tOfficial iPhone news and discussion thread

[docpjk]

Can someone give me a quick update on why I should upgrade to the new phone? Don't feel like reading 5 pages of posts and I'm happy with my current iphone

[Fighting With A Vim]

Originally Posted by docpjk

Can someone give me a quick update on why I should upgrade to the new phone? Don't feel like reading 5 pages of posts and I'm happy with my current iphone

If you live in a 3G city AND you already use AT&T's EDGE network quite a bit for mobile data, then you should consider it.

[Breslin Center]

Originally Posted by TurboSpartan

HTC - Touch Phone, PDA Phone, Smartphone, Mobile Computer

HTC Diamond, coming out at about the same time for Sprint and AT&T. 3G, thinner than the 3G iphone, way smaller footprint and way less clunky, 640x480 resolution, can tether (high-speed internet for your laptop, not available on iphone), record video, 3megapixel cam, 4gb onboard flash PLUS microSD slot for as much storage as you can use, similar touch interface, and a seperate version will be out with a full slide-out keyboard keyboard at about the same time. That one will look like this (leaked low-res photo):

1. If you've actually ever held an iPhone, you would not describe it as "clunky." Absolute opposite of the truth. Also, the htc may have a higher resolution screen now, (against the 1st gen iPhone), but its screen is much smaller. iPhones are meant to be multimedia devices, and that 3.5" is a great size for mobile media. And its just common sense that the music playback on the htc won't even be in the same league as the iPod built into the iPhone.

2.microSD is NOT "as much storage as you can use." That's completely false. If you can even use microSD to get to the same 16gb that iPhones come in, (which I don't believe you can), you're paying up the butt for it. Even getting a 6gb microSD card (to equal the iPhone's minimum 8gb) is somewhere in the range of $60-$80, and many phones are only capable of handling so much from a card, (not sure what the htc is capable of handling). Also, I believe they'll be releasing a 32gb variety of the iPhone in June.

3. There are many "similar touch interfaces" to the iPhone, but none of them are going to really stack up. Just like comparing a Mac to a PC, you can't just compare physical specs and say "well this one is the better deal." The interface for the iPhone against copycats is just a no-brainer. Couple that with the 3rd party app support that is going to explode in June for the iPhone and it's game over.

Conclusion: JesusPhone2.0 will conquer all in June, and the rise of the machines will be upon us shortly.

[GRR Spartan]

Originally Posted by bulldogg

If you can't use it internationally, I can't have it.

Obviously then, it is only geared to the individual user ... not business user.

This week I got a message from ATT that even my lowly Nokia 6085 can now be used internationally.

But stranger things have happened. Like Apple not wanting an international version to hit China and be copied in 72 hours.

[Jim in Atl]

But does the iphone have GPS?????? This is what I am waiting on, otherwise I would have an Iphone right now.

I love verizon's service everywhere I have been. Never a dropped call. I am in love with VZNavigator also. But I would switch if I get the faster connection and GPS.

[Gtarent]

Originally Posted by Breslin Center

2.microSD is NOT "as much storage as you can use." That's completely false. If you can even use microSD to get to the same 16gb that iPhones come in, (which I don't believe you can), you're paying up the butt for it. Even getting a 6gb microSD card (to equal the iPhone's minimum 8gb) is somewhere in the range of $60-$80, and many phones are only capable of handling so much from a card, (not sure what the htc is capable of handling). Also, I believe they'll be releasing a 32gb variety of the iPhone in June.

For what its worth I bought an 8 gig micro sd 2 months ago for $45 from amazon. Kind of a silly purchase since I rarely listen to music on my phone, but my TomTom maps tied up over half of my old micro sd and I was feeling cramped. A combination of orb and my slingbox makes sure I have an unending supply of multimedia.... which of course I don't use much.

I respect what the iphone has done, and I am thankful that its influence has improved the UI of my HTC. I still don't think it can beat the combination of performance and price that my mogul and sero plan offers.

[TurboSpartan]

Originally Posted by Breslin Center

1. If you've actually ever held an iPhone, you would not describe it as "clunky." Absolute opposite of the truth. Also, the htc may have a higher resolution screen now, (against the 1st gen iPhone), but its screen is much smaller. iPhones are meant to be multimedia devices, and that 3.5" is a great size for mobile media. And its just common sense that the music playback on the htc won't even be in the same league as the iPod built into the iPhone.

It absolutely is clunky. It's thin, but clunky because it's 4 and a half inches tall by 2 and a half inches wide. The music playback is exactly the same, playing mp3s is not an epic task. Many phones do it and do it well.

