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Nokia's iPhone, No Seriously 243

Several readers have written to tell us that Engadget has a look at Nokia's visions for the future. "It was presented during Nokia's GoPlay event this morning as a glimpse into the future of Nokia interface design. Oh, and it's due out next year. When pressed during the Q&A about the striking similarity to the little Cupertino device, Anssi Vanjoki — Nokia's Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia — said, 'If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride.' Well, ok then."
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Nokia's iPhone, No Seriously

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  • Not even a Stanza...

    But maybe I can mod this, and make a trade for a refurbed Segway.

    Well, in any case, I'm holding out for the ZunePhone...
  • This is S60 4.0 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eugenia Loli ( 250395 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @06:56PM (#20405563) Journal
    This will be based on Symbian's S60 4.0 new version btw, not Linux. It's just the evolution of their S60 smartphone platform.
    • Re:This is S60 4.0 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 222 ( 551054 ) <stormseeker@gma i l . com> on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:20PM (#20405801) Homepage
      As an IT professional, I prefer the S60 series of devices over the iPhone hands down. Symbian has a whole slew of applications available for the platform, including Putty, Citrix, and RDP clients. My E61i has built in wifi, and Nokia has released a SCCP client (Cisco VoIP) that registers with my Cisco CallManager cluster as soon as I enter the building. Combine that with their full Intellisync package, and you've got the sexiest work phone ever. I'll grant you that the average cell phone user would have a better time with the iPhone, but for me it's Nokia all the way.

      For a more humorous take on what I'm talking about, check out http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=ip hone [thebestpag...iverse.net]">this review.
      • Re:This is S60 4.0 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbearNO@SPAMpacbell.net> on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:36PM (#20405931) Homepage
        The customer Apple is targetting thinks Putty is silly, Citrix is a vitamin C supplement, and RDP is a French police department. SCCP and VoIP is just as arcane to them as TCPIP, XSLT, and the DMCA.

        It's great that Nokia has such a wonderful phone for you, but isn't it even better that, coming soon, Nokia will have an iPhone-like device that will do everything you just described, AND work like an iPhone too?
        • Re:This is S60 4.0 (Score:5, Insightful)

          by catwh0re ( 540371 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @08:15PM (#20406223)
          Judging from my experience with nokia phones. The user interface, performance and construction will still have significant gaps/compromise in order to keep the end price affordable and the handset profitable.(Apple earn their followers by producing thorough and seamless interfaces, this directly contradicts Nokia's business model.)

          Plus in the hey-day of MP3 player competition: Apple rolled out new models twice a year. I doubt that the iPhone won't be following the same aggressive product development cycle.

          I'm not dissing Nokia for duplicating the iPhone interface (and definitely extending it with their handset experience.) What I am saying however is that Nokia will produce every kind of phone out there in their usual jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none design ethos.

          They know that profitability is not about having the best phone out there, but having something comparable and half the price. (I.e consumer choice.)

          Additionally one can argue that the two companies work in different markets: Nokia rarely cut out seldom used/confusing features in the fear that they'll strike off a possible buyer. Apple on the other hand will only include the most desired features and reinvent them with their particular experience in usability.

          • Re:This is S60 4.0 (Score:4, Interesting)

            by 2ms ( 232331 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @09:53PM (#20406917)
            Wow, your perception of Nokia is the complete opposite of mine. In my opinion, and frankly it's a very predominant one in the industry, Nokia is synonymous with the highest quality hardware and most intuitive interfaces in the mobile phone market. This is relative to the other phone companies, of course, not Apple because no one has made a phone anything like the iPhone before and it's too early to see what kind of phone company Apple will prove to be.

            Anyway, Nokia phones are generally [i]very[/i] expensive relative to their competition as far as comparisons in terms of features go. It is in ease of use, build quality, aesthetics, and performance that Nokia's have traditionally been admired -- certainly not cost.

            It'll be an interesting competition. In a sense, Nokia would be the Apple of traditional mobile phone manufacturers. Indeed, particularly since Nokia has traditional been the innovator in form factors, technologies -- certainly the one cloned rather than the cloner -- I'm actually pleasantly a bit surprised by their shrewdness and humility in simply recognizing the excellence of the Apple phone and quickly taking advantage of the position they have (unusually), of being second and thus, able to copy it ;)
            • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

              by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @10:45PM (#20407269)
              Comment removed based on user account deletion
              • Re:This is S60 4.0 (Score:5, Insightful)

                by raju1kabir ( 251972 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @11:34PM (#20407591) Homepage

                I'm not sure what fanboy coolaid you are drinking, but nokia have been far from innovative in handset design. It took them years to understand that phones could actually be designed a tad more stylish than the standard house brick format.

