I-Phone Killer ?
I’ve had my mobile phone for a couple of years now and have been thinking about getting a new one. Nothing wrong with the one I have (Nokia E65). It does everything really well but the new touch screen smartphones have really caught my eye. A few of my friends have the I-Phone which looks great but heard the battery life is really poor (one of my pet bugs). Then a couple of months ago a friend got the HTC Touch HD which looks to be even better – he raves about it all the time. So I thought I had finally found the smartphone to go for. Until I heard about the Palm Pre.
The Palm Pre (pronounced pree) got a lot of praise at CES 2009 back in January. CES is probably the world’s biggest annual consumer electronics trade show. The Pre has not yet been released but a lot of people are already calling it the I-Phone Killer. Not sure about that. It looks a very impressive smartphone but I’ve spotted a few things that may count against it.
1. The screen looks a lot smaller than the I-Phone or the HTC Touch HD
2. The Brand Loyalty of Apple and the I-Phone
3. It’s a Palm
Re: Number 2. Now this may come as a surprise to many of you but I’m one of the few people who has never owned an Apple product ! That’s right not even an I-pod (I have a Sony Mp3 Walkman). What has amazed me though is the fanatical following Apple products have. Many people who have Apple products will never use any other brand. So I doubt many people are going to make the switch from the I-Phone.
Re: Number 3. This may be a bit unfair but Palm used to be one of the leaders of portable devices. Not anymore. Its slipped so far back people are saying that the Pre could make or break the company. Their real problem was that they never thought Apple could crack the mobile phone. At the time when Apple announced the I-Phone, Palm said a computer Company just couldn’t “walk in” and make a top quality phone.
But, as the New York Times so brilliantly put it, “Apple, the novice, didn’t merely walk into the business. It climbed a 10-meter platform and executed a back two and a half somersaults with two and a half twists in the pike position.”
The Pre is due for release in America by July so I guess it would be towards the end of 2009 for Kuwait. Anyway instead of me going through the features, I found this brilliant short video review from Stuff Tv that shows off the best bits of the Palm Pre and asks if its better than the I-Phone. They seem to think so…
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One really good thing about the iphone, is the App store, where you can buy different programs, such as games and productivity software. Also, Apple regularly updates the Operating system, which is an attractive feature when buying a phone.
I’ve heard about the App store. Its another cool thing that sets the I-phone apart from other makes.