For several years now, an elite squad of engineers at Apple Computer have been working diligently to perfect an intuitive smart phone concept that would both conform to the company’s integrated model and oblige chief executive Steve Jobs. As AppleInsider has been told, it’s the latter of those two feats that has thus far presented the utmost of challenges, largely preserving the project and its many facets behind the fortified walls of the company’s home base. Note: Just to be sure: this initiative is not related to the rumoured iPhone project, according to AppleInsider.
Such a thing would be nice. I’ve noticed that there’s a distinct lack of support for Macs on such devices, syncing is often sub-par, music and media playback is kludgy, and the browser experience is awful (unless you get Opera Mobile). There is a ton of lazy designs that Apple could clean up here, just as they did with MP3 Players.
I’m not a phone / PDA person as I’m attached to my computer so often, but a PDA that just works in the way I’m used to OS X working would sell it for me. I’ve played with Windows Mobile PDAs in stores and they’ve always felt the same as Windows was, paranoic, over done and lazy.
They’ve been around for years and they haven’t sold well. In my opinion, putting a MP3 player in a phone doesn’t add a lot of value.
Smartphones not selling well? I guess somebody forgot to tell Nokia, SonyEricsson, RIM et al.
It depends entirely on how you define “smartphone” and “selling well”. There’s little doubt in the industry that smartphones are underperforming in their sales category compared to non-smartphones. And it’s no wonder: The Nokia e24, for example, costs well over $400. BlackBerries, Treos, likewise, are very expensive compared to your average cellphones.
On my morning to commute into to Boston, the number of people who are plugged into their iPods or other music device is amazing. It would be safe to assume that the number of people on the T who have a cell phone outnumber those who carry an MP3 player, but not by that much. Thus the large overlap would seem to indicate a market for a phone/MP3 player.
Convergence devices are apprentices of many & masters of none; in other words, they tend to do a lot of things in a mediocre way. Hence, people tend to prefer separate devices that do a specific task really well.
Only because a device that does both functions well doesn’t exist.
Give me a phone that works very well as a phone _and_ works like my iPod, and I’ll happily pay for one device (even if it is $400+) to carry instead of two.
But it needs at least the capacity of my 20GB iPod, the ability to synch with my iTunes library, bluetooth, and the ability to place calls over a GSM network.
That’s all I need. I don’t want a camera. Just give me something that works well.
People focus way too much on cramming hardware into small spaces and neglect the software and interface — that’s where Apple shines.
I’ve been using my SonyEricsson T637 for two years now, and I’ve put off getting a new SonyEricsson because I’m waiting for a phone from Apple. If this means I wait another year, that’s fine. I recently sunk about $40 into this phone in the form of a new battery and dock / speakerphone stand. I figured it would last until the iPhone or whatever it is comes out.
Unless storage form factors improve radically, you’re asking for a phone the size of a small brick. No thanks.
Isn’t the story of the ipod that it had to pass the demands of steve jobs? Im guess its the same here, if jobs says he likes it done a special way, thats how it will be done. No need for usability testing in that place;-)
Browser: SonyEricssonZ710i/R1EF Browser/NetFront/3.3 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1
would ensue, if Jobs and the US carriers got together. But if there’s a carrier that would be friendly to an apple smartphone, it would be t-mobile, a company that is definitely willing to take risks in that area.
But I think an Apple smartphone would be a very expensive device, even by smartphone standards, becuase of feature set.
the iPhone, as envisioned by the analysts, is more likely to be successful than a smartphone, and better fits Apple’s customer demographic.
And don’t forget that Disney has agreements with at least one carrier for a cell phone device.