It’s been a boring year for smartphones, sadly enough. Nothing evolutionary happened — the iPhone? It’s not a smartphone… yet — and the same old gang circled around the same old group of business users angling to get a sale or two in before the economy tanked.
But wait? What’s that noise? It’s the sound of millions of cellphone users who are scratching their heads and thinking “Hmmm… maybe I should get a Blackberry.” And, this year more than ever, they’ve been ignoring flash for substance and taking the smartphone plunge. Welcome to the era of the casual smartphone.
Smartphones used to be about one thing — to untether the average office worker and allow him or her to check email and access documents and services while mobile. As we now know, this “convenience” comes with a harsh cost. The twitchy thumbs of Crackberry addicts and the blank stares of WinMo Professional users attest to this fact. But what about the plain old folks — grand[ma/pa], mom, dad, teenagers — who want to get email while they’re driving the mini-van to the grocery store? That’s where casual smartphones come in.
Headed up by the Blackberry Pearl and epitomized by the Sidekick LX, these low-octane — and low-priced — smartphones eschew the standard touch screens and QWERTY keypads found in some larger models to offer a more streamlined operation. Take the T-Mobile Shadow or the LG Venus. These phones don’t have a business bone in their bodies, instead designed to specifically offer email and multimedia playback with a minimum of fuss.
So so we return to the iPhone, which is really a smartphone in disguise. As I mentioned before, the iPhone is no more powerful than the RAZR but, and this is a key point, it takes all of the things casual smartphones do acceptably well — email, mapping, contact syncing — and ups the ante considerably. Put a Blackberry or a WinMo 6 smartphone next to an iPhone and accept that the iPhone is far superior and, in short, is where the smartphone market is heading. Arcane menus and difficult set-ups are falling away to simple one-click systems. Geeky graphics and poor UIs are turning into things of beauty.
If we can say anything about this year in smartphones its that next year will be quite a race. As manufacturers struggle to match Apple’s example there will be many missteps (* HTC Touch * cough *) and many winners. But rest assured that this is the year that everything changed and next year that change will become the status quo.
HTC Touch is 5 times the SMARTphone the Iphone is. Running the right set up on the Sprint Touch makes it nearly as easy to do most everyday tasks (and easier on some) than the Iphone. The Iphone takes the cake in the multimedia device scene, but the smartphone Touch is much better as a PHONE and SMARTPHONE. And what kind of SMARTphone comes without 3g? A t-mobile one and the Iphone.
Quit knockin the iCrack dogg! Damn! Enough. With as many time the iCrack is mentioned on this blog, it’s like “I was gonna *** her but she wouldn’t give me her number so I said like ‘well she ain’t gettin ****ed by me tonight . I’ll go **** some other chick that I think it hot.’”
NOW GIVE ME MY DAMN FREE EARBUDS!
http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/12/21/ultimate-ears-superfi-4vi-the-review-and-the-giveaway-yes-that-means-free-stuff/
How is the iPhone not considered a smartphone? It does almost everything a smartphone can be expected to do.
I will agree however that it has been a pretty boring year for smartphones. I haven’t played with WM6 yet, but it doesn’t look like that much of a leap from WM5. All the new phones this year have been pretty boring (although I do want to get an HTC Touch to play with).
Dudes, have you seen the multi-touch on the iPhone? The pinching motion? Come on, it’s freaking brilliant.
Seriously, I can view ms office docs on my Nokia, but I’m not a nerd, so I don’t. I would Much rather have wi-fi and an intuitively zoomable web browser.
It’s smart!
I’m going to have to agree with the other guys. If the iPhone isn’t a smartphone, then my name isn’t Ronald Reagan, and I didn’t start Star Wars or tear down that wall or whatever.
Seriously, though. It’s a smartphone.
Maybe I am too dumb to know how you define Smart. From my perspective the iPhone is much Smarter than any of the phones you described. While it doesn’t have 3G bandwidth, its Wi-Fi connectivity gives it great flexibility. The only thing dumb about it is that it can’t use Wi-Fi to make a call.
I’m just glad this post had nothing to do with an iCrack but that is all the comments are about. LOVE IT!!
NOW GIVE ME MY DAMN FREE EARBUDS!
http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/12/21/ultimate-ears-superfi-4vi-the-review-and-the-giveaway-yes-that-means-free-stuff/