                I think you're making his point for him.

                I don't give a shit about how stylish my phone is.

                I want one that lets me do what I need to do as efficiently as possible.

                To date, Nokia kicks everyone else's ass in that regard. On average, the interface requires the fewest button presses to do the most common things, and it's relatively internally consistent compared to most other handset brands.

            • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

              by Anonymous Coward
              Nokia may be the Apple of mobile phones if not for a very important difference: Nokia has a large maket share.
            • Nokia phones are no better than a standard phone. Nokia is THE standard phone. They have that position because: They make properitary extensions that other companies need to copy, they make cheap phones, everybody has one, and getting the same model as your friends enable more features.

              Nokia is the microsoft of mobile phones. Cheap, crappy and ubiques.
            • Nokia is synonymous with the highest quality hardware and most intuitive interfaces in the mobile phone market.

              s/is/used to be/

              There was a time Nokia kicked every other phone's but when it cam to robustness, usability and function.

              Sadly that disappeared after the 6310i or thereabouts, coincidentally when they decided to move to S60/EPOC/Symbian...

              I have a Nokia 70 right now, which I'd trade for any other Phone at the drop of a hat, including for Motorola even. And that is saying something.

              The interface is

        • Except try dialing number or texting without looking at the screen. Having actual tactile buttons or keys makes inputing of text a lot easier. As nice as this new Nokia seems to be for browsing photos, it seems like it would suck as a phone.
          • Phone interface (Score:3, Informative)

            by Enderandrew ( 866215 )
            I agree. My favorite interface for a phone seemingly died ages ago, though I hear iPods offer it. I miss the jog-dial. With it, I could easily operate my phone with my left hand while doing something else. I really love my Samsung slider, though I wish the buttons offered even more in the way of tactile feedback. For instance some phones have tiny ridges on some of the numeric keys to act almost as home-keys, so it is easier to avoid mis-dialing a phone number when you're not looking.
      • Combine that with their full Intellisync package, and you've got the sexiest work phone ever.

        I bet you were one of the people who were complaining about the iPhone lacking a keyboard, but now that someone else makes a touch-screen smart phone, it'll be the sexiest work phone ever.

        Now I think Apple forbidding 3rd party development is about the worse move ever, but hey, it's happening anyway. Either way, the important thing isn't what features a phone has, but how well those features are implemented.

      • by Greyfox ( 87712 )
        Yup, my Nokia E70 is worth all the hoops I had to jump through to get it here and the price tag. It can use a regular MP3 as a ring tone, connect to my Asterisk box via wifi and create SIP calls and moving MP3s to and from its 1gb MiniSD card via bluetooth is almost ridiculously easy. It's also capable of connecting my laptop to the Internet via bluetooth assuming T-Mobile's data service didn't suck so hard. Maybe it's time to check the GSM provider roundup again, hmm...
    • by valdean ( 819852 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:53PM (#20406073)
      And it's the "pinnacle of human achievement" [thebestpag...iverse.net].
    • Re:This is S60 4.0 (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @10:22PM (#20407125)
      Oh no, not Symbian!

      I'm an intern at Nokia Research right now. We all hate Symbian here. Symbian C++ is incredibly bizarre to program for, and this is coming from someone who thinks Haskell is a great language. You can make the phone OS either lock up or reset way too easily. If linux ever makes it into the flagship phones, I think you'll see a lot more innovation out of Nokia, because the developers and researchers will no longer be hobbled.

      For example, Dlls are limited to a 1MB heap... unless you declare a new heap, then swap it out with User::SwapHeap. Of course if you call new on one heap and delete on another all hell breaks loose. Why have a hard limit on Dll heap size if you can just code around it?

      Don't even get me started on the hacked together perl scripts that constitute the developer's kit (assuming you're a command line + emacs/vi person). Your SDK has to be in the root directory (or subst'd to be such), and your code has to live somewhere on the same drive - ie all projects live under the SDK.

      The security model is a nightmare for researchers. You can't make the phone do anything genuinely new without flashing the phone firmware to a dev version, which means nothing you've written can ever be tried out by other people (nobody wants to flash their personal phone to the dev version), which means the idea will never make it out of the lab and dies from lack of exposure.

