Is the iPhone Launch doomed? I think it might be so...

[rattlsnak]

eveyone knows the original razrs suk. I have the newer krazr with att/edge, and it works light years better than the old razr did.

[red-beard]

I hope he didn't bet the company on 10 million units by 2009. That is about $5Billion in sales.

[JavaBrewer]

My Verizon Razr is the worst phone I've owned. The UI is incredibly slow and the battery life is horrible. No downloaded graphics, screen savers, games, ring tones, or apps. Stock out of the box and it's a total dog. Good thing it's a company phone - I would have hated spending money on this thing.

I can't believe folks are willing to pay $600 (iPhone) for the newest gadget. These things are throw away devices after 16 months.

[slakjaw]

Originally posted by dmoolenaar
My Verizon Razr is the worst phone I've owned. The UI is incredibly slow and the battery life is horrible. No downloaded graphics, screen savers, games, ring tones, or apps. Stock out of the box and it's a total dog. Good thing it's a company phone - I would have hated spending money on this thing.

I can't believe folks are willing to pay $600 (iPhone) for the newest gadget. These things are throw away devices after 16 months.

+1

[red-beard]

Originally posted by dmoolenaar
I can't believe folks are willing to pay $600 (iPhone) for the newest gadget. These things are throw away devices after 16 months.

That is the best point so far. $600 is pretty steep. I change my phone about every 18 months to 2 years. And let us not forget, this is the subsidized rate.

I expect that there will be a rush for them in the first few months, then it will drop off rapidly. Then the price will then drop by at least $200, maybe $300, per phone.

[kstar]

Wayne said: "Is the iPhone doomed? I think it might be so..."

It will be interesting to revisit this quote in the months and years ahead.

I will stick my neck out and say this quote will probably meet the same fate of similar calls of doom for the iPod after it was released.

Best,

Kurt

[techweenie]

Originally posted by kstarnes
Wayne said: "Is the iPhone doomed? I think it might be so..."

It will be interesting to revisit this quote in the months and years ahead.

I will stick my neck out and say this quote will probably meet the same fate of similar calls of doom for the iPod after it was released.

Best,

Kurt

Glad you mentioned that. The predictions of failure for the iPod were everywhere. Now, I think there've been 90 million sold.

[kstar]

Originally posted by techweenie
Glad you mentioned that. The predictions of failure for the iPod were everywhere. Now, I think there've been 90 million sold.

100M+

Best,

Kurt

[stomachmonkey]

Originally posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts


I think that maybe sales of the iPhone will suffer significantly due to the restrictions on the AT&T data network.

-Wayne

I think it will be AT&T/Cingulars Draconian attitude towards end user options.

My E62's Firmware was severly crippled by Cingular. Would not allow any 3rd party apps unrestricted access to the network.

Cingular denied it and would divert you to Nokia for support.

The same phone on Rogers in Canada is not restricted.

There is also a "generic" E62 that was slated for other carriers after the Cingular exclusive ran out.

So hacking the BIOS on the phone to change it to either the generic NA or Rogers product allows you to reflash the firmware with the generic/Rogers and voila, uncrippled phone.

The hack was available for about a week before Cingular caught wind and strong armed Nokia into shutting down firmware updates for the e62. Then they had nearly all the posts on various bb's removed to cover up what they had done.

It was all so they could charge $9.95 for services that could be had for free with an uncrippled phone.

They effectively killed the e62 in the NA market.

http://symbianguru.typepad.com/welcome/2006/12/finally_a_java_.html

[island911]

And just another multi-touch on the market http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_htctouch.htm

[Scott at Pelican Parts]

Here is what a recent issue of The Economist had to say about it:

The iPhone's drawbacks include its battery life, which is mediocre and vexing because the battery will be irreplaceable. The phone also uses a data network, AT&T's EDGE, which is slow compared with third-generation networks (although Mr Jobs counters that the iPhone will be so good at hopping onto Wi-Fi hotspots for a broadband connection that this will not matter). Nor is the iPhone open to third-party software developers, although Mr Jobs intends to change that over time.

[red-beard]

Has anyone seen the battery life numbers? I'm interested in both the with and without wifi turned on. How about the mAh of the battery installed?

And not being able to carry a spare battery, bad news with a cell phone. My lifedrive, the battery lasted about a year, and I'm guessing the battery life should be similar.

