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HTC Launches Latest iPhone Competitor

I gotta admit, it's interesting to see the perspective here at MacRumors forums compared to XDA Developers compared to CNet compared to BoyGenius. The staunch defense if the iPhone is quite ... interesting.

Competition is good. Not everyone can use an iPhone, and sometimes a Windows Mobile device is more useful to a person than not. In the medical field, I love the idea of PDA phones, and Windows Mobile seems to have the most medical software available for it. It's nice having clinical and drug information at your fingertips, and oh yeah, have a phone too.

In the Windows Mobile world, this phone and the Sony Xperia X1 are the most appealing: high resolution screens, 3.5G capable, good UI. I currently have an LG KS20 which is a minimalist2 design.

In the Blackberry world ... well there are blackberries. It's a great phone to have, push e-mail is great. But in my situation, there are few medical applications.

Palm ... Palm Centro.

Symbian ... great Nokia and SE phones.

Competition is good =)
 
Over Achiever said:
In the medical field, I love the idea of PDA phones, and Windows Mobile seems to have the most medical software available for it. It's nice having clinical and drug information at your fingertips, and oh yeah, have a phone too.
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Come June, when ePocrates has all their materials available for the iPhone without the horrible space issues experienced on most WM devices, I am switching my physicians over.

But yeah, even though I am a happy iPhone user, there are reasons for WM to exist. Unless Microsoft really picks up their game, though... those reasons are going to fade fast. sluggish 3rd party shims on top of a now decade+ old framework is not how you advance tech.
 
Sounds like page two material

Not Mac, Not Apple, just another phone that wants to be an iPhone killer. Who cares?
 
syndalis said:
Come June, when ePocrates has all their materials available for the iPhone without the horrible space issues experienced on most WM devices, I am switching my physicians over.
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That's great to know. I'm keeping an eye on the SDK and what comes out of it. There are a lot of third party programs I use (keyboards, etc) which would be great if they get ported to the iPhone. Plus I would love to keep my HTC Home homescreen ... it's nice to have all that information quickly available.
 
Over Achiever said:
That's great to know. I'm keeping an eye on the SDK and what comes out of it. There are a lot of third party programs I use (keyboards, etc) which would be great if they get ported to the iPhone. Plus I would love to keep my HTC Home homescreen ... it's nice to have all that information quickly available.
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You might be SOL on keeping a home screen akin to the WM ones... they were rather nice. Diligent developers can change the launch icon to reflect events so you have some level of visual cue, but nothing like the home screens of WM.

Different input methods and 3rd party apps are already out there for the jailbreaking crowd, and will be assured day 1 apps.

I feel a great deal more functional on my iphone than I ever did on my PPC-6700, or any of the myriad other mobile devices I had all the way back to a 1997 Windows CE handheld.
 
Lol

The fact that the thing has a d-pad on the front tells you everything you need to know about how well the touch interface works (or rather, doesn't work). That would be equivalent to Apple shipping a physical keyboard on the iPhone while simultaneously claiming, "No, trust us, the virtual keyboard works just fine!"
 
This phone has a flashy, slick video and it all looks good on the surface, but as with Mac OS X, it's the little things that add up to make the experience great. I remember some cool videos before the Vista launch too, but that's not really representative of the final product. And making all those little things work into a cohesive whole is not easy, it can't be rushed.
 
I had that small silver T-Mobile Windows phone I think was by HTC.

Was really good. The only problem is that I couldn't get it to sync with my Outlook - the PC gave some sort of wierd error.

Funny, my iPhone syncs with Outlook just fine...

This new HTC looks like will be $299 subsidized at T-Mobile.

I don't think it'll beat the $199 iPhone if AT&T chooses to subsidize it.
 
I'm going to be honest; the iphone is becoming a bit big for me to carry around. I used to have one of those cases with a belt clip, but my wife took that because she broke hers.

