Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Status
Not open for further replies.
So, are we gonna keep on discussing this for the next 6 months?

Every angle has been done to death and without any further announcements all talk is pretty much useless.
 
This is a phone, and phones are one of the most competitive markets in the world. What sells a phone is FEATURES. You want something you can easily use?

No it doesn't. You are so wildly off base here that it's not funny.

The only people who meticulously count features are techie people, a minority in the mobile phone target market. There's a standard internet cliché which consists of two fat nerds arguing over a phone/mp3 player/computer/whatever, and who seem to think that whichever has the most "features" is the best one.

Everyone has seen this and anyone with a sense of how the world works knows that they are a minority. They are the sort of people who can't understand why the iPod has been such a runaway success when there are other products with more features and flexibility on the market. Any normal person could tell you that the problem with these other products is that they suck. It doesn't matter how many doodads a product has if accessing them is a usability nightmare.

Regular customers want something that just works. Smartphones don't. At least I have never seen one that does.

I have what is probably a more advanced phone than most people on macrumors. Then again, I live in Korea and the phones here are pretty sophisticated compared to what people had in North America when I was living there. Mine is a Pocket PC/Bluetooth and Wifi enabled/media centre/TV and lord knows what else. It will do a lot more than the iPhone will, but it sucks because it is just a pain in the backside trying to remember how to use the advanced features (even the calendar is terrible). I don't want to carry around the manual, so I use it for the basic things (texting and phone calls).

When they come out over here, I am getting an iPhone. I'll give my current one to some fat nerd. Jobs may often be guilty of exaggeration, but he is spot on about phones. They suck, and could be so much better than they are.
 
  • Like
Reactions: teknikal90
I put an iPhone in my mums hand she won't know what to do with it.

You mean that your mother is too dumb to press the button that says "Mail" or the other button that says "Phone".

My guess is that she's not that dumb. My wife could work an iPhone, and she is I think the gold standard of technical incompetence.
 
No it doesn't. You are so wildly off base here that it's not funny.

The only people who meticulously count features are techie people, a minority in the mobile phone target market. There's a standard internet cliché which consists of two fat nerds arguing over a phone/mp3 player/computer/whatever, and who seem to think that whichever has the most "features" is the best one.

Spot on Agathon.
 
This is a phone, and phones are one of the most competitive markets in the world. What sells a phone is FEATURES. You want something you can easily use?

nokia_6151.jpg


There you go buddy. Large, dial-friendly keypad with dedicated keys and a clear and easy-to-read 262,144-colour display. And what's that going to cost you? Next to nothing!

That phone is easy to use, but I wouldn't fancy trying to browse the web on it.

Apple is trying to bring smartphone features to the larger phone market - I'd imagine the percentage of phone users using the existing technologies is still very, very small.

Perhaps the biggest error Apple are making with the iPhone is the price: everyone sees the high price and assumes they're aiming for the professional market (or high-end consumer), when in truth I believe this is aimed at a far, far wider market. They're trying to get more and more phone users to use the existing features (web, mail, voicemail, google maps, messaging) rather than present the users with a lengthly feature list that sounds cool but only a tiny minority user regularly.
 
People do want features, but they need ease of use. No point having a feature if you can't work out how to use it.

20 years ago, the VCR with lots of buttons was the one people thought was ultra sophisticated. Then they became simpler - having next to no buttons was seen as sophisticated. Unfortunately - ease of use isn't about have 2 buttons or 200 - it's about having the right number, set up in an effective way, so that it's easy to use and able to reach the features.

The iPhone will be easy to use. For simple dialing people already know how every phone works so if you compare iPhone to others, it takes an extra button to get the keypad, and you can't feel the keys (iPhone "loses" on ease of use). However, you need to look at how people actually use their phone - what proportion of phone calls do you key in the whole number? do you use the "last-number-dialled" record as a speed dial? Address book? Picking one method isn't enough to judge a phone.

So anyway - there ARE some very important features - the phone has to be capable of the things you need it to do. There are also features that you'll never use, or almost never use - we don't really need them.
 
You mean that your mother is too dumb to press the button that says "Mail" or the other button that says "Phone".

My guess is that she's not that dumb. My wife could work an iPhone, and she is I think the gold standard of technical incompetence.

