All Gadgets Aside...

So the release of the iPhone has come and gone. All in all the near immediate sell out of iPhones across the country would definitely make the initial launch a success. As most people that know me will tell you, I am a fan of just about everything Apple related. So why don't I have an iPhone in my pocket? Before I get into why let me give a quick review of the iPhone itself and what I have seen from it.

So the iPhone is a great device. Aesthetically pleasing, well designed (thanks to the infamous Jonathan Ives), has great battery life, a decent camera, and a very beautiful OS with complimenting applications. The device makes a great iPod, works very well with google maps, the safari browser is right at home on the device as well. One of the greatest assets the iPhone has is it's multi-point touch screen in which allows you expans pictures and web pages by simply stretching them out. I have had sometime to play with the device and I think it does everything it's intended to do very well. On the downside, I have also seen a couple things that make me wonder what Apple was thinking. First off, where is the MMS support. When I have sent MMS messages to my co-worker who proudly owns an iPhone he gets a standard SMS message with a link to the location of where the image is stored on the internet. This is hardly an MMS solution, it will take you substantially longer to view your message than if it would have gone straight to your device. The second downfall is the lack of a development platform beyond web apps. Web apps will work but this doesn't seem the way to go to get a dedicated program that will work wherever you are and perform as snappy as it should. The rest of my complaints about it are more specific, which brings me to why I don't own an iPhone.

First and foremost, one of the biggest things for me when it comes to a phone is freedom. The freedom to use your phone as you please, install what you want and turn around and sell it for what it's worth rather than be stuck with a device locked to one network. So it goes without saying that this shoudl be an unlocked device. Unfortunately here in the US the top GSM providers will not sell you a phone unless you buy a contract thus making it difficult for Apple to justify selling it unlocked and free to be used on whatever network you please. This doesn't mean that people aren't willing to dive into a contract to own a device that is free from being locked. Second, the iPhone does what it's intended to well. What about everything else? My current Nokia can do everything the iPhone can plus about a million things more that the iPhone can't do. My Nokia N73 cost me $350 and it has a 3.2mp Camera, takes decent quality video, surfs the internet with the best of them using Nokia's browser, or in my case Opera. On top of that the Series 60 platform has a multitude of applications that have been developed and more constantly being developed.

Basically what it boils down to is that Apple will have to kick up it's game to compete in the game of a making a full featured phone with heavyweights like Nokia. Even mobile manufacturers like Sony Ericsson and LG have mobiles with feature sets that vastly outweigh what the iPhone can offer. Apple, you wil have to do more to impress even your most seasoned customers.

With the speed at which mobile phone technology is advancing these days it was only a matter of minutes before someone took the "Music Phone" to the next level. Samsung is the company to do so with the brand new model, SCH-B570, sporting an absolutely amazing 8gb of flash memory. In case you were thinking that 8gb of music still wasn't enough for your likes they have added a MicroSD expansion slot. What makes this mobile even more amazing is that they put it in such a sleek looking figure and then managed to still fit a 2 megapixel camera inside and apparently an S-DMB receiver to recieves korean broadcasts and bluetooth. This should be pretty a pretty spectacular handset, I do find it interesting that they decided to use Windows Mobile 5 for the OS though. If you live in Korea you can expect to see this handset on the shelves shortly but if you are a Samsung employee in Korea then you have been banned from using this mobile, apparently Samsung views this phone as a security risk for their employees to use.

Allthough not the newest of news, it seems that Opera is touching the hearts of more than just the end mobile users. Opera Mini has hit home with none other than internet auction tycoon Ebay and Ebay has worked with Opera to release Opera Mini Ebay Edtion to users in Germany. It seems like this is a great step forward for Opera Mini and it shows that it is not going unnoticed by the internet industry. We can only assume that there will be more integration like this down the road, make sure to keep your eyes open.

I know I haven't done an entry about this phone on this page yet but I have had a close eye on this one for a long time. The Qube is a complete step away from the standard cell phone in that the form factor is that of a square. The Qube came out last year, obviously not available to the limited US mobile market. But Asia and parts of Europe have been fortunate enough to have this phone graze the shores of their home. So whats the big deal you ask? Well the Qube is another one of those fully functional phones that I keep talking about. The Qube does everything from play music, to videos, to games, shoots 1.3mp still photos, it's just a great all around phone with a very nice set of features. I actually pondered purchasing this phone for myself before I bought the one I have now. The only thing that held me back was the tri-band, it would be so much more if they had just made the phone quad band. Because of tri-band though, it makes this phone an incredible buy for those US mobile users that have t-mobile.