Ben on the iPhone: "Hooray!"
Ewan’s asked for iPhone 3G feedback, so here’s mine:
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My thoughts:
I’m a Macbook Air-toting iPhone-carrying Apple convert. It’s been a relatively recent thing, but hands-up – it works for me and I love it. Having said that the iPhone 3G is just a ‘tick in the box’ as far as I’m concerned – it’s what was widely anticipated and equals the spec of other high-end handsets. Not bad, but no ‘wow’…
But that’s not the full story… Have you seen the announced prices? Now we’re talking… In the UK, it will be free on new contracts and £100 upgrade for existing customers. At that price the boxes will flood out of the stores and as far as most consumers are concerned the major barrier between them and owning an iPhone is now gone. Much as I wish it wasn’t, the price is the only part of yesterday’s announcement that matters.
The hardcore mobile users (yes, I’m looking at you Whatley) will complain about the lack of external memory card, replaceable battery or a decent camera with a flash, but it won’t be an issue for most – in fact the user experience will trump concerns in that area.
Most Impressive?
The price – no messing straight to the right end of the chart – boom. Closely followed by the speed of execution – on specs alone zero to 3G with developer platform in 12 months… suck that Nokia.
Most Dissappointing?
It doesn’t appear to be going network-independent and the UK’s still a single-operator terratory. On the technical front I don’t see any network-based iTunes sync and suspect the 10MB over-the-air limit on application downloads also means no 3G iTunes Music store (yet), but that’s all software and ‘fixable’. I mourn the passing of ‘at home’ activation, but normobs won’t notice – it’s just the same as other handsets now.
Mobile Me:
Full consumer-grade sync… Genius. Long overdue actually, but this will be the leg-up it needs. Yahoo Go, Danger’s Sidekick and Plaxo Mobile have all been stop-gaps, but this is the full-monty with a polished-looking web interface to match. Ignore that iDisk rubbish – push sync is the key here and it’s Mac to PC too… no iPhone required.
Pricing is, as ever, a bit steep and you have to buy it all or not at all, but this will be a grower… just watch… Apple understand the mobile experience is bigger than just the handset and have built a platform for the future as well as a service for now. However, it hasn’t got an operator logo attached so if I was O2 I’d be reconciling myself to life as a ‘pipe’ about now. The other question is why Nokia hasn’t done this yet. With the Intellisync acquisition they have the know-how and it’s been ‘coming soon’ as part of Ovi forever… Everyone will be offering something akin to this soon. Why do you think Vodafone bought Zyb?
Will I upgrade?
Too right I will – I want the speed hike and at that price why not?
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Wrote that last night… Footnote from this morning:
O2 will be offering PAYG options – I think that answers the question about where all the iPhone 1.0’s will be going too as upgraders pass them on to friends and family.
BT’s Openzone WiFi is being added to the iPhone tarriff ‘free’ like the existing Cloud network…. that’s some impressive coverage! Also a smart way for BT to take the pressure of their 3G network in areas like central London.