Now I'm having to put it in my pocket which I don't like to do. I really need a purse for it...which is socially unacceptable ;)

I was admiring my brother-in-law's phone over the weekend because it was such a nice size. Its a shame I'm losing interest in the iphone because I'm actually developing software for it...but I may just make my iphone a dev device and get something smaller for myself.

We'll see what apple comes out w/ in the next couple months.
 
People talk about how this phone is not competitive, when HTC sold millions more phones than Apple. This phone is going to wipe the floor with the iPhone 2, which from the 2.0 firmware we can see will be almost exactly the same as iPhone 1, but with 3G.

When people do a side by side comparison this phone will look a lot more interesting than an iPhone. The weather app will look better, the text messaging and e-mail interface will look better, YouTube will look better, even the clock will look better. The phone itself will be more pocketable.

The iPhone is now a very common phone, and people want something different. HTC has delivered.
 
ruckus said:
I'm going to be honest; the iphone is becoming a bit big for me to carry around. I used to have one of those cases with a belt clip, but my wife took that because she broke hers.
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If you want a small touchscreen phone, check out the LG Prada ... I have the windows mobile version of it which is the KS20. Actually not that bad of a phone ... with a few tweaks it's great =)
 
What carrier is likely?

Anyone know if this is a phone Verizon could sell on their system? I am in the market to replace my current phone (one of those old coal-fired V710 Moto's). I would like an iphone but ATT is not well regarded here, spotty coverage. SO, have to stick with Verizon. But, geez, Verizon has a sucky selection of phones...
 
Its nice how they designed the UI to be one handed. I always thought the iphone UI was incredibly stupid for a phone since it literally requires 2 hands (I suppose people with giant hands could use one). Phones need to be as easy as possible to use with just one hand.

This thing looks like it will make a great phone. The iphone makes a great pmp but an absolutely terrible phone. If you took the ipod and web functions out of the iphone it would be a complete joke that frustrates the hell out of people.
 
APPLENEWBIE said:
Anyone know if this is a phone Verizon could sell on their system? I am in the market to replace my current phone (one of those old coal-fired V710 Moto's). I would like an iphone but ATT is not well regarded here, spotty coverage. SO, have to stick with Verizon. But, geez, Verizon has a sucky selection of phones...
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This particular phone model is GSM/HSDPA so it would not work on Verizon, but like the Sprint Touch, I sure they'll make a CDMA version that will work with Verizon and have EV-DO.
 
Over Achiever said:
I gotta admit, it's interesting to see the perspective here at MacRumors forums compared to XDA Developers compared to CNet compared to BoyGenius. The staunch defense of [sic] the iPhone is quite ... interesting.
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That's because Mac fanboys don't really like competition or any other company that may occasionally have a better idea than Apple. They go irate if Microsoft expresses any anti-competitive sentiment; yet, want Apple to dominate entire markets because Apple is always right. They are essentially a living metaphor of the pot calling the kettle black.
 
Digital Skunk said:
Apple does exactly this far too often and people applaud it. Then they start talking about how such and such SDK will make this and that better, even though it's not out yet.

Apple fans are guilty of the same things.
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Man, you sure took *all* your bitter pills today. ;)

This particular post is a bit egregious though in that Apple *doesn't* typically do this. The examples you mention are both recent and not really the same thing.

While this type of pre-announcement is very typical in the industry in general, Apple has a long-standing reputation for not announcing vapour-ware, and not talking about their future products. The typical Apple product is announced by Steve Jobs at an event and is usually available the same day, world-wide. Not always of course, but things are a lot closer to that model than the pre-announce model.
 
Archie- said:
People talk about how this phone is not competitive, when HTC sold millions more phones than Apple. This phone is going to wipe the floor with the iPhone 2, which from the 2.0 firmware we can see will be almost exactly the same as iPhone 1, but with 3G.

When people do a side by side comparison this phone will look a lot more interesting than an iPhone. The weather app will look better, the text messaging and e-mail interface will look better, YouTube will look better, even the clock will look better. The phone itself will be more pocketable.

The iPhone is now a very common phone, and people want something different. HTC has delivered.
Click to expand...

