

The First Phone I've Been Excited About In A Long Time - twampss
http://mattmaroon.com/?p=629

======
dcurtis
Nice article, but I have one thing to say: your list of priorities for
features is probably what you _think_ you want. Before I got the iPhone, I
never browsed the internet on my Treo because the experience was just
absolutely terrible (the experience on blackberry is also terrible). Now I
browse the web on my iPhone more than I use it as a phone.

While investigating how to make the best UI, I've found that people's
priorities come from their habits and not necessarily from their needs. At
first this seemed kind of illogical to me. But if you think about it, before
the iPhone, no normal people really could imagine a mobile browser as good as
mobile Safari, so no one really put "a desktop experience web browser" at the
top of their requirements lists for phones (obviously tech people did, but
average people did not).

I wonder what would happen if you bought an iPhone.

~~~
davi
I think you underestimate the importance of his items 1 and 2 (call quality
and email/SMS) to the business population.

A dropped call at the wrong moment can cost a sales guy a _lot_ of money; and
a hard-core Blackberry user is not going to give up that keypad for a nice
browser. For them, the importance of reliable, rapid communication with
business contacts outweighs the pleasure of a good browsing experience.

With the Palm, you theoretically will get to have a keypad, a choice of
carriers, and a nice browser (assuming the fact that it uses the same HTML
rendering engine as the iPhone means the browsing experience will be equally
good).

Hence his assertion that "Apple’s strategy has worked well, but it has major
holes, and this Palm unit looks like it exploits them".

~~~
tptacek
So, (1) a dropped call at the wrong moment is not going to cost a sales guy a
lot of money unless that sales guy works in Scranton and is trying out for the
CIA, and (2) am I the only one here who uses an iPhone as their primary phone
and has never had a dropped call?

~~~
eb
I've never had a dropped call with my iPhone either. The only person
complaining about call quality in this thread is Matt.

It's a bit disingenuous to make declarations about how poor a product is when
you don't even own one. It seems to be a common theme when he writes about
Apple.

------
jemmons
Essentially he's saying he likes the Pre because its imagined features are
better than the iPhone ones that he hasn't tried. The article is about pitting
an ideal vs. a bias. Who will win?

~~~
mattmaroon
Are they imagined features when you can watch a video of them? Why would you
think I've never tried an iPhone? I actually wanted to buy one before I did.

Seems like kind of a silly comment to have 25 points. I wonder if it were
about Microsoft instead...

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Are they imagined features when you can watch a video of them?_

Could the Apple Newton recognize your handwriting? It was really accurate in
the commercials!

~~~
mattmaroon
If I saw a video of it recognizing a TechCrunch writer's handwriting, that
TechCrunch took, then the answer would be yes.

------
marcell
>> "But the iPhone platform is also, in many ways, problematic. Programming
native apps in Objective C is really hard work (or so the friends who’ve done
it tell me). Palm greatly reduces the barriers to entry by making app
development html/css/javascript-based, meaning any web developer (maybe even
me) could get started."

A warning to bloggers: when you don't know what you're talking about but talk
anyways, it's very obvious. And it hurts your credibility. I wouldn't complain
about problems with the World Series of Poker in a blog post, and if you've
never used Objective-C/Cocoa, it's best if you don't complain about it.

~~~
jmtulloss
Maybe so, but it's hard to make the case that web development tools aren't
faster than compiled ones for many things.

------
pauljonas
Palm’s embrace of “developer friendly” open platform philosophy for its new
handset in development, in constrast to the decidedly unfriendly sandbox
approach Apple has taken, certainly must be applauded. And a flock of
delighted developers are cheering them on, as indicated by the cited article
discussion, as well as tech sites across the net. However, I see no reference
to a factor that looms larger than software platform — quality of the
hardware.

Palm devices (PDA and their foray into mobile phone market space) are
notorious for their unreliability and low quality. Historically, they are
poorly made and break rather easily. Back when I toted a Palm PDA in my work
travels, it frequently had to be replaced. And I remember giant pallets of
refurbished PDAs in Fry’s Electronics, where devices would be recycled for
second and subsequent deaths.

Experience with Blackberry devices, I do not have, but my iPhone performance
and reliability (other than on OS upgrade days) has been stellar. In fact, the
iPhone is more solid that it was nearly 15 months ago. I have not even
witnessed battery degradation yet on my first generation model. Yes, I realize
there are iPhone lemons, but I’d assess the iPhone defect rate at a fraction
of all those Palm products.

