Interesting conversation I just had with my father, who was asking me about the new iPhone. He's thinking of getting my mom one, since her old Motorola flip on Verizon is dying and she want's a smartphone so she can put her coupons on it. After we stopped laughing about the coupons part, he starts getting excited about the 5 with the bigger screen and redesign. Keep in mind this man still thinks his iPod classic is the bee's knee's and he actually doesn't even have a cell phone. Upon me breaking the news that the recent rumors were saying it would look like the 4 most likely with some upgraded internals and cool new voice assistant features, he promptly said "Oh....Well tell me about those Droid's. The neighbors have one from HTC and Samsung and they looked really nice and they can't stop talking about them."
Despite what a lot of posters on here say, I think it DOES matter to customers if the phone looks different. I'm already seeing a good amount of iPhone 3G and 3GS user's switching and getting the HTC Inspire, Samsung Infuse and LG Thrill at work, mainly because they were either entranced by the screen size or they just got bored with the interface. Price was another factor. And for them it worked, mainly because they never bought the iPhone for the "user experience" or iTunes integration. They bought it cause they're friend had one and at the time, it was the best smartphone out there. Now...It's a lot closer than that, and I think that both platforms are great and have thier own pro's and con's.
The situation on the smartphone market isn't the same as the old 3G-->3GS days. Despite it's detractors here in the forums, it's clear that Android and Google came to play. They're pumping out some competitive phones, which to me has been born out by the amount of people walking into my store asking about the Galaxy S2 with old iPhone 3g's. I just don't believe Apple can get away with not changing the design. If it is true that they are pushing the refresh date to October, that would make it around 28 month's or so that we are looking at the same iPhone 4 design. Add to that, it does seem like we've been stuck with the same iPhone 4 design much longer than normal. Whether that was due to it leaking early or the launch of the Verizon iPhone later, I don't know. While it might be selling extremely well now, how is it going to look next May 2012 or so when it's going up against the Galaxy S3 or any other multitude of Android phones that are LTE capable and possibly Quad core are on the market with bigger HD display's?
If all we are getting is a 4S and not a redesigned 5....Then why not just do the spec update last summer....release iOS 5 (if that was in fact the cause of the delay) as a software update this fall, along with the Sprint iPhone...and milk the anticipation for a new iPhone redesign (with LTE?) in the summer of 2012? That way you wouldn't have had this risk of a let-down and cries of "What were you doing for 16 months?!?!?"
It just doesn't make sense, and as a current Android user who was/is excited at the prospect of jumping over and experimenting with a new platform, it just makes me want to get an Android with LTE and revisit the idea when the 5 comes out. Why switch to a phone that essentially looks the same as it did in June of 2010 and is just now getting some features (Cloud backup, Voice to Text commands, Drop down notifications) that I've been enjoying in some respects since the G1? Yes it might not have been as fluid or handsome as Apple implemented it, but it worked quite well.
Here's hoping Apple surprises on the 4th and I'm still holding out for a surprise iPhone 5 announcement. I'm not predicting doom and gloom for the next iPhone at all, but I definitely think Apple might take some hits for it in the press and in general reviews for the phone. Fingers crossed over here for a redesign.
