is my response to ThongCharm-Priya's thoughts on the iPhone and all the hype surrounding it. What can I say, stuff happens (and sometimes things as well).

For those of you too lazy to click for yourselves, here are some highlights from the review, with some words randomly highlighted in various colors for no particular reason.

i'm sorry to be the contrarian here in this frothy summer milkshake which is the july launch of the 3G ipod, the motto of which appears to be "i will stand in line in the hot sun and queue like i live in a communist country to buy this object i covet and then be forced to activate it on at&t's crappy network and i absolutely must have it now cuz it's so beautiful and oh, dare i say, iconic".

[...]

form factor: the iphone is sleek, and is neat for pictures and videos with the edgeless screen.

[...]

keyboard: the iphone's keyboard blows. i fatfingered everything and it requires constant attention. [...] i've almost successfully memorized my blackberry pearl keypad so i no longer have to look when i type, and can type with one hand, which comes in handy when i'm walking or in a car or wishing i had the other 2 arms of lakshmi, which is 80% of the time while using the phone

[...]

web browsing: the html browsing was the biggest iphone disappointment because web pages on safari were miniature and unreadable and i couldn't intuitively figure out how to make the browsing easier in any way [...] and sadly, i am way behind in my conspiracy theories and editorial news about central asia.

[...]

i also for some reason got really excited about how you could change phone options. all of a sudden that lame options tab was fun. [...] somehow i liked the icons of everything better, and that's not a real competitive advantage.

And here's my comment in response:

All of those iPhone commercials that have inundated our TVs do a fantastic job of showing all of the nifty little things that the iPhone can do, and how it makes even the most conceptually boring tasks like unlocking the phone or choosing options fun and exciting. Props to Apple marketing for that.

However, there are actually quite a few things that the iPhone can't do, and some may surprise you. Prime example: there's no cut & paste... didn't you just assume that a device as sophisticated as the iPhone would have this basic feature? Even the capacitive touchscreen (for all of its general engineering awesomeness) will not respond to stylus-like input, and therefore in spite of Apple's push to get the iPhone entrenched in corporate America through its integration with MS Exchange, you'll never be able to use an iPhone to wirelessly sign on the dotted line and close the deal in the field (and yes, this is indeed a viable use case for a mobile phone, or at least it will be soon).

The other interesting side of the iPhone hype is how all the other carriers and manufacturers are rushing to bring iPhone-like devices to market, sometimes with similar hype (Samsung Instinct, I'm looking in your direction). While this is a global phenomenon, the funny/sad part is that American carriers who want to compete with the iPhone are still bumbling around with the first wave of imitation devices (e.g. the HTC Vogue/Touch/XV6900, my new baby) while customers of their overseas counterparts are already equipped with the second round of much beefier, sexier handsets (e.g. HTC Touch Diamond). If I subscribed to a GSM-based carrier, I might be tempted to buy an unlocked phone from overseas on eBay and plug in my SIM card to (which I did successfully when I was with T-Mobile)... only there's one small problem, in that most of these devices only support UMTS/HSPA, and the only such service that you can find in the U.S. as of this writing is in a few select cities on AT&T's network... anywhere else, and you're S.O.L.

At any rate, I like the fact that the iPhone has given a solid kick in the pants to the manufacturers and carriers (especially in the U.S.) who were dragging their feet on advancing mobile technology. There's no reason that we couldn't have had visual voicemail in 1999 or touch-oriented user interfaces in 2003, but thanks to the iPhone, those are looking to become new baseline features.

BTW, the thing about the iPhone keyboard is that you have to get used to the idea that the key is actually "pressed" when it's released (which is why it displays a larger version of the key you're pressing above your finger), so if you're used to a BlackBerry, Q, or Treo, it takes some mental adjustment. I installed an imitation iPhone keyboard on my XV6900 and after a few minutes I was tapping away at a pretty rapid pace. In the end, I ended up uninstalling that keyboard (it had a nasty bug whereby all letters entered from other soft keyboards would become numbers) and using the "Touch Keyboard" that comes pre-installed... it's basically a soft version of the BlackBerry Pearl's SureType keyboard, and after a few minutes of acclimation it becomes just as fast as a full hardware QWERTY.