This Friday evening, the moment will finally be upon us… Hundreds of Apple faithful will line up outside AT&T and Apple stores across America in an attempt to pick up the mythical iPhone. A few prominent journalists have reviewed devices sent to them by Apple over the past couple weeks. Rather than regurgitating what they’ve already written, I refer you to the amazing iPhone Review Scorecard put together by Nick Denton over at Valleywag. If you’re craving visuals, David Pogue has even posted a cheezy video review available on YouTube.
update: ARS Technica has a great post about restrictions of the iPhone.
Okay… enough about reviews of a device none of us have even seen.
A colleague and I were talking today about the various things the iPhone can’t/won’t do when people pick it up on Friday. Amongst these are both physical limitations (no removable battery, no sd memory card slot, etc.) as well as software limitations (no support for flash video). Yes these are limitations, but I think Apple is keeping things as simple as possible in an effort to avoid Swiss Army Knife syndrome. A Swiss Army Knife does a ton of things, but isn’t particularly great at any of them (including being a friggin knife).
Let’s start with no removable battery. According to a JD Power and Associates study released in 2006, the average wireless handset replacement cycle in the US is 17.6 months. This type of data is what drives carriers like Verizon Wireless to only offer you an equipment subsidy after 24 months. Many folks want a new phone so bad they’ll upgrade regardless of discount. The point is, the battery probably isn’t going to die in < 24 months. If you’re angry that you can’t have multiple batteries–okay fair point, but I’ve got to think you’re in the minority of the iPhone target audience (nerds like us are definitely not ready to part with our BlackBerry).
What about no memory expansion card slot? ITS GOT A HARD DRIVE. The vast majority (if not all) of phones on the market today that have SD card expansion capability have very limited < 128MB internal memory. SD cards are the only way people can store lots of photos or music on these devices. In the case of the iPhone I feel like the internal hard disk of multiple gigs makes this pretty much a non-issue from a consumer’s perspective.
On the software side, I do see genuine issues with not supporting Flash since this is billed as the superstar rich media mobile device. That said, I’m predicting that we’ll all see this issue solved in relatively short order.
The two things that really burn me up are 1) no HSDPA/UMTS support and 2) no external native application development. #2 is something that Apple probably couldn’t have fought and won with AT&T seeing as this thing has to operate safely on its cell data networks. To Apple’s credit, they did release a web SDK of sorts allowing developers to make web apps that run in safari and call an iPhone API to initialize functions like the phone or Google maps. Great start, but not exactly what people were looking for in the development community.
Lack of a high speed data radio is just idiotic. In every single review by a major journalist thus far, the paltry data speed of AT&T’s edge network has been the largest ‘con’ to owning an iPhone. I guess I just don’t get it. AT&T has a higher speed 3G data network and they could have always made the device backwards compatible with EDGE for times when the phone was out of coverage. If anyone reading this works at Apple or AT&T, please feel free to come forward with an explanation for this lunacy.
I think at the end of the day we’re going to see a demographic of iPhone users who don’t use their wireless device for email all the time (tactile keyboards will win). This is not a “BlackBerry killer”. These are Apple evangelists and early adopters. These will be folks who don’t want to carry an iPod and a phone around. They will charge their phone every night as most of us do anyways and not complain about lack of removable batteries. They won’t care that it doesn’t integrate with their MS Exchange GAL or accept outlook meeting invites. They’ll surf the web and more than likely curse Steve Jobs for putting in the crappiest slowest data radio.
At the end of the day, these people will be okay with an easier to use, simple, sleek, handicapped, but still incredibly freaking cool iPhone. Sign me up for revision 2.0
update: Don MacAskill, SmugMug’s CEO, is reporting that Apple and AT&T are refusing to let people buy iPhones on corporate accounts. WOW. That is pretty weaksauce.
Filed under: Apple, consumer electronics, iPhone, wireless | 4 Comments
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The single advantage of using EDGE for data is better battery life. 3G is quick but you may as well power a personal air conditioner on the auxiliary. Motorola Q, anyone? I’ve found that most mobile applications aren’t bandwidth intensive; popular websites redirect to mobile versions and most of the country loads google maps on dialup, so it’ll be fine. 100 x 100 pixel YouTube vids with special compression and caching will be the biggest strain.
If you think about how much time you spend 1) at home 2) at work or 3) in a city, that’s like 22 hours a weekday where you’re near wireless internet. What would really be beneficial is if they partnered with T-Mobile for use of their hotspots included in the plan. As it stands, that’ll cost you $30 a month going directly through them.
A separate non-issue, the non-removable battery is not a big deal because who keeps a cell phone for more than a year anyway? Or an ipod for that matter. These devices have a usable life of about 24 months if you’re *really* careful with your stuff.
I’m going to get one of these because Motorola Q on Verizon runs $85/month + tax, and I can get the same thing on ATT for $60/month data included. As far as the $499 price of admission, I look at it as two transactions: having bought a computer; and switched phone carriers. Windows Mobile 5 had about as much functionality out of the box as Windows 3.1. The only thing that made that phone (the Q) useful was that Google made a Maps application like a year after I bought it. $40/month for google search and maps in my pocket. Great job Microsoft and Verizon, way to let google steal your device.
I’m a Q user. I’m stuck on Verizon. I have EVDO here and I hardly notice the difference between it and 1xRTT. My Q is there because it gives me the advantage when I’m out of WiFi range. However, I will not be going iPhone because:
1. I need the real keyboard
2. I need 3rd party applications like RealVNC (since Q doesn’t come with Terminal)
3. Exchange server capability is really usefull
iPhone is a toy for playing around on the web and for listening to music.
Q is the perfect tool for my productivity without buying a massive and expensive Treo or dealing with a Crackberry
Now if only the Q had Excel and Word capability… iPhone was not the only phone that got neutered.
And Google Maps is AWESOME!!!
Exclusivity and data network will limit its adoption with the latter being a much bigger deal beyond the core apple audience.
The % of people who will connect to a wifi network outside of their home: I say less than 5. If I wanted to connect to a wifi network I wouldn’t have bought a portable phone.
I bought the iPhone June 29 and returned it July 9. Its main limitations were no service: in buildings, in open spaces, near trees, near wildlife, near cars, in cars, on beaches. In short: the best piece of hardware I’ve ever touched on a calling network that has clearly not been updated since 1999.