You know Archie, you are a concern troll, to put it mildly.

You haven't posted anything on this site than didn't have to do with iPhone competition. I find that unusual to say the least.

So, let's say Apple brings out the V2.0 iPhone next month and meets its sales goal of 10M for 2008. Let's say that hardware has been upgraded. Let's say that developer's go wild with applications. Let's say that the iPhone's sibling iTouch gets similar treatment.

Will you be here with your Mea Culpa's, or will you be back with a whole new list of concerns?

That's a rhetorical question, since I can surmise the answer.

tom
 
It looks good from the video, but thats what i thought when i bought the HTC P4350. HTC generally make some nice looking front ends and ive used a few. But underneath that front end that you see in the videos is a horrible Windows Mobile interface.

I think anyone whos thinking of moving from an iPhone to a windows mobile device is making a mistake unless they really require some of the extra features.
Its just not a nice experience generally.
 
This is somewhat off-topic, but is there a place in macrumors that discusses other, non-iPhone phones for mac users? (Not all of us are willing to switch to ATT.) One that deals with features/quality and compatibility/sync issues? Sorry for the digression...
 
/dev/toaster said:
Palm is dumping Palm OS for a reason, but they aren't going to gain much switching to Windows Mobile. Maybe if they switched to Android they would have a chance :D
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They should have just updated their OS instead of working on that crappy Foleo! :mad:

Virgil-TB2 said:
Like... ?
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Come on! Where have you been for the past year. Do a forum search, I'd answer that but the information has been floating around here for years.

Virgil-TB2 said:
.....
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The first part is in fact correct. Apple does announce things they will be doing or a feature a product will have then leaves it off at introduction. A lot of Apple's products or announcements are vaporware, especially the SDK and the lack of an announced but not yet available app store.

The second part of my comment is geared toward the members of this forum. When someone talks about something that is wrong with an Apple product, like Mac OS 10.5.1 or the iPhone, they were the first ones screaming, "This rumored fix/update/patch/SDK/jail break will fix it" then to add salt to the wound the blow off your argument like they actually produced facts.

Just some examples:
- Aperture 1.5.3 and RAW cameras
- Leopard intro bugs
- iPhone missing features and functions before the 1.1.3 update.
- iPhone missing features and functions/problems after the 1.1.3 update.

All I am saying is Apple fans (myself included at times) find ways to pass off Apple's mistakes as strategy or company culture when in fact they are just that, mistakes... but we are so quick to put down/bash/write off the competitors when in fact they are producing some amazing products.

It really has nothing to do with bitterness, just a realization that some people (myself included at times) have a blind devotion that we need to step back from and look at things with open eyes. I am not going to say this phone sucks, or the iPhone sucks, but fact is that Apple will have to keep on their toes if they want to sell more iPhones.... they can't live off of the hype forever, and people will start wanting "those" features in their iPhones.
 
First impressions - it looks a little naff. The design itself is simple and good enough but most of the features look like iPhone gimmicks. There appears to be significant lag in the interface according to the YouTube videos and it looks less practical from a UI perspective. The multi-touch bit on the iPhone is presumably patented, which is why the photo zooming, etc looks slow and awkward.

I reckon this thing will flop. I don't know how Apple has done it but, like the iPod before it, the iPhone just makes everything else look like second best. I can imagine buying this device is like getting a Creative MP3 player. Rather than marvel and gawp at your device, people just ended up saying "so how come you didn't get an iPod?" :D

Not that Apple should become complacent though. The good news is that competition will push Apple's products and make them better. We could certainly do with the higher res screen, for example.

I'll definitely be waiting for the 3G iPhone though.
 
mongochops said:
Every time any cheesy electronics company tries to rip off an Apple product (which is generally about 4 months after the Apple product appears), they ALWAYS produce a ****ty, gaudy, plastic piece of w8nk based on Windows Mong Edition or something equally crap. Fools!
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Happy ninth birthday. :rolleyes:
 
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