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Might as well talk about the iPhone too

Since there’s not getting around the fact that all the talk in the coming days/weeks/months will be all about the iPhone, might as well put in my 2 cents on the matter based on what I’ve read in the internet.

Here’s a press release from Apple

iPhone will feature up to 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback.* In addition, iPhone will feature up to 250 hours—more than 10 days—of standby time. Apple also announced that the entire top surface of iPhone, including its stunning 3.5-inch display, has been upgraded from plastic to optical-quality glass to achieve a superior level of scratch resistance and optical clarity.

If this is true, then damn, that’s awesome! The use of glass is a brilliant idea – I just hope it doesn’t make the phone fragile and less resilient to [unwanted] physical impact.

As amazing as these specs sound, there are also some other “feature concerns” the iPhone reportedly has. I’m not sure as to the accuracy of the data on the list below, as it was posted from a Windows Mobile-centric forum. But assuming they are true and not just an attempt at sour-graping, here are my thoughts on the matter.

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Goodbye XDA… Hello XDA.

After years of service (and torture), my XDAII has finally bit the big one. It’s a shame since I really wish it would hold out for another year.

I’ve realized that for my purposes, the Windows Mobile (WM, formerly PocketPC) is the definitive platform to have for a smartphone. Having said that, I’ve always budgeted at that price-point should I ever need a new one.

I have to admit though that these days, the Apple iPhone has made it difficult for me to decide what type of replacement I would want. There’s no doubt the iPhone would be an awesome phone. But I’m not convinced by the iPhone just yet. There are so many legitimate “concerns” in that phone that are keeping me from just making the switch to MobileOSX (I just made that up, I don’t know what the OS is officially called). Yet it still has massive iconic appeal, a marketing approach which Apple has polished to perfection. While all logic tells me to stick with the tried and tested Windows Mobile, the geek in me really wants that shiny new iPhone.

Having said that, I’m pretty much 50/50 on the matter. Which is why I would’ve preferred that my XDA conk out when the iPhone was finally out (an supported in our country); so that I can actually try and compare it with a WM device it and decide once and for all which type of phone would better fit my needs.

Alas, life isn’t that kind; my phone died a year too early. And hence I have to buy a replacement phone. Sadly, there’s really no choice for me other than a WM device or the iPhone – and since the iPhone hasn’t hit Philippine shelves, nor the bulk of its “features” currently supported by our network providers – there really wasn’t a choice to be made in the first place.

Since I was already going to spend quite a bit for the WM phone, might as well get a good one. I decided on a WM device that was small, as well as handle all possible networks you could throw at it. As of the moment, there’s only one unit that fits all of those criteria: The XDA Atom Life.

The unit will be arriving tomorrow afternoon.

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Keep it up Steve, and you’ll lose your fans

Mr. Jobs’ words about opening up Mobile OS X to 3rd-party developers:

You don’t want your phone to be an open platform, you need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.

First of all, assuming the techincal implications of this are true (because they simply aren’t), whose fucking bone-headed idea was it to tie the phone up specifically to Cingular in the first place? The only feature I can see that is directly tied to Cingular’s network would be the visual voice-mail feature – unless another bone-headed decision was made to even use Cingular’s network for connecting to the internet as a whole (which is highly unlikely).

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More iPhone thoughts

Before anything else, this is probably just a sourgraping post. Since I can’t get the iPhone anytime soon, I’m trying to rationalize and make myself feel better by pointing out the factors that could make the said mobile device impractical for the time being.

But before I get into that, more eye-candy for everyone:

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