      Bah. Posting anon for obvious reasons :)
      • Re:This is S60 4.0 (Score:5, Interesting)

        by weicco ( 645927 ) on Thursday August 30, 2007 @02:19AM (#20408417)

        How's the Visual Studio development toolkit going on? I was supposed to be project manager on that but they moved the whole project to Chezk if I remember correctly :)

        I worked as Symbian coder for couple of years 2003-2004 and man it sucked. The whole development environment is absolutely horrible! But let's start from documentation. The whole documentation is directly generated from comments coming from .h and .c files. Often it lacked some necessary information which had to be googled or your software came crashing down. Sometimes it even gave wrong info and your software came crashing down. Documentation was almost useless.

        And how about debuggin then? What's the idea with phone simulator (not emulator) that lacks of phone functionalities! There was some hack to get it to use Windows' TCPIP stack but no calls and no SMS. Simulator ran on X86 so you couldn't catch any of the ARM (or was it MIPS? Don't remember.) specific errors.

        Building process was absolute mess! Perl scipts which had to be invoked from command line. Luckily I managed to create nice .bat file which compiled everything and packaged software to installation package. There was some weird thing with Perl also that you had to set some environment variables to get it working. Nothing of this was on the documentation of course. Just a notice, that you should not set this variable...

        The whole architecture was pure shit. I've never seen a good C++ API and Symbian was/is no exception. Of course the lack of exception handling in the normal C++ way doesn't help either (yes, I know C++ didn't have exceptions when Symbian was first made but they was on experimental state and they could have added those later). I've heard a saying that if you need to inherit multiple classes (not interfaces or abstract classes but normal classes) there's something terrible wrong with your code. Well, I often ended up inheriting 3-5 classes and implementing 1-2 interfaces. Talking about good design...

        And that's just the Symbian part. Add Nokia's Sxx or (Sony)Ericsson's UIQ above that with their braindead design and you get a very fucked up coder.

        This reminds me when I was looking for a new job, I think it was -05, I got a phone call from London (I live in Finland) and they offered me a Symbian job. You know what I answered? "There's no company in the world that will pay me enough to get back to that horrible piece of ..." (I'm a gentleman, I don't curse when there's ladies around/in phone). Need I say that I didn't take the job? :)

        Posting non-anon for karma whoring :P

  • by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @06:59PM (#20405597) Homepage
    I guess that beats everyone else's motto; "If there is something good in the world, aquire dubious IP then SUE SUE SUE!".
  • I read the article before seeing it here. Nokia says they were displaying there touch screen technology. The fact they chose a hardware platform that looked...familiar is simply been reason for a few chuckles. So it's an OS thing more then a hardware thing. They probably could have done it with a less obvious knock-off, but I'm sure they needed something fast with the right screen size to display the feature.
  • Turn it on its head (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fishthegeek ( 943099 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:10PM (#20405711) Journal
    I'm actually pretty excited to see iPhone features make their way into non Apple products. Sure it is blatant idea theft. Sure Nokia is leeching whatever "coolness" they can from Apples form factor. Who cares? We have PCs that aren't proprietary because of blatant idea theft. Hell, we really wouldn't have spinning cubes in Linux were it not for ideas presented in other operating systems. Noah Wylie, while playing Steve Jobs said that "good artists copy, great artists steal". I do not mind getting quality (if Apple like) features at a lower price than Apple is willing to offer.
    • by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @08:02PM (#20406135) Homepage

      Noah Wylie, while playing Steve Jobs said that "good artists copy, great artists steal"

      That quote is stolen from Picasso, I believe.

    • by mrjatsun ( 543322 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @08:18PM (#20406251)
      > Sure it is blatant idea theft

      You forget, Apple is leveraging decades of ideas in cell phone technology for their product that they never thought of. Sure they have a lot of great new ideas, but I don't see other folks using their ideas as stealing. No more than I see Apple building a cell phone as stealing.
    • by Lars T. ( 470328 )

      I'm actually pretty excited to see iPhone features make their way into non Apple products. Sure it is blatant idea theft. Sure Nokia is leeching whatever "coolness" they can from Apples form factor. Who cares? We have PCs that aren't proprietary because of blatant idea theft. Hell, we really wouldn't have spinning cubes in Linux were it not for ideas presented in other operating systems. Noah Wylie, while playing Steve Jobs said that "good artists copy, great artists steal". I do not mind getting quality (if Apple like) features at a lower price than Apple is willing to offer.

