
Why iPhone Will Win - far33d
http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/04/24/five_reasons_wh_1.html
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eli
Ok, this is topic I know a little bit about. Here goes...

1\. Samsung & BlackBerry browsers? That's not a fair comparison at all! Opera
Mobile and Nokia's S60 browser are the clear market leaders (and, yes, both of
them render full web pages with JavaScript/AJAX as a thumbnail that you can
then zoom in on) See: <http://www.opera.com/products/mobile/> and
<http://www.s60.com/browser/> (btw, the S60 browser is open-source and based
on webkit). The iPhone browser is _supposed_ to be very good, but no one's
really seen it yet. And it took many years of work for Nokia and Opera to get
where they are today (Microsoft still isn't there, and they've really been
trying).

2\. Touchscreens. If all you want is a touchscreen, you can pick up, say, the
LG Prada phone or the Samsung Ultra Smart F700. They both sport full-screen
touchscreens like the iPhone. There are others.

3\. Mobile fonts: please. Virtually all modern smartphones have nice,
antialiased fonts. Take any cheap Windows Mobile phone for example.

4\. Big Screens: You _can_ get phones with bigger screens than the iPhone.
(But until they invent fold-away screens, they're gonna be bulky)

5\. Mobile interfaces suck. Ok, I'll give you this one. But I've got a bonus
anti-feature of the iPhone for the YComb audience: The iPhone is bad news for
developers! <http://www.fiercedeveloper.com/story/editor-s-corner/2007-01-16>

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Readmore
I love it when people talk about how you 'won't be able to dial a number
without looking at the phone' Who dials numbers on a cell phone? I don't know
anyone's number I just pick them out of my stored numbers list. I'm surprised
they aren't asking why it doesn't have a rotary interface.

~~~
Sam_Odio
Good point. Knowing Apple, I also have a feeling they'll come up with some
innovative solutions to the no-number-pad problem.

Some ideas:

\- Automatically complete phone numbers, as you dial them

\- Spotlight-type search for contacts. I.e, I dial "442" and the phone
displays all contacts with 442 in the number, address, etc. I could then press
the contact I want to call.

\- Better voice recognition technology. For example, if I say "Call Mike," the
phone displays the top 3 contacts it thinks match my request, I then confirm
the default choice or select one out of the list. Maybe the phone even learns?

Obviously, this is all speculation. But the point is, it should be easy to
come up with solutions to this problem that actually make the phone easier to
use.

~~~
randallsquared
Current voice recognition technology is actually fine. My wife's phone has a
dial-by-voice feature that she uses all the time to select from her contacts,
and it's a prepaid phone she bought outright for 19 bucks. This suggests to me
that voice recognition for things like "Call Mike" is a solved problem.

~~~
jaggederest
My phone has a simple script:

"Please say a command."

-call someone

"please say a name"

-joe

"did you say... joe?"

-yes

"call mobile?"

-yes

"calling..." and it starts ringing. The prompts are optional too, you can just
push the button and say 'Call someone, joe, yes, yes' and it'll go for it.

