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For me, the questions would be
1- How easy is the phone to use?
Do I really need to have a record/log of ALL the calls? I would like to delete some of them.
2- How does it handle my contacts?
Everything is synced with my Gmail contacts.
3- Can I choose where to have my camera images/videos stored?
Right now, I cannot find a way to have my images recorded directly to the 8 GB SD card in my myTouch. Yep! That's T-Mobile. Apple missed that and others by limiting iPhone to AT&T.
1- How easy is the phone to use?
Do I really need to have a record/log of ALL the calls? I would like to delete some of them.
2- How does it handle my contacts?
Everything is synced with my Gmail contacts.
3- Can I choose where to have my camera images/videos stored?
Right now, I cannot find a way to have my images recorded directly to the 8 GB SD card in my myTouch. Yep! That's T-Mobile. Apple missed that and others by limiting iPhone to AT&T.
After using the BB Storm for almost a year Im eagerly awaiting this phone. Would love to go back to iPhone but currently not feasible for me (VZW contract + not best options for work)
My biggest concern is the cost of the phone as Im currently unable to upgrade. I have a year left (on a 2 line plan) so to get out would cost me about $200. Im just going to threaten to cancel both line, pay the ETF, and go elsewhere unless they give me a break on the price. Trust me, after using the Storm for a year I deserve something
My biggest concern is the cost of the phone as Im currently unable to upgrade. I have a year left (on a 2 line plan) so to get out would cost me about $200. Im just going to threaten to cancel both line, pay the ETF, and go elsewhere unless they give me a break on the price. Trust me, after using the Storm for a year I deserve something
Strange, I had a couple smartphones before the iPhone came out. Both of these were perfectly usable, and add to the fact, they were still more capable and useful than the iPhone 3G is today!!
A piece of cake - Display Call Log - Press Menu - Press "Clear call log" to get rid of all of them.
To get rid of one - Press+hold the individual call log entry, select "Remove from call log"
What he said
- it is easiest to work on Contacts within Gmail. Any change you make there is pushed to the handset. Equally, if you make changes in the handset they are pushed to Gmail.I don't think you can, at least, there is no menu item [that I can find] to say where you'd like the camera images and videos stored.
When you plug in your SD card Android automatically uses it to store your pictures to /sdcard/DCIM/Camera
Simples
its definately not a killer and it isnt really a competitor, it doesnt have the wow factor... nothing can beat the apple app store too
Would you care to cite the devices and qualify that?
Smartphones pre-iPhone (not saying its the greatest or anything like that) would have included Symbian and the earlier versions of WinMo. Both barely useable in comparison to 2009 iPhone and Androids. Think about the entire experience, the effortlessness of accessing information, the synergy between these two handsets and their cloud partners Mobile Me and Google respectively. The seamless integration between handset, cloud and desktop/laptop. None of this really available out of the box prior to iPhone and latterly Android.
Now try and do any of that with Symbian and WinMo. Apart from requiring an extensive bit of customisation the experience would be akin to rubbing sand in your eyes.
I'm taken with the WinMo-based Acer Neo Touch (http://www.talk3g.co.uk/showthread.php?p=35783) but even that is somewhat in the wake of the newer incumbents.
I would challenge any notion that Symbian and WinMo devices are "more capable and useful" than iPhone and Android devices. The game has changed significantly of late.
Right, because looks are the most important ting wen deciding what phone to buy. Definitely not hardware specs or what you can do with it.
And honestly, I don't think its ugly. The Verizon branding is anoying, but other than that it is a clean and simple design.
And this is where you are absolutely wrong. From BGR's comments, this phone does measure up in a big way. http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/10/23/motorola-droid-preview/
Android's battle with the iPhone is not going to be won with any one phone. Its going to be one with the torrent of different devices launching in the next 6 months.
Look, I like the iPhone, but competition is a good thing people. Don't act like such Apple tools.
There is no point to argue with *LDT* he is a apple Fanboy to the core. He worships at the Church of Jobs. Anything from apple might as well be the word of god.
he is a prime example of true Apple Fanboy.
Agreed. I dont get everyone who is cheering for this phone to fail. I don't own an iPhone, but if I did I would want this thing to do really well so Apple would consider putting in a screen like the Droid has, or maybe a flash, etc.