2.microSD is NOT "as much storage as you can use." That's completely false.

With flash ram being so cheap and microsd so small (less than the size of your thumbnail), and available in at least 8 and 12gb sizes, you can take as much of this stuff with you as you want, so your storage is really unlimited.

If you can even use microSD to get to the same 16gb that iPhones come in, (which I don't believe you can), you're paying up the butt for it. Even getting a 6gb microSD card (to equal the iPhone's minimum 8gb) is somewhere in the range of $60-$80, and many phones are only capable of handling so much from a card, (not sure what the htc is capable of handling).

Do your homework. You can go to pricewatch.com right now and see that a 4gb microSD chip is $20, which brings the total to 8GB. An 8gb microSD is $60, and the gentleman who posted above found one for $45. And you can expect that to drop to $40 (the standard $5 per gig), in the next couple months as more companies make them available. Sandisk has a 12gb, but I don't see it listed. I'm sure in 6 months those will be easier to find and cheap as well. Based on price trends you can bet that within a year you'll be able to buy 16gb microSD for under $50. Flash is cheap, and its price per gb roughly cuts in half year over year.

Also, in practice these cards can be filled with songs a lot faster than flash on-board the phone. Class 6 cards, rated for a minimum of 6mb/s, typically get close to double that in my experience. An iPhone (and many other phones) typically transfer at a rate of 2 or so mb/s, limited by the bus on the phone. This means if you want to fill 8gb, it can take over an hour, vs just plugging in an 8gb microSD to your PC and filling it in 10 minutes.

Also, I believe they'll be releasing a 32gb variety of the iPhone in June.

So what? Is everyone with an 8/16gb iPhone sitting here saying man I wish i had 32? I mean you're talking about almost 200 songs per gig, so 8gb is ~1500 songs, 16gb is ~3000. If you need to be changing out songs all the time, you'd probably like interchangeable microSD.

3. There are many "similar touch interfaces" to the iPhone, but none of them are going to really stack up. Just like comparing a Mac to a PC, you can't just compare physical specs and say "well this one is the better deal." The interface for the iPhone against copycats is just a no-brainer. Couple that with the 3rd party app support that is going to explode in June for the iPhone and it's game over.

Conclusion: JesusPhone2.0 will conquer all in June, and the rise of the machines will be upon us shortly.

Spare me the fanboy stuff, the Diamond and Raphael look like a great phones.

[hexydes]

Originally Posted by Breslin Center

3. There are many "similar touch interfaces" to the iPhone, but none of them are going to really stack up. Just like comparing a Mac to a PC, you can't just compare physical specs and say "well this one is the better deal." The interface for the iPhone against copycats is just a no-brainer. Couple that with the 3rd party app support that is going to explode in June for the iPhone and it's game over.

Conclusion: JesusPhone2.0 will conquer all in June, and the rise of the machines will be upon us shortly.

Honestly, HTC's interfaces are VERY slick. The only problem is that they can't mod (or don't mod anyway) everything. So you get into say File Explorer and it's back to fugly Windows. Microsoft should hire HTC to re-design their UI from the ground-up. At any rate, it looks like HTC has stripped even more of Windows Mobile's UI out in this next ROM update, so that's a good thing. I look forward to seeing what they do.

And I don't care what Apple does with their SDK, they're not going to make up for the fact that the Windows platform has been out for years, and has literally thousands of applications available. That was one of the main reasons I never bought an iPhone; I can just do too much with my Windows Mobile phone. It's going to take at least 2-3 years for the iPhone platform to catch up to anything Windows-based (and it probably will, since Microsoft just doesn't seem to "get it" in the mobile department).

[bulldogg]

Originally Posted by Breslin Center

1. If you've actually ever held an iPhone, you would not describe it as "clunky." Absolute opposite of the truth.

Try to type an email. It IS clunky.

Originally Posted by Breslin Center

Couple that with the 3rd party app support that is going to explode in June for the iPhone and it's game over.

I'll believe it when I see it. We've been waiting for that same 3rd party app support to explode for the Mac for years now.

Originally Posted by Breslin Center

Conclusion: JesusPhone2.0 will conquer all in June, and the rise of the machines will be upon us shortly.

I'll definitely try the iPhone when v2.0 comes out, however I'll bet that it falls short of my expectations (currently have a Blackberry Curve - will also try to Blackberry Bold when it comes out).

[PortlandSpartan]

Originally Posted by bulldogg

I'll believe it when I see it. We've been waiting for that same 3rd party app support to explode for the Mac for years now.

