Five Reasons Why Apple's iPhone is Better Than the Rest

Having now wandered in the wilds of various cellphones over the last few months, I am re-reminded why Apple's (AAPL) iPhone is underestimated. I have a Palm (PALM) Treo 700, a Research in Motion (RIMM) Blackberry 8800, and a Samsung TV phone, and they all suck. Here are five things that bug me about the abovementioned trio, and that favor the iPhone:

Mobile browers are awful. The Treo isn't bad, and it's the best of the above three, but the Samsung and Blackberrry browsers should be outlawed. They are that bad. They are so bad that Blackberry users' opinions about mobile services, mobile startups, etc. should be summarily dismissed.

iPhone: Browser is reputedly very good.

Touch screens rule. Once you've gone touch you'll never go back. Treo has it, Blackberry doesn't, and it drives me nuts. Trying to use a thumb wheel to touch a specific screen element is like dancing about architecture. It's briefly mildly entertaining, but ultimately stupid.

iPhone: Touchscreen. 'Nuff said.

Big screens rule. The Samsung screen is teensy and irritating. The Blackberry and Treo screens are bigger and better, but I want more. I hate having online real estate so crunched. It feels so ... 640x480.

iPhone: Big, bright mofo screen.

Mobile fonts are shit. The Samsung and Blackberry have fonts that only an MS-DOS fan could love. They are clunky, brain-battering and largely unreadable. The Treo fonts are marginally better, but they're still woeful.

iPhone: Lovely fonts, at least in pictures. Would design-obsessed SteveJ ever have it otherwise?

Mobile interfaces are thoughtless. The bizarro combination of escape key and menu key on the Blackberry -- neither of which are labeled in a way that gives any indication what they do -- is maddening. Controls are highly modal, which means something that works one way in one app works totally differently in another. A little thoughtful UI design would transform the market in a heartbeat.

iPhone: You can accuse Apple of many things, but thoughtless interfaces aren't one of them.

Comments

[Richard Alv...:]

So am I the only one that felt like throwing their phone onto on coming traffic?

2007 Apr 25 09:16 AM

[Ruski:]

Admitting that the iPhone ‘looks damn gooood’, I have been amazed that people have so strong views on the usability, the user interface, the feature set, etc. of the iPhone ... without ever having seen or used the device in real life. I sure hope it lives up to the high hopes.

Kind regards,
Lauri Rosendahl

2007 Apr 25 09:29 AM

[Tom B:]

People HAVE used it. If you Podcast Macnotables.com, a few reliable, well-reputed reviewers got about a half hour hands-on experience at the MacWorld expo.

2007 Apr 25 10:45 AM

[David H Dennis:]

The iPhone's marketing package is pretty slick. It contains elaborate demos of exactly how the phone is used. I think that after viewing that material, you would have a pretty good idea of whether the iPhone is highly impressive or just another me too device.

True, it would be better to have it in our hands, and I'd insist on having it in mine and playing with it before signing a two year contract. If it has SSH available, for me it's a done deal because the design is just plain brilliant. The only other factor that could change my mind is the possibility that it might be painful to type on the on-screen keyboard, which I think is a highly individual decision. It's not like the buttons on a Blackberry or Treo are that easy to type on either.

That aside, if you look at the typical phone with its cryptic, often unlabelled buttons, that are often in awkward places, I don't think there's any question that the iPhone is an enormous improvement in design over earlier phones.

Check out the material and by all means let us know your reaction to it.

D

2007 Apr 25 12:17 PM

[Tom B:]

Great comments!

2007 Apr 25 09:36 AM

[s h:]

Great post, Paul. I used to work at Openwave (funny, since i used to be short Phone.com/Openwave and hated the whole notion of browsing through a keyhole (aka, Cell phone), but they acquired my company). I can't begin to express how hopeful I am that Apple breaks through the hammerlocked industry that just can't get mobile data (aside from SMS) right. PS. I hate carriers and the closed and walled-gardens they stand for.

2007 Apr 25 10:10 PM

[jbelkin:]

Yes, we don't know 100% of what the iphone will be or won't be BUT we do what the competition has offered after 20 years and a couple BILLION phones - THEY HAVE FAILED. I have used about 10-20 phones in my life and yet to find one where everything important pretty much worked as it should. OSX is not perfect but its' quirks are pretty minor. Conversely, I have yet to use that could do all the simple things correctly that a phone should in making my life easier ... or they program it idiotically. Why is it my $300 phone can jostle in my pocket and change from RING to VIRBRATE or I look in my photos to see that it took 6 photos of the insides of my pocket (all black - no light) - how dumb is that? Or that I have to manually change theclock on phone - doesn't the freakin' thing have to check into the network like every millisecond? My VCR can find the right time, my cell phone can't? I have no idea if the iphone will be brilliant or great or even just pretty good. All I know is Nokia, samsung, moto, Sony, LG, Erickson and many others have been trying and failing for 20 years to produce anything that 90% of people would go - it's got a great UI! And not dumb at all to figure out if my contact has 6 numbers, of course, he gets 6 listings - who doesn't love to call fax numbers! They had a million shots and they blew them all. From the video I've seen, they will look like morons in July 2007 ... especially Verizon.

2007 Apr 26 01:06 AM

[Tom B:]

I was an early Palm OS. It had SO much promise. 5-6 years later-- no improvements from the user point of view. Many flaws.

I've used Windows form 1995. Years later, we have XP, and Vista, which I have not tried hands-on (I have read many reviews). The stability is has been better since Win2000, but NO REAL improvements from the user point of view since 1995.

I am convinced Appple is the ONLY company that can "fix" the cell phone experience.

2007 Apr 26 08:29 AM