iPhone or aPhone (new phone from Apple)

Everyone is talking about the iphone from apple. There are some good coverage at engagedat etc, but good place to see the demo is of course apple web site.

One, I was amazed at the some of the simple things that other cell phone manufacturers/providers could not think of. Like visual menu to voice mails. It is probably not all that hard to do if they really had thought about it. It is too early to say if this becomes successful, but I am sure it will start a new page in the usability of cell phones.

When I tried to buy a new phone couple of months back, initially I purchased a smart phone that runs the M$ OS. It sucked was a understatement. I cannot really say if it was because of the hard ware or software, but the experience was awful. So, I just went back and purchased a samsung phone without much of the bells and whistles. My thought was, if it is a phone, let it be just phone not a internet device which is hard to use for browsing. With smart applications that are built for mobile device, I might change my stand, but as of now I feel that let phone just do the “talk/sms” part properly. Of course, having music in the same device seems natural.

As many have pointed out, make or break of this device depends heavily on
* Touch screen usability: apple claims that they have patented and smart technology, we can only say if it really works after few months.
* Exclusiveness: of course it is OK in initial days, but hope there will be unlocked phones
* Price: Paying price of a computer for a phone, nah! it is not an easy sell. But then again, looking at iPod’s success, you never know.

Price point of this is probably too high for now and I dont like their exclusive deal with Cingular. But if it is what is hyped to be, then you are really see a new trend of common people avoiding PC altogether 😉

It also brings up an interesting thing, at one point everyone wrote off Apple because they adamantly controlled both hardware and software. Now, looks like tables have turned, it looks like everyone wants to control both (MS xbox, zune, sony ps, nokia, motoroala etc). Apple is showing it can be to your advantage.

It is pretty apt that they changed the name of the company to Apple inc. from Apple computers.