Since Im tied to verizon, this is looking really good for me
Im not so sure its that much of a weakness. I get your point, but realize that Apple/iPhone devs are going to eventually have to deal with those issues as well (they already do with some games that can run much better on the 3Gs). Android forcing people to think about that stuff may require extra work in the short term, but may be better in the long term
There's no one device that will ever be an iPhone killer other than a newer iPhone. That's pretty obvious at this point, but as the other OS's get better (Android and WinMo (7 and later)) we will start to see better competition between the 3 platforms. If anything will take away from iphone sales it will be the service provider.
Besides that I'm excited for this phone and the rest of the Android devices coming out for Verizon. I'm glad they finally have picked up some good phones beyond blackberries and seem to be in full support of Android and its open development. The better the rest of the phones in the world get the better the next iPhone has to be.
Honestly I'm not sure why this is on this site, this isn't a rumor about Macs or iPhones, in fact the only way its related to the iPhone is those commercials.
Besides that I'm excited for this phone and the rest of the Android devices coming out for Verizon. I'm glad they finally have picked up some good phones beyond blackberries and seem to be in full support of Android and its open development. The better the rest of the phones in the world get the better the next iPhone has to be.
Honestly I'm not sure why this is on this site, this isn't a rumor about Macs or iPhones, in fact the only way its related to the iPhone is those commercials.
It was SE and Nokia. I've used UIQ and S60 - I found both were very usable, and still very usable today.
I can sync very well with Ovi, Mac and Google ( if I really wanted, which I don't ). With OVI, I can access files on my Mac anywhere.
I need a phone that can multi-task and have applications running in the background: the iPhone just can't do that. ( I don't care about losing a few hours battery life ).
Also, I don't need to be told what applications I can and cannot install / should or should not use - ala Apple. Apple need to relax and be more consistent with its AppStore policy. Why should the user not have an option of installing other mail clients or browsers, or indeed, any other application that 'competes' with a pre-installed application?
Additionally, when it comes to web browsing, sure, the multi-touch screen is nice but apart from that, the iPhone is very limited because Apple ( again ) restrict what I can see - i.e., no Flash, no Real / WMA etc etc. Like it or not, these are very much part of internet content. Personally, I want to be able to view Flash content and experience more of the internet that I can with mobile safari.
HTML5 as nice as it is, won't become mainstream until the browser with the largest marketshare supports it, and thats IE. Until microsoft support HTML5, its not going to be mainstream.
Some people must realize that iPhone isn't for everyone and there are other phones that suite other people better. I've given a few reasons to why Symbian phones suite me better than the iPhone can, at this moment in time. Its a personal choice.
So, to answer your question: I personally find that Symbian phones are more capable than the iPhone. Symbian phones offer the functionality that *I* require that the iPhone does not yet deliver.
A lot of people really don't know what Symbian is capable of, and would open their eyes when they find out.
I don't find, nor have ever ever found using UIQ or S60 akin to rubbing sand in my eyes. In fact, I find it frustrating that Apple artificially cripple the iPhone.
One more: when I travel internationally, I buy a local SIM card so I don't have to pay expensive roaming fees. I can't do this with the iPhone ( without using SIM free software - which I wouldn't want to do )? Why doesn't Apple let me buy the phone outright? Another example of Apple's excessive control. I don't care if the network of my choice doesn't support visual voice mail, thats my problem, not Apple.
I can sync very well with Ovi, Mac and Google ( if I really wanted, which I don't ). With OVI, I can access files on my Mac anywhere.
I need a phone that can multi-task and have applications running in the background: the iPhone just can't do that. ( I don't care about losing a few hours battery life ).
Also, I don't need to be told what applications I can and cannot install / should or should not use - ala Apple. Apple need to relax and be more consistent with its AppStore policy. Why should the user not have an option of installing other mail clients or browsers, or indeed, any other application that 'competes' with a pre-installed application?
Additionally, when it comes to web browsing, sure, the multi-touch screen is nice but apart from that, the iPhone is very limited because Apple ( again ) restrict what I can see - i.e., no Flash, no Real / WMA etc etc. Like it or not, these are very much part of internet content. Personally, I want to be able to view Flash content and experience more of the internet that I can with mobile safari.