The Treo680 came out in the past 6 months and the biggest issue was it's battery life is less than the 650. With the push e-mail turned on, it will last 6-8 hours. So I keep some of the features of the phone turned off. That really is not acceptable.

[slakjaw]

Originally posted by red-beard
Has anyone seen the battery life numbers? I'm interested in both the with and without wifi turned on. How about the mAh of the battery installed?

And not being able to carry a spare battery, bad news with a cell phone. My lifedrive, the battery lasted about a year, and I'm guessing the battery life should be similar.

The Treo680 came out in the past 6 months and the biggest issue was it's battery life is less than the 650. With the push e-mail turned on, it will last 6-8 hours. So I keep some of the features of the phone turned off. That really is not acceptable.

I read 8 hours talk time and 6 hours of data use. But as we all know if they say 8 it means 6 in the real world.

[lendaddy]

I heard Jobs claims they are developing a radiation antennae that will harness the power of the users smug energy, granting the device an additional 2-3 hours of life.

[Halm]

The iPhone will be a ground breaking device in many ways, especially the keyboard/interface. The Apple loyalists will have the expected orgasmic response when they get one and it will influence the design of future phones too, like the HTC Touch.

However, it will probably be just another excellent niche Apple product until 2 things are changed. First the market for phones is exploding because of messaging, email in particular. From what I read there are no Blackberry, Good, or Microsoft applets built in. That means Apple ignored the Holy Grail that is driving the market: Over The Air synchronization of everything typically found in Outlook.

On top of that, the multimedia capabilities of the phone are crippled with only having EDGE data connections. That might be semi-ok for downloading a MP3 or 3, but there is no way I would try to pull down a DVD. Why they didn’t go ahead and add HSDPA (3G) is beyond me. Even worse is that AT&T is slowing down 3G deployment and emphasizing an improvement to their EDGE network to accommodate the iPhone! So don’t look for this problem to go away anytime soon.

So in the end the initial iPhone will be a multimedia success filling the need of a relatively small market segment but again missing the mass market. Maybe Rev 2 will move it mainstream.

[Neilk]

Everyone mentions how good the iPhone will be with WiFi, but how many of those hotspots are open? Will the iPhone magically connect to WPA or WEP encrypted hotspots? WiFi capability might be fine at home or in the office, but it will useless in most areas unless you pay for another fee for WiFi service.

I'm looking forward to an iPhone Mini with a lower price. $500 is a bit much.

[nostatic]

Apple doesn't need Microsoft applets and other crap. They just announced the killer app: youtube. With H.264 they'll be able to stream over Edge. The first iteration will likely be a bit rough, but that will change. And it'll be 3G soon enough (that was likely due to FCC issues). I'm sure it'll do email push as well...that isn't rocket science. Likely it'll be a kludge early on (probably doing it through att or .mac and safari), but remember, this isn't a "corporate" phone. Most non-geeks are texting, not emailing. Email is for old farts.

[slakjaw]

Originally posted by nostatic
Apple doesn't need Microsoft applets and other crap. They just announced the killer app: youtube. With H.264 they'll be able to stream over Edge. The first iteration will likely be a bit rough, but that will change. And it'll be 3G soon enough (that was likely due to FCC issues). I'm sure it'll do email push as well...that isn't rocket science. Likely it'll be a kludge early on (probably doing it through att or .mac and safari), but remember, this isn't a "corporate" phone. Most non-geeks are texting, not emailing. Email is for old farts.

Stream video over EDGE? Yeah. when pigs fly. Do not blame the FCC for ATT's 2G network. A direct quote from the CEO "We are not sure what 2G is fully capable of yet so we will continue to explore it"

[RANDY P]

I have a Blackjack. 1st thing I noticed was the horrible battery life in 3g- I could barely do 30 minutes talk time before it dropped out. The thing is shipped with two batteries, Samsung knows this.

The common fix is to hack a shortcut into adminset so you can set the phone to GSM to make it operate like a normal phone, only activate 3g for internet surfing.

Other bugs with the network include roaming, when you leave your area for another 3g area if someone calls they get the "the subscriber has traveled out of the area" message instead of VM if you don't answer.

The sound quality on the phone makes it sound like you're talking through one of those reverb machines from time to time.

It still needs work..

rjp

[nostatic]

You don't understand. I'm not talking about ATT, I'm talking about Apple designing v1 for Edge rather than 3G. My understanding is that there might have been issues with Apple getting FCC approval, so they went eith Edge for v1.

You'd be surprised what you can stream video over.