No you're quite right, there is absolutely nothing new, original or exciting about the iPhone.

I couldn't agree more, it's just a bunch of outdated technologies that everybody has had for years with no new ideas or concepts included what so ever.

That isn't what Fin said.

But a lot of people are getting joygasms, just because the new version of the iPhone software is getting features that have been standard features of other 'phones for quite a while. The iPhone is very innovative, but there were some gobsmacking omissions and now that they are starting to appear in the newer versions of the software, many iPhone owners are bigging it up, whilst the rest of the world is going "so" or "erm the iPhone couldn't do that? My €5 PAYG 'phone can do that!"...

Thank you for noticing my point.

Record videos for one, my old sony ericson K500i could do that, my K800i could take as good pictures as the iPhone too) (not to mention it can actually pair via bluetooth with other devices and headsets)

There are some good features it has, but the new features aren't exactly new or special compared to other java based phones, let alone smartphones, and on a £500 device should really be expected on release

Swings & roundabouts to a degree - the iPhone had some thing missing at launch but then it also had some thing no other phone had at the time. Subjectively the value of the iPhone comes down to how much you want the features it has got versus how much you want the features it hasn't. For example, I don't record video and I have several cameras that take better photos than any mobile phone camera yet invented, so the fact that phone A has a better camera than phone B is pretty much irrelevant to me. I do however need to access the web quite a lot while I'm away from my desk, so having a phone with a good web browser and a 3G connection is actually useful to me. Also I have quite a large music collection, so a phone that's also a high capacity MP3 player is also of value.

We are not everyone. Almost by definition, the fact we're on here makes us non-standard consumers. I always see the argument that 'product x is better than product y because <this quantity of a feature which both phones have> is bigger'. The general population simply don't think that way. They're not engineers or analysts. They're more likely to pick a product because they find it preferable upon trying it out in the shop than by going on the web and downloading the spec sheets.

I suspect Apple's response to complaints that the iPhone isn't actually very good would be 'Oh, OK, I'll write you a formal apology on one of this enormous pile of hundred dollar bills I seem to have here'.

Jon

The only thing I can think of is the app store, what else was there?

The other parts of the post make sense though and I pretty much agree with

I'd say the Touch interface (specifically the Multi touch) was it's strongest suit. Picking up the iPhone for the first time and it just made sense to me - something not many other phones do, these days. My nieces Samsung was frankly baffling.
Apple spend a vast amount of time making the thing as simple as possible to use, something I'm not convinced any of the other manufacturers are doing. Perhaps the price of that was a reduced feature set, but I think a lot of people will take ease of use over an awkward, less thought out phone, even if it has other facilities.
And, as we see now, more features are being rolled out as they go, making a very simple to use phone even better. What's not to like?

The App store wasn't available on the iPhone initially - it appeared when Apple released the native application SDK. There'd be no point to the App Store before that because there'd be nothing to put on it. Although you'd have to say that today the App Store is probably the iPhone's 'USP', at least for a while. The Prof's post is probably more along the line - when the iPhone came out nobody else had a purely touchscreen phone like it and definitely nobody had a multitouch handheld device. Not having any buttons at all was pretty unusual in a phone I think and every other touch screen phone before it had been intended to use with a stylus much more than a finger. I'd been a devotee of the SE 'P' range before the iPhone appeared and the iPhone did the things the 'P' range had been trying to do so much better than the Sony phones it wasn't even funny.


I'm sorry, I don't know what came over me .

Jon

And a whole bunch which have never been a standard feature of any phone before, too. I think they're what most people are getting excited about. I'm yet to find anyone exclaiming "woooooooo - MMS!!". I've never sent an MMS on any phone before, and I don't plan to.



I think the app store would be number one, followed by the full screen touch-screen and of course the interface. Add to that the fact that it had a great browser and included unlimited internet usage, not forgetting of course that it had massive storage and did an iPods job just as well (if not better than) as an iPod, so you only have to carry one device. There are quite a few USPs to the phone IMO.

Full screen touch screen had been on quite a few WM and other devices before the iphone, the capacitive/resistive was new I think which is fairly good, as was multitouch (due to OS)

Massive storage is subjective, I have an 8gb microsd in my phone, was less than £20, a 16gb microsd is £30 new, I have plenty of music on there, as I can play back on other formats than MP3 and AAC/M4A

Great browser? Does that include the huge security flaws that were in it? Opera (both the version my phone shipped with, and the latest beta + widgets) on my phone works perfectly fine, handles multiple pages, flash for youtube/iplayer(which works well in the widescreen view) too, and I can even use a light version that has all my bookmarks from my main pc and syncs with it.