      The problem is that most just copy and don't actually "steal". "Looking just like the original" isn't enough, it has to act like it too. And the fact that they didn't show any multi-touch features means Nokia is merely a "good" artist.

  • Umm, someone just took a video editing program, and replaced the Apple with Nokia. People on Slashdot AND Digg seem to not be picking up on this yet.
    It's clearly a poke at Nokia saying, "They are simply going to rip off Apple after the iPhone, and we think they'd go this far". Come on people! Apple DID file a handful of patents on this.
  • by timmyf2371 ( 586051 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:29PM (#20405867)
    I'm not so sure that the finished model will end up looking like this; the European iPhone launch is seemingly due to happen shortly, and it makes perfect sense for Nokia to remind people that there is something better just around the corner.

    Nokia's high-end products have always been head and shoulders above the rest. Its current top of the range models are arguably better than the iPhone, possibly excepting the design and touchscreen. When Nokia do launch this device, or a similar one, I've no doubt it will support technologies such as HSDPA (3.5G), multimedia messages, uPnP media sharing, third party (unsigned) applications and all the multimedia functions us Europeans have come to expect from Nokia's "multimedia computers".

    There is no doubt in my mind that Apple are the proverbial Rolls Royce of desktop computing, however I'm not too sure of their credentials in the global mobile telephony market - I just don't believe they "get it".
    • by dwater ( 72834 )
      > When Nokia do launch this device, or a similar one, I've no doubt it will support technologies ... third party (unsigned) applications

      You're kidding, surely?

      They don't support that now, intentionally. I know developers hate the whole SymbianSigning thing, but are you really suggesting that they'll listen to developers and stop that somehow?
      • I don't claim to know the full details of how the signed applications thing works, but the three Symbian devices I've used on a regular basis (N70, N80, 6120) allow me to run unsigned applications. They throw up a warning message informing me of the risks involved in running and installing unsigned applications, but once I click past that I haven't encountered any problems in actually running them. The Symbian OS also supports standard Java Midlets (which run on the vast majority of new phones) and there ha
        • by dwater ( 72834 )
          > N70 [forumnokia.mobi], N80 [forumnokia.mobi], 6120 [forumnokia.mobi]

          The N70 is 2nd edition device, so that will run unsigned applications, but the other two are 3rd edition and won't. Of course, I'm talking about native applications (ie written in C++), not java/etc.

          This has been the main problem for developers targeting S60 3rd edition. Even freeware needs to be signed (a slow, slow, slow process). You can sign them yourself, as a developer, so they'll run only on your own phone (or a small selection) but they've been cracking down on that over the
    • by GauteL ( 29207 )
      "Nokia's high-end products have always been head and shoulders above the rest."

      And still rather crap. I've got a Nokia Symbian phone with all the features I could ever want; a 3.2 megapixel camera with a decent point and shoot lens, video chat, 3G, radio, mp3-player, PDF reader, video player, web browser, blue tooth, irda, etc. etc.

      But it is still shit. Every single feature feels like loosely connected applications rather than a part of an integrated whole. Every feature is just a little bit awkward, making
  • by elysian1 ( 533581 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:33PM (#20405889)
    Didn't Apple file a bunch of patents related to the iPhone and specifically the touch screen?

    How long before we see Apple's lawyers get on Nokia for patent infringement?
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      How long before we see Apple's lawyers get on Nokia for patent infringement?

      That'd be a really long time. I don't think anyone, Apple least of all, believes that the iPhone wouldn't accidentally tread on at least one Nokia patent. A lawsuit would no doubt result in a codified arrangement that's otherwise equivalent to the current tacit agreement. Basically, a cross-licensing agreement that allows both companies to use both sets of patents.

      It's really not worth it for either company to spend the money on law

    • by e4g4 ( 533831 )
      Actually, I believe Apple bought the company that designed the touch-screen (and thus the patents for said technology). But touch-screen's aren't new. One detail I did not see in the video was multi-touch - I think Nokia will have a hard time getting around the patents for that (for now).
  • There's copying... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @07:34PM (#20405903) Journal
    and then there's carbon-copying. Which this is. It doesn't just resemble the iPhone or steal ideas from it - everything I saw in the technology demo was EXACTLY the same.

