The iPhone may be the best phone I have ever used but it’s not for everyone.
My own experience with phones draws from the phones I have owned and used myself as well as those I have been required to support. There’s been a progression, to my mind, from early Nokias to a Sony Ericsson T39m, to a 610. Then to a Razr V3. Back to SonyEricsson for the K800i and lastly to iPhone. I only realise how much I like the iPhone when I am forced to use one of these other phones.
For me, iPhone is a combination of user interface, features and package. There will be better phones.
HerIndoors had a similar experience last night. When she was upgrading her phone last time round, I advised her to go for a Nokia e65. She likes Nokia phones anyway – but the e65 had a lot of extra features including a half decent web browser, 3G connectivity, WiFi, a SlingPlayer and MSN Messenger. But these things didn’t matter to her – she wanted a fashion phone and the e65 was also attractive. This also meant, when the iPhone came out, she had to have one – and this put her alongside Posh and the rest of the glitterati (but strangely not Carrie Bradshaw).
With the release of the 3G iPhone, the shine has gone from the iPhone somewhat and she dug out her old e65 and stole my N800 power adapter to give it a little juice. I arrived home to find the e65 on charge and her browsing through Nokia.com to look at the latest and greatest phone models (which would be the e66 and e71 – which are hidden in the bowels of europe.nokia.com).
While I continued to work on a client web site, I was witness to the following monologue.
I do like this phone. It feels like a phone. Not like a …flat thing held to your face.
Yay, it’s started up.
I don’t know how to get this going. I keep going into contacts or gallery. I don’t remember.
It’s very slow.
Look how slow that is to launch something.
Look, some of our old texts.
The camera on this phone is much better. It’s easier to hold it and press the button.
*click*
The iPhone is much faster.
There you have it. She has spoken.
We did dally on several web sites but were faintly disappointed to find that many of the iPhone killers were either delayed in development or simply obfuscatory about their capabilities (a review wherein the Samsung Instinct’s web browser gets ripped).
Finding a phone to replace iPhone is going to be tough but I’m sure she’ll be up for a white iPhone 3G in 3 weeks….