Jessica Mintz:
Other phones have higher-resolution cameras and can shoot high-definition video. The processor seems faster in new phones such as the Droid Incredible. A more energy-efficient touch-screen technology is eclipsing the one used in the iPhone screen. And competitors are matching features that once set the iPhone apart, including its slim shape and its store with thousands of applications and games.
“This thing is not state of the art,” says ABI Research analyst Michael Morgan.
How long will it take journalists to recognize that processor speed doesn’t matter. And matching the look of an iPhone, and it’s App store is hardly the same as matching the iPhone’s features. I could make my own App store, but nobody would buy anything from it – cause nobody wants to develop for it. Still would that mean I have matched the iPhone’s features. The App store is not a feature, the hundreds of thousands of apps in the store, that is the feature.
And I can’t let this bit go either:
Carolina Milanesi, who lives in Britain and analyzes the mobile market for Gartner, has tried to switch away from the iPhone but gets hung up on something every time. She spent 20 minutes trying to set up e-mail on an Android phone, only to fail. The iPhone is so simple her 2 1/2-year-old daughter can operate her spelling and animal-noises apps herself.
The iPhone isn’t as flexible as some others, and Milanesi bristled at things Apple wouldn’t let her do, such as set custom tones for incoming text messages, a common tweak in Europe.
“But then you kind of get used to it, and you don’t miss it,” she says. “You kind of think that that’s for your own good.”
Wow, so Android is better, but it is hard to setup email? And she wants custom text message tones, but then she doesn’t really care all that much in the end. This all sounds like grasping at straws.