Actually I have to agree! My mother asked me the other day how to make a phone call on her Nokia 6230i, she was also outstounded when I told her it had a camera! She also had no notion of a text message and was getting freaked out when 121 (vodafone voicemail uk) kept on ringing her!

Give possibly the most untechnical woman in the world an iPhone and she probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and a black bar of soap!
 
monkeyandy I work in the telcoms industry here in the UK and I can tell you the concensus amoung a lot of people is that Apple have maybe bitten into an industry they do not really know enough about.

There are several problems with the iPhone

1) Its built for the US market, not the rest of the world, as it does not have 3g, so is simply not compatable with the business stratagies of network operators in the rest of the world which is a serious issue Apple will have to deal with! As many operators, esp ones here in europe are relying on 3G to bring in a major part of their revenue, and their price plans and services are being based round 3G.

2) Its price, most people on this forum clearly are not aware that phone makes produce a lot of models that never make it onto the market because it is the mobile operators that make the final decision (e.g. Sony produced nearly 50 handsets in 2006 that never made it to the market!), they have to subsadise the handsets so will only do it on phones they will make money on, regardless of demand!

Expensive phones (the price the OEM charges to the network - dont confuse this with the price of a handset without contract - they are very very different!!!) are not often subsadised as they will not claw back the money from the average person from calls unless there is a very clear market for them, e.g blackberry, and with no 3g on the iPhone that is a big loss in revenue too, one that many may not be willing to risk esp with mobile tv hotting up to be the next big mass demand service.

The price will place it in the expensive price plans region, e.g. for a businessman, and it can't do push and pull email like a Blackberry can so is no good for a business in reality.

If the average person was willing to spend £300 GBP on a phone, Nokia and Sony will have produced the same phone long ago.

3) 2Mp camera and no flash, thats not good compared to what the standard is fast becoming, expect 4MP+ with a flash in 2007.

4) Network operator response - not good so far here in europe from the people who actully make the decisions about which phones will be offered to the public on price plans.

5) No removable battery - a lot of people will not like this

6) There is no front camera for video calls - again showing no thought for the non-us market in its design.

The iPhone has been known about for a long time in the industry as have the major bugs it had when he first experimental models were produced and shown us network operators. Die hard Apple fans will love it, but I don't think the rest of the market is big enough as it stands.

If it had 3g, and was half the price then maybe, but the reality is if you look at the overall market, the proportion of people spending more than £75 on a handset is smaller than most people would think.

Though top marks in the design area, it looks good, can't fault it there, even if it is larger than what most people want.

But i think the major problem is it is simply not compatable with the current business plans of non-us mobile operators!

"Originally Posted by bmoseley07
I can't start my own thread yet, but here's an article by the LA Times about how Japan's cellphones already have many of these features and more and that the iPhone doesn't even scratch the surface of many of Japan's latest phones, nevertheless be revolutionary.

http://www.latimes.com/technology/la...home-headlines

The reporter doesn't get all his facts right. He says that the iPhone will/can be used to download music, but this came out on the 11th so he just wasn't in the loop yet.

Still a good read and I wish we had a lot of the features that they have over there like:

-GPS
-3G
-Live TV
-Video conferencing

All of which can be added and probably will be added either by software or hardware upgrades"

You can't just add on the above on as a software or hardware upgrade to the phone alone as a they are network dependent and use huge bandwidth, thats the issue, hence why operators outside of the US have had to spend so much money upgrading their networks and getting additional liciences.

If you want those things soon in the US, you best bet is to write to GWB, as you FCC will have to assign more frequencies to operators, and take the required frequencies away from the current holders, the USAF. Its a real pitty you didn't try and take up GSM/GPRS at the same time as the rest of the world did, its put the US in a catch up position for what looks like a long time to come.

No disrespect but from my expereince most people in the US who use mobile phones are simply not aware of how backward your cell infrastructure, pricing plans and services avalable are compred to the rest of the world - which always really surprises me!

But the above post probably makes me sound a bit negative about the iPhone, but in all honesty, i think its pretty cool from a personal point of view having actully had a play with a demo model, but from a business point of view, i'm just not convinced Apple have got it right this time, I just hope they are willing to live up to and satisfy the demands of us network operators who obviously are the ones with the power in the industry!