    So not dubious - shameless. Yeesh.
    • by mce ( 509 )

      So what do you want instead? Do you want Apple to patent, trademark, copyright, and encrypt, the hell out of the entire iAlphabet range of potential products and how they might work just so nobody can copy them? Why are patents used to prevent copying of innovative ideas judged to be bad when they are owned by certain companies, while copying a great idea is judged to be bad when the item being copied was engineered by some "holy grail" company or nerd god?

      For $DEITY's sake, what Nokia may not be very or

      • "... but if Apple didn't patent their iPhone properly, there's nothing wrong with it. If Apple did patent it properly, Nokia wouldn't have copied or would/will be facing a law suit. Note that if Nokia found a way around any relevant existing Apple patents, then: 1) Apple didn't patent properly after all, despite having their patents; 2) Nokia has been more creative in finding a way around the patents than a very first look at their phone suggests and hence should get the credit for it."

        More likely, Nokia w

        • by mce ( 509 )

          You misunderstood my message. The game I'm refering to has only one outcome: "patents are bad". Until, that is, this stance suddenly doesn't fit the /. dogmas after all, because then it suddenly has multiple ones. Hence the cookie applies, even if I don't say so at all.

          Note that it's not the game I personally play, as I don't agree that patents are either bad or panacea, but it's the game that many people on /. play when the whole attacking concept of IP.

  • Yawn... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by CRobin ( 20777 )
    Come on what is the big deal about this thing. The iPhone has a touch-screen interface, which is really its great innovation. Nokia has made a touch-screen interface to their OS, the iPhone has shown its a great way to have a small communication device with a small footprint. What do you expect for a touch-screen phone other one big display? Granted this will probably be much better in many ways for, more hackable, more bleeding edge hardware/features, but its just the inevitable, big screen with few
  • Sometimes I think the discussions on Slashdot are pretty dumb, but that Engadget discussion is a whole order of magnitude more dumb. I guess it's because it involves Apple.

    It's not the hardware that makes this an iPhone clone, it's the look and feel of the interface. Hell from that poor quality video they posted even the UI colours seem to be the same.

    Also Apple have patents on the UI behaviour up the wazoo.

    On the other hand Nokia won't lock their device to particular networks, make it unlockable, and sell
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Jeremy_Bee ( 1064620 )
      Interesting analysis but your (rather strong) bias is showing.

      There is not a Nokia phone made today that the Apple iPhone doesn't blow out off the water "value-proposition-wise" with it's first iteration. The very bankruptcy of Nokia's idea mill is shown by the very subject of this thread; the announcement that they are going to try to copy the iPhone.

      What do you mean by "Nokia's more mature interface"?

      Isn't that just spin for "old-fashioned?" Also the iPhone runs OS-X a variant of Unix. I think that Unix
      • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @11:10PM (#20407409)
        You've probably never used a Nokia Communicator, an N800 or even an N70, let alone a high-end Qtek PDA (ex., Qtek 9000), right? Thought so.

        The iPhone might look very impressive in the USA, where cell phones seem to have been stuck in the early 90s (your theory that Motorola was ever "the cellphone of choice" confirms this), but it's a joke compared to any modern european or asian smartphone. Why do you think Apple is limiting it to the US? Because that's the only place where they'll be able to sell something so underpowered for such a high price. Sure, there are some Apple fanbois in Europe too, but there's also real competition (phones come unlocked, and there are lots of operators). The iPhone needs to go through at least three iterations until it is ready to be sold in Europe and Asia, and the competition (Nokia, Qtek, Sony-Ericsson, etc.) aren't exactly sitting still.
      • by Iloinen Lohikrme ( 880747 ) on Thursday August 30, 2007 @12:23AM (#20407875)

        It seems that you don't understand how Nokia works. Nokias competitive advantage isn't design or superior technology, it's main competitive advantage is mass production of phones and phone models. Yes, Nokia doesn't just produce massive amounts of phones, it produces massive amounts of different phone models. The idea is simple, produce as many phone models as quickly as you can, and hope that at least few will be big hits and the others will just do.

        It also seems that you really don't have a grasp of mobile phone markets. Nokia isn't just top at the moment, they have been for almost the last 10 years at the top. They currently have 37% market share globally. They are the most profitable mobile phone company not just now, but have been for the long time being. When we look at technology, production and marketing abilities, there really isn't any other phone company as Nokia.

