November the 9th is fast approaching and with it comes the highly anticipated launch of Apple iPhone here in the UK.
And I just don't get it. It's not that special people!
I've been follower of phone technology since I got my first Nokia 5110 over ten years ago. The phone had a monochrome display, which showed three lines of text and came with about fifteen ring tones. It didn't feature predictive text or vibrating alert. Those features were reserved for more up market phones. From there I moved onto a Siemens S40, the worlds first MP3 capable phone. What a useless piece of junk that turned out to be. It's Achilles heel was the serial cable interface. It took several hours to transfer just one MP3. It featured a whooping 32 MB storage allowing you to hold all of one album. Around this time Bluetooth was beginning to emerge so I ran out and purchased a Nokia 6210. This featured the latest hi speed Internet connectivity (14.4 mbps called HSCSD ). It also featured Bluetooth and at the time I had just purchased a 3Com PCMCIA Bluetooth card. I was able to use my laptop (A Sony C1 picture book) to connect to the Internet. Without any wires. Literally. Amazing stuff.
A new job and a salary boost lead to the extravagant purchase of the Nokia 6600. This featured a VGA camera, 65K display and a built in video player. I remember all the problems it caused due to faulty firmware and I remember having to bring it back to get it repaired. Not what you want to do with your latest gadget. But I brought it back and Carphone Warehouse had it fixed. It was a smashing phone. Good battery, decent camera and good call quality. It was a 3G phone too so it had excellent Internet access speeds.
The 6600 gave way to the Sony Ericsson V800 3G Video Phone. I upgraded to the V800 so I could "ride the wave" of new 3G services that had just been launched in Ireland and take advantage of video calling. It didn't appear to matter to me at the time that I didn't know anybody else with a video phone! One of my friends, not to be outdone in the gadget stakes, purchased his own video phone and this was to usher in an age of visual communication between us. In the end I reckon we only made about four video video calls. Whilst the quality was excellent, it was the practicalities that kept us at odds with video calling. It's very difficult to walk, talk and watch on a video call, so you're no longer mobile, but rather stationary. Handset issues also conspired to ruin the experience. The V800's external speaker was absolutely useless. So unless in fact, that you had to use the crappy supplied headphones, otherwise you simply couldn't hear the person you were looking at, even in reasonably quiet environments. However, the phone did features a rather good MP3 player, plenty of internal storage, an excellent screen and a 364 kpbs UMTS data connection.
The V800 did let me down badly in one area: Bluetooth compatibility. I was, at the time, the owner of an Nokia integrated Bluetooth car kit and the V800 just didn't want to know about it. Auto connection didn't work. The kits answer/cancel button didn't work. They just didn't play nice. I wrote letters to both companies and they each simply blamed the other for the incompatibility. I even reported them to the Bluetooth SIG. Who knows where that complaint went. Into/dev/null I'd say. With this issue, I finally lost patience and ditched the V800 in favor of the new Nokia 6680. This was similar in respects to the V800 except in form factor and compatibility with my car kit. This issues really did annoy me since the founding principal behind Bluetooth is complete and total inter-operability. Sony or Nokia really dropped the ball on this one. Far from offering more consumer choice it just helps keep consumers brand loyal in the fear that a new phone of a different brand won't work with your existing accessories. It was bound to happen I suppose.
The 6680 was a work horse phone. It offered excellent battery life and a host of good features. It was a dual camera setup, unlike the V800, but I never made one video call from the device. The 6680 gave way to the Nokia E61, my first qwerty, blackberry style phone. I signed up for a hosted exchange package and enabled Mail For Exchange on the device. This was part of my "end my email woes" strategy. The phone itself was excellent. It didn't feature a camera but it did feature HSDPA, meaning I was able to get download speeds of 1.8 mbps. This was very impressive especially when I used the phone as a Bluetooth modem for my laptop. Solid battery life and an excellent keyboard made this a good phone.
My move to the UK, a new job and amazing phone offers led me right to the Nokia N95. I purchased this particular phone so that I would have internet access at home. The phone offered 3.6 mbps connection speeds and since I wasn't eligible for broadband, it offered a practical alternative due to it's high speeds. Combined with a 5 MP camera and GPS this is an awesome handset. Being a newbie in London, the GPS feature alone has made this device a worthwhile pruchase (and a new firmware version has made it even faster and more reliable yipee!).
It was at this time that I did consider waiting and purchasing an iPhone. Apple hadn't selected the network it would sell the iPhone through yet and it was the centre of much debate at the time. However, as a mobile device, the specifications just didn't add up. First and foremost in my mind was its network connection speeds. The iPhone supports EDGE, a protocol so old that it's no longer even supported in the Republic of Ireland! EDGE is the next level up from GPRS and offers data rates of around 250 kbps. That is less than the 6680 or V800 I purchased three years ago! I want to be on the cutting edge, not taking a trip down memory lane! Secondly, being a serial texter and having owned a phone with full qwerty keyboard, I just wasn't convinced by the "virtual" keyboard. I use a virtual keyboard on my Tablet PC and I find that annoying. And that's with a stylus! Thirdly it suffers from Bluetooth incompatibility. It will only work with Apple branded Bluetooth headsets. Sorry Apple. I've been down that road before and you're not acting in the spirit of Bluetooth.
The list of issues goes on and on. Only a 2MP camera. No third party apps allowed. It doesn't work with regular iPod headphones or accessories. You can't replace the battery without sending it away. It only works with iTunes! I'll stop there because I think I've made my point.
Since I've already purchased an N95, I was relieved I didn't wait for iPhone details for the UK. Pricing for the iPhone was released and I was shocked! The handset itself is £280 independent of the tariff you select. Even the top tariff doesn't offer the same value as my T-mobile tariff, which is £19 pound cheaper each month. Plus the N95 only cost me £60. I'm going to be very interested to see how well the phone sells here in the UK. I do own an iPod touch and I've actually only seen one other person using one since they were released here in the UK. Perhaps people are holding out for iPhones. I sincerely hope not. Apple need to go back to the drawing board and get version 2 of the iPhone "Europe-Ready" before I'll reconsider.