HTML5 as nice as it is, won't become mainstream until the browser with the largest marketshare supports it, and thats IE. Until microsoft support HTML5, its not going to be mainstream.
Some people must realize that iPhone isn't for everyone and there are other phones that suite other people better. I've given a few reasons to why Symbian phones suite me better than the iPhone can, at this moment in time. Its a personal choice.
So, to answer your question: I personally find that Symbian phones are more capable than the iPhone. Symbian phones offer the functionality that *I* require that the iPhone does not yet deliver.
A lot of people really don't know what Symbian is capable of, and would open their eyes when they find out.
I don't find, nor have ever ever found using UIQ or S60 akin to rubbing sand in my eyes. In fact, I find it frustrating that Apple artificially cripple the iPhone.
One more: when I travel internationally, I buy a local SIM card so I don't have to pay expensive roaming fees. I can't do this with the iPhone ( without using SIM free software - which I wouldn't want to do )? Why doesn't Apple let me buy the phone outright? Another example of Apple's excessive control. I don't care if the network of my choice doesn't support visual voice mail, thats my problem, not Apple.
They dropped the price of the phone within a couple of months, though. The Pre is JUST being released in Europe in the last couple weeks as well. It's pretty close in in the 1 million mark as well. It was also competing against new iPhone and Andriod sales at the time, where the iPhone was up against a pretty inferior competition. All things considered it's doing OK.
Soooo you just discount previous smartphones because you didn't like them? Sure, that's one way to do it I guess. Like it or not RIM and WinMo had decent products out well before the iPhone. The iPhone moved smartphones into a consumer market, competing against things like the Razr though. Palm made a FANTASTICALLY usable OS long before Apple got into the mobile market. It was ugly, but it was fast, stable, one-handable, and had tons of apps available for it.
There's no argument that OSX mobile/the iPhone is a great piece of hardware. It was almost certainly the best phone/PMP when released, and it's obviously the stadard which other are judged today. All I'm saying is that they 1) didn't create this market or were the first ones to make a device in this class, and 2) the competition is catching up quickly now. Apple can, and likely will, stay on top for the foreseeable future and will keep innovating new features to compete. It's no longer the iPhone and rest now.
Specifically, Palm did an absolutely wonderful job with webOS. The Pre is also a decent handset, but as a foundation for new products, webOS is really better than OSX, imo. They're about a year late getting it to market, though, and the route they chose for their SDK/app environment is risky BUT I think it will pay off in the long run (by long run I mean 5+ years from now).
It is, in the same way that the Zune is the iPod killer
I don't really see how iPod versus Zune market share even matters when it comes to phones. A phone is on a network and how good that network is will have a lot to do with how successful the phone will be. Verizon is no lightweight. Give them a great new phone like the Droid and it will sell. If you live in the United States (especially rural areas) Verizon is FAR superior to AT&T. They have a map for that.
You need to decide what you believe.
In the first paragraph you describe the iPhone competition at launch as "pretty inferior" and in the second paragraph you say there were "decent products" before the iPhone.
This means either that the original iPhone must have been insanely great compared to legacy smart phones or that old phones weren't that decent.
Ha! The RAZR of all phones! Don't be ridiculous.
Just because both devices sold/sell well doesn't mean they are comparable in any way. The RAZR didn't change or start anything. It was just another phone. No one outside the US cared about it.
The iPhone OTOH made smart phones usable in the first place. This has nothing to do with consumer/business market. The device is a success in both markets.
You are totally a Palm fanboy. Praising Palm OS! The worst of all mobile OSs. It has always been really bad technically and there's a reason why it was scrapped in favour of a completely new OS. The original Palm Pilot was a good product for its time, but it's not 1996 anymore!
I would disagree here. When the Razr came out, it brought front this idea of thin, and trendy phones. It seemed like everyone I knew when ape s*it over it, and had to get the latest color when it came out so they can be head of their friends. I remember this leading to many companies putting their phones on a diet to imitate the Razr and I started to see the term Razr killer being used.
