iPhone Thoughts

So after reading a number of reviews, watching a few of the iPhone videos, my ramblings on the iPhone, possibly the most hyped gadget ever.

I think, at the end of the day, the iPhone does what it can brilliantly.

First and foremost - it is an iPod. And it is a brilliant iPod at that. It does what other iPods do, only better, and that alone is a selling point.

It is a good phone. It is an intuitive to use phone. It has some of the features that I would like (silence button for instance) but don't have. The integration with the address book is also a lot more intuitive.

It is a good medium for writing SMS text messages. This past weekend I have had SMS text message conversations comprising over 200 messages in total (it is infinitely cheaper to have a conversation via sms than to use the phone, esp over such a long period of time). It is a pain to view and organise them as they are on the Nokia that I use. The iPhone's conversation view makes brilliant sense, as does Google's gMail.

It is a good web browser. I am not talking about the speed - that is the responsibility of the network. But just as a browser it is brilliant. As someone who regularly uses wap to check my mail (via gMail) or Autosport.com etc, I can say that a full blown browser, even without plugins is long overdue.

Could it be better - off course. It could have had 3G. It could have had better battery life. It could have had faster memory. All those are for the next versions. I am sure most of the UI and multi tap screen features has been patented, and like FairPlay, no other phone manufacturer is going to come out with a UI or phone with the core features of the iPhone in the next couple of years.

At the moment, the iPhone is a good iPod with all the basic features of a phone. The first batch is effectively serving a very core market of people who will buy it because of the emotional attachment and exclusivity. The second and third generation will have more feature, and will going to target the mass appeal so that people will start wanting a iPhone because the Joneses have it. And soon, like the iPod, almost every second Tom, Dick and Sipho will seem to have it.

And then they will launch another gadget that will cause long queues similar to other gadgets on the market, with smaller set of features, but allowing the user to inteeract with those features really, really well. After all it is the usage of the features that matter, not the features themselves.