And contry to what Apple execs seem to think, we actully do know what the vast majority of consumers - our customers want in terms of features, and what they are willing to pay for them - its the one thing were actually quite good at now!

Great post. Especially the last part is very true..
 
I think that the lack of 3G is not quite as major as you all think.

Here in London the biggest users of mobile data that I see on my way to and from work are...Blackberry users.

And while there are a few 3G Blackberry users there are still plenty of users still using the monochrome screen 2G Blackberry's - all day long.
 
Returning this thread after the honeymoon period, I can see that the iPhone is not as exciting as it first seemed.

Sure, it appears simple to use and the touch screen is great, but it doesn't actually appear to offer much for the tech-hungry UK market. I'd expect 3G, the ability to download extra software, video camera and video messaging (does it even do MMS?), and a decent still camera. You can have all this on a typical smartphone today. :confused:
 
  • Haha
Reactions: TVreporter
You can have all this on a typical smartphone today. :confused:

Hell my K800 can do all of that, granted not that complicated software but the k800 is not what i consider a smart phone.

And what about the torch function, it is so useful.
 
I don't think the lack of 3G is a huge drawback - yet. I tried using it casually on and off a couple of months ago and ended up receiving a Godzilla of a monthly phone bill, I won't be using it again in a hurry!

I know a handful of people here who have 3G phones, and not one uses it regularly - because it's slow, unreliable and most importantly, very expensive.

The most revolutionary feature the iPhone could have here, is an affordable data plan (which Apple might be able to strong-arm the network into, though it does seem to have more muscle in the US).
 
I don't think the lack of 3G is a huge drawback - yet. I tried using it casually on and off a couple of months ago and ended up receiving a Godzilla of a monthly phone bill, I won't be using it again in a hurry!

I know a handful of people here who have 3G phones, and not one uses it regularly - because it's slow, unreliable and most importantly, very expensive.

The most revolutionary feature the iPhone could have here, is an affordable data plan (which Apple might be able to strong-arm the network into, though it does seem to have more muscle in the US).

Exactly. 3G without a data plan is pointless.

And to have a phone like this that is based on being on a 'network' like a computer and not having 3G (HSDPA, like all the other smartphones that are coming out) is a big mistake.
 
Sure, it appears simple to use and the touch screen is great, but it doesn't actually appear to offer much for the tech-hungry UK market. I'd expect 3G, the ability to download extra software, video camera and video messaging (does it even do MMS?), and a decent still camera. You can have all this on a typical smartphone today. :confused:
If you want:
** a high speed data device for when you're on the go, the iPhone is not it (no 3G). As others have said - this data can be quite expensive though. Wifi options may or may not be useful depending on where you live & work.

** a phone - then it does the job.... though it's a bloody expensive phone.
** to listen to music - excellent. Still cheaper to buy a 5G ipod.

** to watch video - it really stands out. And there will be similar screens.

If you want a combination of the above then the iPhone starts to shine - especially if you consider ease of use to be a great thing.
 
I don't think the lack of 3G is a huge drawback - yet. I tried using it casually on and off a couple of months ago and ended up receiving a Godzilla of a monthly phone bill, I won't be using it again in a hurry!

I know a handful of people here who have 3G phones, and not one uses it regularly - because it's slow, unreliable and most importantly, very expensive.

The most revolutionary feature the iPhone could have here, is an affordable data plan (which Apple might be able to strong-arm the network into, though it does seem to have more muscle in the US).
The network '3' push their services pretty heavily, and rightly so. They aren't slow, hence why it's 3G, it's faster than normal, my phone is faster than 56k surfing, it's reliable where I live and it's not expensive either. It seems to be the cheapest network around. Mine's £15 a month for 30MB of data, 300 minutes, 600 texts, free phone, £5 of downloads, it's cheap.
 
It'll be interesting to look back on this thread in a few years, much like we do today with the famous Thread #500, and see how people's gut reactions match up with reality.

hahaha, that's a very funny post to see now that this has been out for a couple of years. That's exactly why I was looking at this thread in the first place!
 
  • Like
Reactions: EvvieLynn
Status
Not open for further replies.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.