Again for the music side Sony Ericsson and many others have had competent portable music devices in phones for a while too, the new shake to change track was in the Walkman phones first also.

I find it surprising that for such a high end product the resolution is so low, it's not even VGA yet in it's 3rd revision, the TouchHD/Xperia/Diamond2/tocco ultra and a lot of other new phones are WVGA as standard (800x480)

To be honest I don't use MMS any more, I just email from my phone as it's less hassle for those that receive it, don't know if the iPhone could do that, but I doubt it, same with tethering it as a mobile 3g modem, a lot of phones supported it one way or another before the 3GS

The store is good, I object to having to use iTunes however but luckily there are alternatives available for music management, don't know if the app store works on the phone direct. Good to see other companies getting into the centralised software point like Google and MS and Nokia.

Funnily enough if Apple weren't such an 'underdog' in terms of market share I wouldn't be surprised if they got a lot of stick for some of their practices, same as MS get with their OS and other areas.

My new boss may be getting me an iPhone, although I'm not holding my breath. Until then, my only experience is playing with KW's, and very briefly Jonlumb's. However, that brief experience along with what I have read gives me a fairly good impression.

1. It's the best pocket-sized browser there is, bar none and by a long way. The multi-touch interface is intuitive and it really does work. I really want one.

That's the plus. Now my gripes, based solely on what I've read so I may be wrong / out of date:

2. The app store is a nightmare. I want to develop apps for my company and sell them to clients. It's easy with other phones, but an expensive lottery with Apple.
3. It can't use hi-fi bluetooth headphones. Is that still true? My free Nokia "only" has 2GB but at least the BT works.
4. It can't be used as a bluetooth modem for my laptop. Is that still true? So I'll need to keep my Nokia...
5. It doesn't do Java. Not even Javascript. Might not seem like much, but it means it won't work with any of the commercial portals I use.
6. No Flash. Neither does my Nokia. To be quite honest, even my desktop struggles sometimes and that's a core 2 duo... Flash is so damned fat. Still, it would be nice not to have to develop and pay to publish a "special" version of a website just because the iPhone is "special" and the "special" people get upset when their "special" shiny thing won't work.

AmIright about the BT not working? If so, any idea when they'll fix it? I'll be over the blooming moon if my boss really does buy me one, but there's no way I'd pay all that dosh myself for something which can't replace my dirt cheap Nokia.

But to me fin, that's just the typical response.

"The xxx phone can play music". I know - I had a walkman phone. I still carried my iPod around with me though because the Sony phone sucked at playing music.

"The xxx had a touch screen". I know - and you had to use a stylus. It sucked.

VGA? No thanks - the iPhone packs 160 PPI as it stands. What exactly am I missing out on? Not much lol I think I'd have to upgrade my eyes.

Good point about the storage though, I remember my Sony had a card slot of some sort. No doubt it was some proprietary standard of theirs.



This was in the update today, I believe. I've never used the bluetooth on my phone, so I don't really know what you mean but todays update for the iPhone included an update to stereo bluetooth, whatever that is lol



This was also in the update today, although it's expensive. Then again, if the company are paying ...

Somebody will sig that if you're not careful

Why was JonLumb only briefly?

"Stereo Bluetooth" means you can use stereo bluetooth to listen to the music in stereo on your bluetooth headphones. Previously, it only had telephone quality mono - rather negating the iPod aspect of the device if you have decent bluetooth headphones.



When you say it's expensive, do you mean you have to pay an additional premium to use it? Or do you just mean the iPhone is expensive? This is quite important, because there are times I may have to download a 700MB image file with no access to Broadband. That would probably be very expensive on the Nokia too, although I don't actually know the prices. I know it would cost a mint on my PAYG!

I played with his gizmo when we met up in a Turkish restaurant. There simply wasn't the opportunity for a full-on session. He pretty much just showed it to me and let me have a little play, before putting it back in his trousers. I'd like to point out that he didn't force it on me like some people do. I had to ask him nicely, and I think he was a bit reluctant because my fingers were a bit sticky from all the nibbles