        On technology wise Symbian is the number one mobile OS. It was originally developed for the handhelds and has been powering them from the days of Psion. Most of the smart phones in the world are powered by Symbian and the platform has support not just from Nokia and Sony-Ericsson, but from other handset manufacturers also. As what comes to interface, yes the iPhone has a pretty interface which polished to death, but news flash, that same polishing can be found from the newer phones. Also it should be noted, it just isn't one interface Nokia is catering, they have Series 60, they are Series 40, they customize and try quite a lot. They may not be as innovative as Apple, but why be when they can just copy, imitate and mass produce.

        As to your question about what happens when and if Apple will produce its low market version of iPhone, the answer to that one is easy: Nokia will just copy it, produce handful of new models, drop margins if needed for those phones and make sure that there is no way for Apple to succeed in the market. Actually I would argue that for now it's even impossible for Apple to try to gain any strong foothold from the markets, they have shown their cards are they are being copied and out imitated. It should also be noted that Apple isn't known to play in the mass production league, they are a company serving niche segments and are to do that with a bigger gross margin.

        I would suggest that you take a visit to a Nokia NYCs Store or maybe visit their European pages to see on just what and how much they offer. Nokias European homepage [nokia.com]

      • The majority of Nokia's sales are bottom of the market crud phones. I know because I have one myself.

        There is a very mysterious form of logic at work here.

        I own an expensive Nokia. Do I therefore "know" that "the majority of Nokia's sales" are high-end phones?

        There is not a Nokia phone made today that the Apple iPhone doesn't blow out off the water "value-proposition-wise" with it's first iteration.

        Until Apple comes up with a keyboard and an open apps platform, they're not blowing Nokia out of the water

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hattig ( 47930 )

        Interesting analysis but your (rather strong) bias is showing.

        By all accounts I'm an Apple fanboy, but reading your post I think you have me down as a Nokia/Symbian fanboy or Apple hater! I guess I tried too hard to be balanced or reasonable. Or pessimistic.

        Mature simply means that they've been doing phone UIs for years. Of course that does mean they were set in their ways and concepts, whereas Apple could come straight in an refine the current state of the art into the iPhone's UI, which is smooth and exce

  • I'm just waiting for OpenMoko [slashdot.org] to finish their beta.
  • Engadget called (Score:2, Redundant)

    by cyberfunk2 ( 656339 )
    They want their story back.... the headline's even ripped.. come on guys. "http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/29/nokias-iphone- no-seriously/"
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lordlod ( 458156 )
      Would that be the same Engadget that is mentioned in the first line of the story. The same Engadget that is linked to?
      While copying virtually the entire story into the summary seems a bit much I don't really think your statement is profound or informative. Thanks for the link though, it would have been useful if I'd missed the great big blue one in the article.
  • 'If there is something good in the world then we copy with pride.'

    Remember, kids. Copying someone's "intellectual property" is A-OK if you're a mega-corporation, but a crime if you're trading MP3's in your basement. Got that? Good.
  • by or-switch ( 1118153 ) on Wednesday August 29, 2007 @09:02PM (#20406565)
    No product, especially something as personal as your phone, is going to satisfy everyone, and they're not designed to, which is why there are so many to choose from. The iPhone does what it does, and it does it reasonably well (though yeah, the phone feature is the hardest to use). It's a consumer entertainment device so why are so many people hard on it for business. If something else is better for you (you need SSH, Microsoft exchange, etc.) get a phone that has those features. If you can't live without a keyboard, get a phone with a physical keyboard.

    Frankly, for the last two years I've kept a Razr and a video iPod crammed in my pocket, and I'm happy to have one device, that also gives me internet when I need it, in a single device. I wish it had 3G and some other things, but it's also a first generation device. The first iPod kinda sucked too, but not so bad it didn't make a big impact.

    Regarding price, AT&T, and other 'problems' people talk about, get over it. If T-mobile is better for you, go with 'em. Nobody is forcing you to use an iPhone if you don't want to.

    By analogy: When I was shopping for a car recently I looked at cool 50K sports car that only seats 2. Well, I drive around with friends a lot and a 4 seater is much more my speed, and I got one with lots of power for about $30K. I could say, as some do with the iPhone, "It only seats two and costs $50K! I can get a 4 seater for half that." So get the freakin' 4 seater.

