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purplecthulhu at 06:58pm on 11/01/2007
purplecthulhu at 06:58pm on 11/01/2007The dust is settling, the Reality Distortion Field is wavering, and its time to .
It was a great demo, but as others are noticing, there are problems. To my mind, and in no particular order, these are:
- closed software architecture
- lack of 3G
- lack of expansion slots (ie. closed hardware architecture)
- locked to Cingular in the US
- battery life (maybe)
- getting the phone to work as a phone (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daveon has raised doubts on this)
- not getting to Europe for 10 months
The key thing introduced on Tuesday wasn't the phone but was the UI. Apple cracked the UI of the MP3 player and now dominate that market. I think what they've cracked this time is the UI for a more generic handheld device. So what are they going to do with this.
Well, first is the phone, and that's what we saw this week.
Second will, probably, be the real widescreen iPod. Take the formfactor we already have for the phone, throw away the phone and connectivity aspects, make it a bit thicker to allow a hard drive to be fitted and maybe a bigger battery, and you have the perfect movie iPod. You don't need to open up the software or hardware environment on this since we're all happy with our proprietary iPods already. The fact that the phone can show great movies but only has a maximum of 8G memory rather points in the direction of this particular item.
Next will be the PDA, which will effectively be the widescreen iPod, but with wifi and bluetooth put back in, and possibly with a more open hardware and software environment. And at last we'll have a PDA that works seamlessly with MacOS. Bluetooth is important here since it will need to be able to connect to your (non-Apple) mobile phone for net access.
Its possible they might combine these two into the same device effectively making a non-phone iPhone, and that might make some sense. Larger screen tablet versions are also feasible, as has been suggested elsewhere.
Whether there'll be a 3G phone version in time for the European release is an interesting question, but the obvious final Rolls Royce device, which might be a bit too bloaty, will be the hard-drive phone. Adding 3G to that and you have quite an interesting appliance...
Each of these options gets around some of the problems with the current set up. I think I'd be quite partial to the hard-drive widescreen iPod and the PDA myself, especially if no 3G version materialises here.
It was a great demo, but as others are noticing, there are problems. To my mind, and in no particular order, these are:
- closed software architecture
- lack of 3G
- lack of expansion slots (ie. closed hardware architecture)
- locked to Cingular in the US
- battery life (maybe)
- getting the phone to work as a phone (
daveon has raised doubts on this)- not getting to Europe for 10 months
The key thing introduced on Tuesday wasn't the phone but was the UI. Apple cracked the UI of the MP3 player and now dominate that market. I think what they've cracked this time is the UI for a more generic handheld device. So what are they going to do with this.
Well, first is the phone, and that's what we saw this week.
Second will, probably, be the real widescreen iPod. Take the formfactor we already have for the phone, throw away the phone and connectivity aspects, make it a bit thicker to allow a hard drive to be fitted and maybe a bigger battery, and you have the perfect movie iPod. You don't need to open up the software or hardware environment on this since we're all happy with our proprietary iPods already. The fact that the phone can show great movies but only has a maximum of 8G memory rather points in the direction of this particular item.
Next will be the PDA, which will effectively be the widescreen iPod, but with wifi and bluetooth put back in, and possibly with a more open hardware and software environment. And at last we'll have a PDA that works seamlessly with MacOS. Bluetooth is important here since it will need to be able to connect to your (non-Apple) mobile phone for net access.
Its possible they might combine these two into the same device effectively making a non-phone iPhone, and that might make some sense. Larger screen tablet versions are also feasible, as has been suggested elsewhere.
Whether there'll be a 3G phone version in time for the European release is an interesting question, but the obvious final Rolls Royce device, which might be a bit too bloaty, will be the hard-drive phone. Adding 3G to that and you have quite an interesting appliance...
Each of these options gets around some of the problems with the current set up. I think I'd be quite partial to the hard-drive widescreen iPod and the PDA myself, especially if no 3G version materialises here.
geeky