Ok ok I’ll talk about the iPhone

Is it possible for someone to get sick of a product a few days after its announced, six months before it goes on retail, and a whole year (or so) before it’s available in Asia?

I mean, everywhere you go, it’s [tag]iPhone[/tag] this, iPhone that. On Google News, PWIT, Inq7 (oops ok that’s ‘inquirer.net’ now), all the local blogs and there’s even one in moderation queue at Kikay Exchange by one of the contributors. I talked about it both at my client’s office yesterday, and even with basketball buddies at our game last night. Talk about getting in the news, Jobs is a news – hogging God, but it’s not like we didn’t know that already.

Ok, here’s the things that kind of jumped out at me the first time I read its specs – which is pretty much what everybody else in the whole world can only do since like I said, it ain’t around yet and won’t be for a while.

[tag]EDGE[/tag] – edge? EDGE? On the supposedly most highest of hi-tech phones in the world? I mean, it’s not like we haven’t yet even come to grasp with [tag]3G[/tag] yet, then this thing takes a step back? How so early 2000s, and somewhat indicative of either a rushed product or one that has been so long in the making that it still retains some of the early features when it was first laid out on paper. It has [tag]wi-fi[/tag] though, which is always good, albeit limited.

US$599 – that’s the price for the 8gb model, while the 4gb one costs $499.00. Amazing once you put a pricetag onto something, all the hype just fizzles out and you are forced back to reality. That’s Php 29,950.00 and Php 24,950.00 respectively. While not that expensive, I bet once you hold that money in your hands, you’re gonna start asking yourself what other phone you can buy with that kind of money, and start looking around at Nokia’s N Series and SE’s, Samsungs, LG’s and Motorola’s high end phones and the other PDAs as well. Granted, unless those other guys come up with something really good soon, I’d say the iPhone is the most interesting model at that price range.

Irreplacable batteries ala iPod – Why? That just plain doesn’t make sense. No need to explain that.

[tag]Cingular[/tag] locked – You know, locking your phone to any single provider brings about only bad things. Promise. First, you will be feeding an underground economy of phone ‘unlockers’ who will open up your precious phone to make it available for use elsewhere. While that sounds ok to the consumer, that is what Jobs hates to see, with his devotion to maintaining the ‘Mac experience’ via keeping complete control of his products and how they are used. Second, because Jobs has made a deal with a telco, any enhancements a user may want to place into his phone, such as oh, maybe, [tag]Skype[/tag], will most obviously not be allowed. This greatly diminishes its capabilities and will make many Skype, or any 3rd party application developer users for that matter, disappointed. Third is pretty obvious. Why would you want currently satisfied customers of competing [tag]telcos[/tag] to shift to another? Why make them have to make that choice at all, given there’s no new innovation or even reduction in cost while doing so? And fourth – and this is something the American skeptics may miss – will [tag]Apple Inc.[/tag] do so in every country? And if they for example, choose [tag]Globe[/tag] instead of [tag]Smart[/tag] when they come here, then I’ll be in trouble, because I am a (more or less) satisfied Smart customer.

Cannot install 3rd party apps – Yup. I mentioned Skype, and make that the same for pretty much anything else you may want to install. It’s pretty simple. You CANNOT. This system may work for most [tag]Macs[/tag], which comes with a plethora of applications that makes it ‘complete’ and ‘ready to run out of the box’ (there’s one of those Mac ads that had this subject in mind) . Keep in mind however, that many of these apps that come with Macs perform fundamental easy tasks anyway, and for the most part, you’ll not want to look for replacements for these. It’s not the same with Phones. Again we go back to Skype. Skype is the sort of ground breaking, revolutionary innovation that makes everyone stand up and want it. As a result, they pattern their gadget buying habits after it as well. To miss out on something like this isn’t good.

So anyway, these are what I’ve noticed so far. There are a lot of cool neat things though, like an 8gb flash drive (no moveable parts!), and one of the coolest looking GUIs around. Although keep in mind, cool looking GUIs is something gadget buyers need to look beyond quickly. I mean, remember how excited everyone was when XP came out, and now we all can’t seem to get rid of that wheat field fast enough. That’ll be the same with Vista’s Aero too for sure. So get over how it looks and start checking out the specs and how it’ll work for you because aesthetics can get pretty old quickly anyway.

For sure, I’d want to try one out. Who wouldn’t? But let’s be realistic here. It’s just a phone. Just another gadget, just brilliantly marketed by a true icon of a man.

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