No we haven't. The application library for the Mac is vast. I've never needed an application and not been able to find one that will accomplish what I'm looking for. Mileage may vary I guess.

[PortlandSpartan]

Originally Posted by hexydes

And I don't care what Apple does with their SDK, they're not going to make up for the fact that the Windows platform has been out for years, and has literally thousands of applications available. That was one of the main reasons I never bought an iPhone; I can just do too much with my Windows Mobile phone. It's going to take at least 2-3 years for the iPhone platform to catch up to anything Windows-based (and it probably will, since Microsoft just doesn't seem to "get it" in the mobile department).

It won't take long. You underestimate the Mac development community. Anything of value you'd want to put on your Windows phone will have a Mac equivalent. I'm confident it will happen quickly too.

[hexydes]

Originally Posted by PortlandSpartan

It won't take long. You underestimate the Mac development community. Anything of value you'd want to put on your Windows phone will have a Mac equivalent. I'm confident it will happen quickly too.

Well when I say "long time", much of it simply is because there is such a vast amount of software already available. If developers started today, and worked feverishly day and night, it would take two years just to match that. That isn't possible, so it will take longer. Also, there are proprietary projects that are now discontinued, and as such will never work on the iPhone (unless someone writes a clone app). Then, the market isn't nearly as large for iPhones as it is for Windows Mobile devices (yet), so you don't have as much incentive to develop for the iPhone. And finally, annoying things like not being able to run multiple applications pisses developers off (though we'll see if that's still an issue in iPhone 2.0).

I don't doubt the ability of Apple to create a capable development environment for the Mac; everything that I've seen and heard has shown OS X to be a tremendous platform to develop for (especially multimedia applications, which are MUCH easier to develop and work better without as much effort, which shows good design practices on the part of Apple). However, the issues mentioned above I think are going to really hold 3rd-party development back. The main problem is, how many phones run portable OS X? One, the iPhone. How many phones run Windows Mobile? Just from AT&T, I see five different manufacturers with seven different models of phones that run Windows Mobile. Add to that Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and then all the other providers in other countries that have various offerings of phones with Windows Mobile...and you just have the same problem you have on the desktop. There's one company that makes Macs. There's 10-15 big players that make Windows PCs, and hundreds of smaller ones. It just creates a smaller demographic, which discourages developers because a) fewer of them even have the computer to develop on, and b) they want lots of people to use their software, and the easiest way to accomplish that is to develop for Windows.

Granted, there's lots of nuances to the mobile industry such as the applications being smaller and less complex and things like that, but at the end of the day, I just think that the boundaries in place will limit the amount of available software for the iPhone. Don't get me wrong, there will be plenty of applications available; just not like the Windows Mobile platform.

[PortlandSpartan]

hexy, I'm not referring to the big boys of software development. I'm talking about all the great freeware/shareware stuff out there. Sure Office 2008 isn't going to be on the iPhone a week after 2.0 comes out, but I bet there will be plenty of alternatives. The same point holds for "regular" OS X. Most Windows apps have a Mac equivalent - whether is a direct equivalent from a huge developer - Office for Mac for example - or its a freeware/shareware deal. You just have to know where to look.

When 2.0 comes out there will be more iPhone apps out there than we'll know what to do with.

[hexydes]

Originally Posted by PortlandSpartan

hexy, I'm not referring to the big boys of software development. I'm talking about all the great freeware/shareware stuff out there. Sure Office 2008 isn't going to be on the iPhone a week after 2.0 comes out, but I bet there will be plenty of alternatives. The same point holds for "regular" OS X. Most Windows apps have a Mac equivalent - whether is a direct equivalent from a huge developer - Office for Mac for example - or its a freeware/shareware deal. You just have to know where to look.

When 2.0 comes out there will be more iPhone apps out there than we'll know what to do with.

Definitely, I get what you're saying. I still contend though that while there may be (and I'm just using an example of ratios, not specific numbers) 500 iPhone apps from 3rd-party developers, there would be 20,000 apps for the Windows Mobile platform. That simply comes from more devices, more developers, and more time. That's not to say you can't find what you're looking for on the iPhone platform, but there won't be as many choices (not always an issue, but sometimes), and depending on the application you want, it may be out within a week, it may take two years. I know never to count out the open source and hobbiest developer community, because they combine to make a huge force that will work relentlessly at any task. However, at some point it's going to simply come down to an issue of numbers, and until one of the numbers drastically increases (more devices (not likely), more users (potentially likely), more time (a given)), I think you won't be able to compare what's available between the two platforms.