------
ssharp
Not sure I understand the point about development at all. You can program apps
for the iPhone using HTML/Javascript/CSS as well. In fact, when it was first
announced, many people criticized Apple for not having a native SDK. People
felt that it was too limiting and you couldn't really tap into the power of
the phone. We've seen some great applications since the SDK has come out that
shows that these folks were justified in their initial critiques.

As it is now, you can still program apps for the App Store using web
technologies through the WebView object.

------
axod
>> "The iPhone’s call quality is notoriously abysmal"

I've heard other people complain about call quality with the iPhone, but only
people in the US. Is this a US only phenomenon?

Surely this is down to the network, and not the handset. I know that doesn't
help much if you don't have a choice of network, but I haven't heard of any UK
users complain about call quality.

All in all my experience of call quality in the US on _any_ phone has been
abysmal, including land lines...

Also I think you place way too much importance on the app store. I doubt that
many people buy a phone based on the apps they can install on it, obviously to
hackers it's important, but for most people I'd say the app store is a sort of
bonus they didn't know about.

I tried out a G1 yesterday, and although it looked quite nice, the keyboard is
so small it's impossible to use :( Still thinking of getting one sometime,
wondering how it stacks up against the iPhone.

Great to see some more competition though :)

~~~
enomar
> I tried out a G1 yesterday, and although it looked quite nice, the keyboard
> is so small it's impossible to use :(

I have to completely disagree with you here. The keyboard is one of the G1's
redeeming features. I type much faster and make much fewer mistakes on it than
when typing on my iPhone. It's especially better than all those phones with
physical keyboards with weird non-standard layouts. YMMV...Just thought I'd
offer a counter example to yours :)

~~~
axod
Yeah you may be right, I just couldn't work out how I'm supposed to use it...
One finger, two thumbs, 2 fingers? With the iPhone i use 1 finger and can type
pretty fast, but with the G1 it was just really hard to hit the right key, and
you actually have to press pretty hard which slowed me down a lot.

How long did it take you to get used to it? Does it always take so much effort
to register a keypress, or does that 'loosen up'.. :/

~~~
lacker
If you're trying to do 1-finger typing, no wonder you found the G1
inconvenient. Use the G1 keyboard with two thumbs, holding the device with
both hands. (I can't even figure out how you would use it with two fingers.)

~~~
axod
Yeah I just can't do 2 thumb typing. iPhone one finger peck works for me...
does the G1 also have an on screen keyboard?

~~~
enomar
It will... [http://lifehacker.com/5115473/touch+screen-keyboard-shown-
in...](http://lifehacker.com/5115473/touch+screen-keyboard-shown-in-android-
cupcake-video)

------
randallsquared
"If your phone is on multiple carriers that collectively serve four times as
many customers, it only needs to be some amount greater than 25% as appealing
to get the same market share."

If you measure "appeal" by market share, then this is a tautology. If you
measure appeal by some other method, it's almost certainly false.

~~~
mattmcknight
That math is wacky. The >25% number is assuming that people won't switch
carriers for a really cool phone like the iPhone. So it's obviously wrong. The
point he is trying make is that if it's the best Sprint phone, the best
Verizon phone, and the best T-Mobile phone, it's going to get a lot of sales,
even if it isn't the best AT&T phone.

------
anthonyrubin
Why is it that everyone bitched when the iPhone offered a Javascript widget
API and now Palm is being praised for it?

~~~
blasdel
Because this adds a fuckton of standard libraries to JavaScript -- a full set
of syscalls for manipulating files, contacts, etc -- it's not just a standard
browser, and your shit is stored on the device.

------
jhancock
Matt's article links to the Pre intro page at palm.com
<http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html>

It has a "notify me" button to register when there is more info. Since noone
outside Palm has touched a Pre yet but we _all_ know about it, I think somehow
I'll be kept informed either way ;)

------
bprater
Matt, white on black is really tough on the eyes.

~~~
palish
Not for me.

(If we're dishing out opinions, I thought I'd throw mine in.)

------
Silentio
I think the Pre looks interesting, but the biggest draw for me when it comes
to the iPhone is the tight integration to my mac. If a smart phone isn't going
to synch easily and seamlessly with my PC I'm not interested.

------
dmix
Ahh, early adopters, you can always rely on them.

------
pistoriusp
I find the call quality to be really good, much better than my Nokia could
ever achieve.

