Saturday, May 24, 2008

I want a 3G iPhone. Sort of. Not really. But yeah.

Because it's pretty and has good web browsing capabilities and it will synch with my Mac and let me enter stuff on a QWERTY keypad instead of a number keypad, and maybe it will do other neat things that Uncle Steve hasn't announced yet, too.

But Amy Gahran makes a good point: the iPhone is for content consumers, not content creators. You can't get an external keyboard for it, the camera quality is too low, and you can't take or edit video. Or COPY AND PASTE for that matter (jeez, Apple. Seriously). I want to blog and broadcast on the go. It's critical. Sort of.

Amy writes...

... In other words, the new iPhone still won’t be as good a product as Nokia’s N95 already is — at least not as far as journalists and mobloggers are concerned.

Nevertheless, I might soon end up settling for an iPhone — unless Nokia pulls its US service act together damn quick. (Specifically, before the new iPhone goes on sale in the US.)

Why? Because the new iPhone might be barely good enough for much of what I need a mobile device to do. More importantly, Apple has proven, through its service practices, that it stands behind its products and cares about customers’ experience after they buy. Apple understands and respects that users of high-end phones run their lives on those devices, and thus cannot tolerate being without them for more than a few days at a time.

Meanwhile Nokia’s dearth of US local service centers, requirement that customers ship damaged or dead phones to Nokia at their own expense, and warranty that allows Nokia up to 30 days to return a phone — plus its risky, clunky, PC-only firmware update process — convey the message that Nokia doesn’t really care much about its US customers. (At least, not after they fork over $500-$700 for an N-Series phone.)

I'd add that the keypad on the N95 is a critical problem, too. While the ability use bluetooth keyboards is excellent, a phone's native keyboard needs to be decent, too. I refused to blog, or even Twitter, from a number keypad. Not when I've been using the Treo's QWERTY for 2 years.

Oh wheeeere, oh wheeeeere is my perfect phone?

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