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iPhone Versus the Rest: More Evidence Smartphone Makers Are in Trouble

$500 for an iPhone which "could" have a great interface and has 4gb memory but that's just about it?

Or $0 for the Nokia N95 which has 5mp camera, GPS mapping, up to 2GB of changeable memory, smaller and lighter than the iPhone, and 3G?

The iPhone may look better and will probably have a better interface. But if that's all I cared about then I'd be happy to put up with a worse interface considering everything else you get with the N95. And I'd spend the $500 I saved on a Hugo Boss suit or coat to make me look cool.

Money money money. That's what it's all about. The iPod is successful because not only is it the best but it's also damn good value for money. It's isn't infinitely more expensive than it's rivals where as the iPhone is.

Some people say a phone is just a phone. Well then save your $500 to!

The key feature on a phone now a days is the camera which is why the iPhone is poor. But the key features of the near term future are mp3 playback capability and internet access. The iPhone may be fine with one but it's not with the other. It can't access iTunes on the move? That is a big advantage to the competition because they have already set up agreements to provide music downloads on the move as part of the contract.

Nokia: 'The Future of TV Will Be Personal'

While I agree that mobile phone manufacturers get caught up in their own hyperbole sometimes I don't think they are seriously thinking about competing with plasma and lcd manufacturers so I hope you're not Dean. I think many technology writers get caught up in the hyperbole that is "convergence" to and start to think that what convergence should mean is the discarding of every super expensive gadget and appliance that we own in order to substitute it for a tiny all in one phone. Now while that might happen for many gadgets in 20 or more years time I think many of you are too quick to shoot down something that will be a great convergence device in the next couple of years.

But with the emergence of 3.5g and 4g internet speeds on mobiles will allow many devices on a phone to be supported by the internet. This frees up memory and even takes out a lot of the processing power of some things that you might need.

One thing I can see happening is that you have a tv screen somewhere in your house or in a hotel that can be connected to your mobile. You then wirelessly stream tv from the net to the tv. That does away with the need for a cable (or Sky as we call it in the UK) box.

The mobile phone will not only be a basic convergence device but it will act as a portal for other big devices. Some of the other uses could be to turn on your oven before getting home. Or even more genius would be to command your fridge and cupboards (from the office) to do a scan of all the RFID tags on your products to check what you have to cook for dinner. That way you'll always know what you need to buy.

I'm not going to throw away my 42" plasma to start watching my mobile on the toilet. But I will embrace all the ways in which convergence in a mobile phone could improve my life.

Nokia the iPod Killer? I Think Not

I completely agree with Lauri on this one. And I think some of your arguments as to why convergence won't happen are poor at best David.

For instance how is anyone going to expect a phone to replace your digital slr camera? How ridiculous. A digital slr is specialist that is used for hobby purposes. A compact camera is what you take out for nights out where you want to capture moments. The phone will eventually replace compact cameras.

What on earth are you talking about regarding a dive computer? That's not convergence. That's insane. You may as well argue that the phone is never going to have a microwave oven in it.

Batteries are a problem but again I think your argument is weak. Batteries, I agree are the big potential problem to all of this but it's not as if the companies are standing back and ignoring the problem. Anyway, as Lauri says you can carry one or two spare batteries around a lot easier than you can carry a phone, camera, mp3 player, gps system, etc. You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing there.

As for convergence itself it does present potential problems with content and the experience itself. But once we embrace 3g (or 3.5 and 4g) then the experience will be made easier by having high speed internet access to provide us with all sorts of software developers out there willing to provide us with software that will make it easier to use each device. On the phone you'll simply have a button that switches the software to what ever you're using. So you're using your camera and then you want to upload that image to some website. With a click of a button it's uploaded to your online photo library. Or a video is uploaded to youtube. Or you switch to mp3 and you stream music live from your online storage system that holds the whole of your mp3 collection on it. And that's the beauty of it. None of it will be stored on your phone. It will be used as a portal to the net where you will send and access all the information you need from your own library of information. You own bespoke library of information. And who says you'll even need to press a button. Voice recognition could make things even easier if you wanted it to. Although I think I'd still like to press the buttons.

Times are a changing David and you need to look at how other technologies and services can benefit the possibility of convergence. The internet is changing all the time. Now we just need to wait for those benefits to reach mobile phones.