Line up fanboys! You’re really gonna want this! You’re gonna scream and pee your panties like you’re at a Justin Bieber concert.
WWDC opened yesterday and all of Geekdom either attended in person or watched a live blog stream to find out the real story on the new iPhone – iPhone 4.
- New iHardware iDesign. iPhone 4 with 24% Less iFat.
- Higher Res iScreen. Beyond the resolution of the human eye.
- Front Facing iCamera. Make video iCalls over iWiFi to other iPhone 4 users.
- Bigger battery. A really good thing, but it is still not user-replaceable.
- New iPhone OS. Now being called iOS and has over 100 new features and really is the best part of the announcement, yet was given the back seat to the sort of redesigned iPhone.
Yawn. iPhone still lives on the anemic AT&T network and if you think the Verizon iPhone (or any other carrier) is coming this summer, it’s iNOT.
andiwm2003 posted at Macrumors:
- nothing revolutionary here but everything got improved.
- the gyrometer is as much a toy as the compass.
- the screen could be amazing however i’m happy with my current screen since my eyes resolve max 150ppi anyway
- i’ll probably skip that update since I don’t see any real new feature that I would need.
- no 4G, no video calling over 3G, no standard USB port for charging and file transfer, no sim card slot and such. but we won’t see most of these features ever anyway.
- this may be a great update for people with a 3G or a 2G because you get speed improvements.
That is really the story. This is an “oh well” announcement from a company that we always expect to bring us something fascinating when Steve Jobs needed a “Holy Sh*t!” moment. He kind of got it later in the day…Apple stocks hit $259 just after the market opened and they began to fall during the keynote. Apple stocks closed at $250.95. Today, it is still falling and that’s a big disappointment on what is probably Apple’s biggest announcement of the year, however you might be surprised that this downward trend is a normal occurrence after an iPhone announcement. It will be interesting to see what happens when it actually becomes available.
The iPhone needed a radically new form, not just one that renders my Mophie Juice Packs obsolete. Make it smaller but with a larger screen, a removable battery, free MobileMe with the iPhone, a “flying car” button, make me gotta have it – but it didn’t happen. (FarmVille. Really?) And don’t blame this on Gizmodo. Giz did bad but Apple didn’t bring it the way we expect it.
A smartphone needs the network, hardware and horsepower to get the job done but the OS and UI are what really make the experience and Apple has been slow with that. I don’t care whether or not I’m using the smartphone made by the company that revolutionized wireless phones. I don’t care about helicopter glass on the front AND back. “Designed by Apple in California” does not make me want it. It used to because at one time Apple was the only company with the ability to think and create “insanely great” stuff, but that is no longer the case. We are now seeing that benefit of the open market that we call competition and the gap is closing or has closed when it comes to the iPhone. Now, it just preference. Does it do what I want and need it to do? How much does it cost to run it?
The most significant breakdown in the equation still comes within their unholy matrimony. Until Apple can extricate themselves from the over-priced and under-performing AT&T, the appeal of the iPhone will weaken for both current and potential users – and I’m still not convinced that at least part of the network issues with dropped calls and poor performance are not problems with the iPhone. My friend Anthony lives about 30 miles from the Apple campus in Cupertino. After 30 days with an iPhone on AT&T he had to take it back because the network is sooooo baaaaad. He really wanted to like the iPhone and looked for any reason to keep it but when you can’t make a call with your iPhone in Apple’s backyard, you don’t keep it. Other devices are being created – yes Android devices – and are bringing the wanted features to handsets on carriers with better service, fewer dropped calls, a rabid development community, and people are making 2 year commitments to go a different direction. That’s what Anthony did when he got a Motorola Droid on Verizon. That’s what I did last Friday when I bought my Sprint HTC Evo 4G.
If you didn’t know, the HTC Evo 4G is the device that is giving the iPhone its most heated competition. Nothing else comes close yet. Think back to the lead up to the original iPhone. Announced in January 2007, hyped for 6 months by Apple and AT&T, available in June only at Apple stores and AT&T corporate-owned stores, and sold 270,000 in 30 hours. (1 million iPhones were sold in 74 days) Evo 4G was announced in March 2010, wasn’t hyped, available in June at 22,000 retail locations, and launch weekend by analysts reports sold between 225,000 and 320,000 units. As of this writing, the Evo 4G is sold out nationwide. This is a big deal in the smartphone world.
EDIT: Sprint is now saying they “over estimated” the sales figures for opening weekend. Huh? Now they say 150,000 which is still very good for a handset that didn’t get the advertising push before launch like the iPhone did, but come on. You don’t know how many you sold?
The most criticized issue with the Evo has been battery life. I am currently on 35 hours of battery power under moderate usage without any re-charge and I still have about 20% power remaining. Web, email, (including Exchange that doesn’t cost me an extra $15 a month for B.S. “Enterprise Data”) video and still camera usage, phone calls, texting, audio streaming via Radio Time, installing and deleting apps and such. Using it when I want to without thinking about it, I’m gonna run it until it dies and see what I get out of it.
Be a fanboy if you want to – I’m sure iPhone 4 will make you happy. But if you dare to venture beyond the walled garden and look around you will find a new world of exciting, colorful, and more reliable options.
One more thing…
It’s just a phone.