    The iPhone is clearly a luxury device designed for a certain market, but not all markets. Is all the griping over this to protect a moron from going into and Apple store, dropping $600 and saying, "WAit, this isn't what I wanted at all." People aren't that dumb, and if they are and have that kind of money, let 'em. Frankly, no cell phone could be perfect, especially with this group. Someone did an analysis on Slashdot I think of the 'ideal' mobile device and then proved it couldn't be made by any one manufacturer because of patent and licensing issues. Go get the phone with the features you want. I showed my iPhone to my parents and they said, "Hmm, we just need a phone that makes phone calls." So I helped them find a simple phone with big buttons because that's what they needed.

    Or is all the griping because you secretly want an iPhone and are frustrated because you can't justify the cost because it doesn't have a feature you truly need. Hmm. I think a lot of the bitching about the AT&T lockout is becuase people still have contracts they can't cancel and really want one. Life's not fair (and yeah, as an AT&T customer for some time now they kinda suck, but what tradeoffs are you willing to make?) IF you're not willing, nobody is forcing you to.

    • "No product, especially something as personal as your phone, is going to satisfy everyone, and they're not designed to, which is why there are so many to choose from."

      That is not the whole story. Take a look at Nokia's product lineup, a really close look, and you discover something very curious. They have dozens of phones at any given time, and dozens of features, all mixed around in ways that don't make sense to consumers. I know, I tried for two years prior to iPhone to find a phone that would annoy m

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Budenny ( 888916 )
        We find this argument again and again from Apple advocates. It goes: choice is painful and people do not want it and cannot exercise it intelligently. Apple's product line, is better because it does not give this choice.

        The argument has usually been applied to hardware. It is better to have less hardware choice - graphics card, keyboards, processors. In the present case it is being applied to features.

        It ignores the way markets and products actually work. Nokia or whoever produces all these different
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Nokia has had touch-sensitive smartphones / PDAs for ages. The same goes for Qtek and a lot of other Asian and European brands. I was always amazed at the success the Blackberry had in the USA (by European / Asian standards it seems like something out of the early 90s) until I went to the USA and saw what crappy sell phones you people have been living with. No wonder the iPhone was such a big deal in the US.

    But the fact is, pretty much any Qtek PDA or Nokia "tablet" cellphone beats it in specifications, fea
  • This is hardly the biggest announcement today, though it may be fake the GPhone seems to be gathering a lot of buzz.

    The GPhone! [last100.com]

    Too bad Slashdot didn't run this, it would have made an interesting conversation even if it was fake :)

    My current phone is free (totally) so buying an expensive one kind of sucks, the prices are massively inflated (as evidenced by their lake of VOIP software), the Gphone doesn't seem to have these problems as much as it has advertising problems (which might be solved with sa
  • Their 770 [nokia.com] and N800 [nokia.com] tablets have touch screens, run Debian Linux [maemo.org] and have WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. They don't have a phone module but I suspect that's for the want of Linux drivers. They're a bit big to be a phone but a bit of development could produce a truly open competitor.
  • Instead of a clamshell with the screen and keyboard on the inside, put two touch screens on the outside. "Open" the phone so both screens are facing the viewer and then one becomes a virtual keyboard. When not needed for typing, the second screen finally provides enough resolution to effectively browse pages or run some types of programs. Instead of 480x240 on once screen, there'd be 480x480 combined.
  • by HTH NE1 ( 675604 ) on Thursday August 30, 2007 @12:10PM (#20412601)
    Gunmaker Smith & Wesson is planning to come out with their own take on convergence devices: the !Phone (pronounced bang-phone). When the firearm feature is discharged, it automatically calls 911 and uses GPS to report its location. Also included are orientation sensors to record its position and orientation when discharged for ballistic trajectory analysis (similar to features of the Nintendo Wii) and a fingerprint reader embedded in the trigger.

    Shooting ranges will be equipped with devices that communicate with the firearm to inhibit the calling of 911 and instead log the information to your PDA or other portable computing device to analyze your shooting proficiency.

    Of course. the !Phone can also be used to make phone calls. The keypad will be located on the left side of the grip (or right side for the left-handed model), the microphone at the base of the grip, and the speaker just below the tip of the barrel. Flipping the safety answers the call.

    The !Phone accepts multiple batteries which are loaded in the clip. You can install more batteries for longer charge duration at the expense of ammunition at launch, but they are continuing development of a dual-purpose battery-bullet that can be fired once fully discharged.

    A variety of !Phone holsters will be available.

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