Tech phone elegance

[Costi]

One more argument: Apple has no plans to develop a Blackberry-like phone. Blackberry's latest development appears to be the Thunder model, an imitation of the iPhone. That's the most sincere form of flattery, isn't it?

[alden]

One more argument: Apple has no plans to develop a Blackberry-like phone. Blackberry's latest development appears to be the Thunder model, an imitation of the iPhone. That's the most sincere form of flattery, isn't it?

Is it not the case that Apple will be releasing a new Iphone in June? So there will be the Thunder and new Iphone in a few months? I am glad I do not have to wait for new technology in my clothes, what a frustration that would be? We just have to wait to find good cloth and have it made..

Michael

[Aristide]

What I hear often from BB users is that it is not particularly good at maintaining call connection when you are close to national boundaries where the connection is about to be handed over by one network to another network serving the adjacent country, ie, the call gets dropped. This can happen quite frequently if one operates in Europe and tend to move around reasonably often. To get around this issue, these people carry a separate, small phone for receiving and making calls while using the BB strictly for data. However, I do not know if the same weakness exists in the most recent models.

My experience with by BlackBerry in travelling through Germany, Austria, Hungary and Czech Republic last fall was to the contrary.

[Costi]

Is it not the case that Apple will be releasing a new Iphone in June? So there will be the Thunder and new Iphone in a few months? I am glad I do not have to wait for new technology in my clothes, what a frustration that would be? We just have to wait to find good cloth and have it made..

Dear Michael,

If you are willing to wait a few months to get a better model you might end up never buying a new cellphone at all in the next 20 years. New editions come up all the time, but they are most often complications of the really successful models. The iPhone is fine as it is, I hope the next model is a fiasco so it would make the original a classic

[sartorius]

The iPhone is fine as it is, I hope the next model is a fiasco so it would make the original a classic

I've been waiting for Apple to bring out an iPhone with enough memory to make the iPod obsolete. That may be a forlorn hope because the iTouch is what most people go to for mobile net use combined with music and video. So many toys, so little time...

[couch]

I could never stand the BBerry user experience so I waited for the iPhone 3G 16 gig before getting a smart phone. I now use it heavily for business email and calendaring. Reading e-mail and other text on a proper screen with actual typographical rendering makes a big difference if you do much of it and are older than 25. Other comments about location-aware applications, web use, and media (I find Pandora perfect for muting inane conversations while reading on long train rides) are on the money. Synchronizing with my university's Exchange server and my work and home Macs is simple and reliable, and I do it often enough that I seldom have battery concerns. Switching between any available wifi network and the 3G phone network is simple and a real plus for data-intensive uses. My only wishes would be slightly faster input recognition on the touch keyboard and a better cell carrier than ATT&T (in my area Verizon was superior) but that is presumably not relevant to you in Europe.

If the new Thunder approaches the sleekness of the iPhone's physical form and its quality of text and graphics rendering, then it would be competitive for those who are already used to the BBerry interface and mail system. If you are not already using a BBerry, you might try out both (and the other iPhone clones) in the shops and see which experience suits you best.

I'd simply observe, vis a vis a previous comment, that the iPhone is only a toy if you use it as a toy. For some reason, good design in the world of business technology has long been seen by some as suspect, as though something can't be serious unless it's hard to look at and clumsy to use--the cold shower ethos as opposed to chic in your sense, Michael. Here in Philadelphia some young web developers have created a free train-finding web app optimized for iPhone viewing that has completely supplanted the regional rail authority's own site in popularity, despite having received no help from the authority (they had to write a program to scrape the data from the official site, since the authority would not give them access to their database. These guys have to manually update their app every time a train schedule changes). This is a testament to the power of understanding user tasks and facilitating them simply using good design. The iPhone is an enabling platform for many such uses, and as other smart phones catch up in power, resolution, and graphics rendering they will proliferate further.

[tteplitzmd]

Highly recommended. The browser is just fine, especially if you use Opera-Mini. I don't think you can beat Blackberry for email. The subscriber base for Blackberry, regardless of the carrier, keeps growing. Unstoppable. Plus I own shares in the Company.