I will say palm did do one thing right in the phone market with their old OS(and with WM oddly enough), and that was adding thread SMS, which it seems every company is now releasing their own version of.
Both the Treo and Blackberry were out well before the iPhone, and while not as elegant as the iPhone, were very useful.
Sure, these days I'd prefer the iPhone (if it weren't on AT&T) or Android, but I've been making due just fine with a Blackberry.
Uhm, wasn't your rant about how some pre-iPhone "smart" phones were great and even better? There's no way you could enjoy surfing the web with one of them. There was one single phone with a touchscreen before the iPhone (the LG Prada, it got bad reviews) and don't tell me you surf the web with a stylus and think it's great ...
And mentioning flash and multitasking ... on an underpowered hardware with hardly usable UI those were non-issues, because there was hardly a need for them.
My my. But when you do travel internationally you must know that you can buy the iPhone freely and sans SIM lock in several countries, e.g. Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Hongkong. Apparently, you need to blame AT&T, but that wouldn't fit your stance of blaming Apple for everything.
I think the reason you don't see much in Canada is because the G1 just got released here this summer..one year later..
so who knows, if the droid gets released here in the summer of 2010, I'm sure you won't see much of them around either.. no one wants to wait that long.
A fad completely limited to the US.
And fashionable phones were a topic long before the RAZR....ask a female of your choice
I do agree that the RAZR brought extreme thinness up as something desirable. Do you really want to compare that to the possibilities the iPhone created? Thinness?
Please tell me you're joking with that statement? There were no touchscreen phones before the Prada?
Actually, how shiny it looks is the selling factor for the current generation phones.
This may be true to a certain extent, but the iPhone, like every other consumer product, does well because of branding. Apple has a big brand image. I talked about this before on a similar thread to this one.
People would be a lot more likely to think the iPhone is better than the Droid, though, for a few reasons.
First, Motorola does not have a solid reputation. Oh, it's well-known for sure, but for many people it has a bad reputation, and their phones are known for being useless for anything above looking cool. I know the software on the Droid is made by Google, but Android is still relitively unknown, and it can't even use the "it's new" excuse because it's been out for quite some time now and even in 2007 a huge amount of people knew about the iPhone.
People will therefore look at this thing and think "oh, it's another Motorola, with a weird system I've never seen before" as opposed to "it's the iPhone, it does ****ing everything!" and even if that's not accurate, it's the image the general non-nerdy public has. Apple=very good at marketing.
Then, there's the fact that the iPhone really was the first phone of it's type. Smartphones before (and the majority after too) are/where crap at Internet, e-mail, etc. compared to the iPhone.
Well, yes, isn't that what this dialogue is all about? The individual's perspective and preference. I'm quite happy to state for the record that I have not overly enjoyed the pre-iPhone/Android "smartphone" experience.
As a technical person I enjoy tinkering with all manner of product. But when it comes to making actual day-to-day use of my tech I want it to work simply and effectively. I cannot accuse Symbian or WinMo of ever granting me those particular favours.
I would be in complete agreement that these devices preceded the iPhone/Android pair, that they may well have set the ground for the latter day smartphone. But now both are in rapid catch-up mode. In their time they were not sufficiently innovative enough and got overtaken, big time.
I think I know what you're getting at - but would not agree that the iPhone intended competing with the Razr - well, not in Europe anyway. We had long got over our love affair with the Razr by the time iPhone appeared. The handset market in Europe is very rich - expectations are extraordinarily high here also. The UK is completely saturated at something like 1.5 handsets per head of population! Plus we're a cynical lot of bar stewards in the UK, taking some pleasing. I digress.
What I'm saying is that by the time the iPhone appeared here we were more than ready for it. RIM, Symbian, WinMo even were not selling in any great quantity because they did not impress nor inspire. The iPhone first, Android much later, have changed all of that, both here and in your own market.
I did not mean to imply that I thought the iPhone has created the smartphone market - but it has certainly redefined it, as Android picks up the baton and reinforces the paradigm across an even wider range of handsets.
Quite possibly, I currently think of Palm as something of an irrelevance. They have to save themselves from Chapter 11 first. The Pre has several times been cited as their last chance. Maybe that is a bit over-dramatic, but it does seem that if they do not gain public confidence in the Pre that it may very well be game over given the huge tidal wave of Android heading to all of our shores.
