To be honest, I’m not really into phones. I have a pretty good one for the UK, all 3g and live tv and browsing etc but the data plan sucked and it’s no use where I am. And my US phone is just about manages to phone and text, there nothing else really to it. So looking at the iPhone coverage I can drool over the design but as for the functionality, if I bought it it’s just end up being a big phone and ipod I can’t put in my pocket, so would sit in the bottom of my bag getting scratched.
And once you get past the design, what is really new about the phone. As Robert says, there’s always a reality distortion field when it comes to Apple announcements. The range of functionality is not too hot as far I can read; Tom has a good piece looking at what it can do compared to his current phone. So again, design good, features not so good. There’s back and forth on a mobile marketing mailing list about design vs functionality, especially about what appears to be the closed nature of the system, without the ability to add functions, tools and widgets. Then again, lack of functionality never stopped the iPod. Would I buy it – probably not. Cool gadget, too expensive for what I would actually use it for.
I wonder why whatever Apple does inspires such excitement. The current iPod setup doesn’t allow for a battery replacement, and repair is practically impossible, requiring the purchase of a new one when it breaks.
Now they’ve gone and invented and all-in-one with a touch pad screen (ewww, finger grease) that is supposedly smart enough to know when you mean to touch the screen versus accidently brushing against it. Then they went and named it iPhone in spite of Cisco and Linksys. While the initial demand may be high, I have a hard time seeing it continue if the glitches that continue to haunt the regular iPod start appearing in the iPhone.