Who knows though. I hope I'm wrong. I'd love for the iPhone to keep making the inroads that it has thus far. The cell phone industry was going nowhere fast, and Apple has the better companies freaked out right now, which means nothing less than them now being forced into thinking outside the box more.

In the long run, I do think Windows Mobile's days are numbered. While the iPhone may not enjoy the sheer numbers of the Windows Mobile platform, this is one case where you can't really compare it to the desktop paradigm. On the desktop, you can argue about whether OS X is better than Vista (and in my opinion it probably is, but not enough to make up for Windows' inherent advantages). However, in the mobile market, Windows Mobile is only the best of what was available. Mobile OS X absolutely destroys Windows Mobile; the only thing Windows Mobile has over OS X is that it is very open-ended from a user perspective. Apple could easily render that point null with their SDK (to be seen).

I am very interested in Android, mostly because I want to see what happens with it. It has the potential, if properly embraced, to basically supplant Windows Mobile as the dominant platform; also, if no one uses it, it could amount to nothing. I think it would take a company like HTC to use it and do it right (which, judging by how much they change the Windows Mobile experience, I don't even know why they are still using Windows Mobile at this point, other than there being so much software available).

[bulldogg]

Originally Posted by PortlandSpartan

No we haven't. The application library for the Mac is vast. I've never needed an application and not been able to find one that will accomplish what I'm looking for. Mileage may vary I guess.

Well, I have and I have only had my Mac for two weeks. I would like Visio, Google Talk, and Outlook please.

[tuff bob]

Originally Posted by bulldogg

Outlook please.

why would you want outlook?

[bulldogg]

Originally Posted by tuff bob

why would you want outlook?

Because we have an Exchange server.

I'm trying my best with Entourage, but am starting to find out that there is a reason they just don't call it Outlook ... it just doesn't do many of the very simple tasks that Outlook does (like book a conference room for a meeting).

[tuff bob]

Originally Posted by bulldogg

Because we have an Exchange server.

you got the Exchange virus

[PRStoetzer]

Originally Posted by tuff bob

you got the Exchange virus

Personally, I find Exchange/Outlook to be a much more user friendly service than Domino/Notes for the end user.

I, of course, have no experience on the server side of things.

[bulldogg]

Originally Posted by tuff bob

you got the Exchange virus

And what you you recommend for a large corporation? Notes/Domino? GroupWise?

Exchange Server is actually a very good email/collaboration application.

[hexydes]

Originally Posted by bulldogg

And what you you recommend for a large corporation? Notes/Domino? GroupWise?

Exchange Server is actually a very good email/collaboration application.

Sign In

[bulldogg]

Originally Posted by hexydes

Sign In

[PortlandSpartan]

Originally Posted by bulldogg

Well, I have and I have only had my Mac for two weeks. I would like Visio, Google Talk, and Outlook please.

You keep asking for google talk when you've been given an option. Adium didnt work?

[bulldogg]

Originally Posted by PortlandSpartan

You keep asking for google talk when you've been given an option. Adium didnt work?

Not at work. It uses some odd TCPIP port to connect which isn't allowed through our proxy/firewall. The GoogleTalk client uses the standard HTTP(80) and HTTPS(443) ports.

iChat and Adium work fine from home ... but at work - nada.

[Breslin Center]

Originally Posted by TurboSpartan

It absolutely is clunky. It's thin, but clunky because it's 4 and a half inches tall by 2 and a half inches wide. The music playback is exactly the same, playing mp3s is not an epic task. Many phones do it and do it well.


With flash ram being so cheap and microsd so small (less than the size of your thumbnail), and available in at least 8 and 12gb sizes, you can take as much of this stuff with you as you want, so your storage is really unlimited.

Also, in practice these cards can be filled with songs a lot faster than flash on-board the phone. Class 6 cards, rated for a minimum of 6mb/s, typically get close to double that in my experience. An iPhone (and many other phones) typically transfer at a rate of 2 or so mb/s, limited by the bus on the phone. This means if you want to fill 8gb, it can take over an hour, vs just plugging in an 8gb microSD to your PC and filling it in 10 minutes.

So what? Is everyone with an 8/16gb iPhone sitting here saying man I wish i had 32? I mean you're talking about almost 200 songs per gig, so 8gb is ~1500 songs, 16gb is ~3000. If you need to be changing out songs all the time, you'd probably like interchangeable microSD.

Spare me the fanboy stuff, the Diamond and Raphael look like a great phones.

It's pretty apparent you have a very limited music collection, do not sync your music library to a mobile device, and enjoy carrying around spare memory cards in your pockets.