I absolutely hated them both. Tried UIQ in the form of the Motorola A1000, it had all the right boxes ticked on paper, but it didn't deliver. There were "ways" of doing things but none of it was OOTB or straightforward.
Ovi has been a response to Apple and Google's infiltrations into Nokia's market. On YouTube there is a wonderful statement by Symbian's MD stating that iPhone and Android are irrelevancies. Two years on Nokia/Symbian are scrabbling to catch up. Its the Beatles and IBM PC all over again
If that is your need then who can possibly argue with that? You then have to choose what can best fit that need of course.
I have no need of multi-tasking. What the iPhone offers is more than sufficient for my "needs". That the Android in my other pocket can multi-task is irrelevant to me, its not even a bonus that it can. In fact, given the meagre memory allocated to smartphones [still] the ability to multi-task has limited appeal or benefit. This limitation existed in the last Symbian device I used (Nokia N95 v12) and still exists today in the Nokia N97. I'll come back to multi-tasking when I see some decently spec'd hardware.
Y'see? I'd rather my handset single task very well indeed than multi-task somewhat inadequately. But then again, that is simply my choice.
This hackneyed old argument gets trotted out at each and every dinner
It really is quite specious in my opinion.All handset platforms have limitations on what apps can and cannot be installed. For your argument you will also find another that complains about WinMo and Symbian's "requirement" for apps to be signed (thus approved). And there is a whole community who have created an underground movement of installing unsigned apps into these handsets - thereby breaking even those manufacturer's intentions and rules.
The manufacturers, Apple included, have set these rules to protect their environment. Symbian and WinMo are trying to protect how well their OS runs and is percieved to run. They don't want to see their brand ruined by bogus apps being run on them, hence the protectionism exhibited there.
With Apple it is slightly different again - they have the entire hardware/software paradigm to protect. And in that they take complete control over what is loaded into their product.
In all cases, where the protection is bypassed, the Manufacturer accepts no liability against their brand.
Contrary to all argument, the OS and what you do with it are not entirely up to you - the licences that we all agree to make that abundantly clear. The only real solution is not to use the tech at all!
It would be hard to argue against that proposition, I believe.
Then clearly the iPhone and Mobile Safari are not for you. But that still does not mean that the tech is fundamentally wrong or substandard. It simply is what it is - and we should make our choices on that basis, surely.
I completely agree with that - people must make informed choices rather than take things for granted or base their choice on what someone else thinks (particularly the zealots among us).
And I personally find Symbian phones inferior in more ways than they could be listed as superior to iPhone and Android. But then, in all likelihood, the use that you and I put our respective devices to could very well be worlds apart, fundamentally different in every possible way.
Horses for courses, I find the iPhone/Android environment, by which I mean the entire experience, widely more capable than anything Symbian.
Whenever I have used Symbian it has been a limiting and frustrating experience. A good friend of mine has recently outed his Nokia N97 in favour of an iPhone. When I spent quite some time with him working through the issues faced with not only the N97, its poor state of firmware and the Nokia experience behind it I came away thanking my lucky stars that I resisted all urge to take the N97 when my contract ended - the choice of Android instead did not disappoint.
The lack of a SIM-free iPhone is soon to be a moot point - as of November in the UK when O2 lose their exclusivity they will be unlocking handsets to make them SIM-free. I would expect iPhones bought directly from Apple to come unlocked also as they would not have been subsidised by the mobile network operator. But up until now the tight licensing of the iPhone to operators has seen Apple unable to sell SIM-free because of the mobile network operators licensing terms, not Apple's. So the blame does not lie at Apple's door.
The SIM-free lockdown has nothing to do with visual voicemail.
Of course, with Android the ability to purchase SIM-free or get the handset unlocked exists.
Just to play devils advocate...
A few people might say the same thing about AT&T.
Anyhow someone is excited about this new phone... here is one on eBay.
Currently at $1,125 with almost 5 days left.
http://cgi.ebay.com/Verizon-Wireles...Cell_Phones?hash=item2c51626d8a#ht_500wt_1182