iPhone Alternatives?

[GHW]

Don said:

This means its "unlimited data" is accessible only in WiFi hotspots (admittedly fast) or via GPRS - at 32kpbs. What have I misconcieved about that?

It also does EDGE - which supposedly gives you up to 236kbps.

O2 have substantially upgraded their GPRS network for the iPhone so that EDGE is pretty much everywhere now. Down here in the Welsh valleys I can get a good EDGE signal pretty much everywhere, but rarely see a 3G signal of any significant strength.
(This is on my Nokia E65. I'm not an iPhone owner, although I do have an iPod Touch.)

[Noger]

Don said:

iPhone doesn't do HSPDA/3G.

This means its "unlimited data" is accessible only in WiFi hotspots (admittedly fast) or via GPRS - at 32kpbs. What have I misconcieved about that?

It has EDGE. Which is 237 kbps. Compared to 3G @ 384 kbps.

So it is perfectly possible that in a non HSDPA area, an iPhone on EDGE (with much faster rendering and some server side image size tweaking) would go faster than a 3G PIE sloth.

It you lose EDGE, or 3G, then it is game over whatever device you have ! No way am I going back to GPRS speed.

Grr- too late.

The E65 has no HSDPA, so even if you got 3G, you would not get that much of a speed increase. HSPDA makes a difference if you can get it. But only if backed up by a fast rendering machine. Was very impressed at the speed of the iPhone on EDGE.

Will be interesting to see what the likes of SkyFire, Deepfish (yeah, like that will ever see the light of day!) and Opera Mini 5 do with the server rendering market. Skyfire looks very interesting, as will do Flash and Ajax et al.

Edited by Noger on Thursday 31st January 11:15

[clonmult]

Noger said:

It has EDGE. Which is 237 kbps. Compared to 3G @ 384 kbps.

Edited by Noger on Thursday 31st January 11:15

237kbps is a theoretical maximum (and its supposed to be capable of 473kbps) - the actual speed isn't normally anywhere near that.

[GHW]

Noger said:

The E65 has no HSDPA, so even if you got 3G, you would not get that much of a speed increase.

Mildly OT: but even if the E65 had HSDPA I doubt I'd see a massive speed increase. The E65 is, without a doubt, limited by its processor and software in how quickly the web browser works. There's negligible difference between 3G/EDGE and connecting it to my own home wifi network - it's slow as hell all the time!

[Noger]

GHW said:

Mildly OT: but even if the E65 had HSDPA I doubt I'd see a massive speed increase. The E65 is, without a doubt, limited by its processor and software in how quickly the web browser works. There's negligible difference between 3G/EDGE and connecting it to my own home wifi network - it's slow as hell all the time!

Exactly. Which is what the entirely unscientific test (still looking for an N95) we did showed. Fast rendering and processor can make up for slower data speeds.

[cyberface]

Hell, my iPhone is just about usable on the internet (web) with my meagre GPRS

The browser really is very good, but it should be, the device has a proper operating system so can run proper code. Symbian is a bitch to code for, Palm is 16-bit nonsense (generalisation) and I'm not sure what Microsoft have done with Windows Mobile, but it doesn't seem to work as well on the same hardware class as OS X on the iPhone. No idea why - MS have tons more resources and have been at it longer... then again, we now know that OS X was designed from the ground up to be multi-platform. Windows (original NT kernel excepted) isn't really.

I'd like more bandwidth, but moving to O2 is a step too far...

[Noger]

cyberface said:

and I'm not sure what Microsoft have done with Windows Mobile

Focused too much on the corporate market, by their own admission. Supposedly they know how to fix it too. We shall see. They are claiming Mobile 8 will be the turnaround. Not convinced people can wait that long.

iPhone sales are "slowing" in the UK and Europe however (failed to meet target in Q4 IIRC), and you don't exactly see them glued to the ear or finger of every teenager and there is never anyone fiddling with the one in the O2 stores anymore. People who were going to buy one probably have already.

Maybe the iPhone 2.0 will be the killer. Or an Android based phone ?

This isn't iPhone hate. If the iPhone did what I needed it to I would just buy one.

HVGA is nice, although HTC do a full VGA screened device, the Advantage. Bit of a brick ! By that size I would just opt for the far far cheaper Nokia N800. 800x480 @ 4.1 inches. Not a phone, but then should phones be that big ?

[clonmult]

Just got a Touch Dual, and the touchflo is nice, but its just a nice shell on top of the awkward Windows mobile interface.

And in the dual, touchflo is just a 3 sided "cube", on the touch its 4 sided?

v2 of Touchflo has been leaked, it definitely looks nice. But it sounds like an alpha release - just too slow.

[off_again]

I had a play with the new Palm Treo thing recently. Its Windows Mobile based but they have completely re-skinned the internals and hidden most of the 'Windows' parts. Looks good and was pretty interesting. If only someone had done this before.....

Its not that Windows Mobile is rubbish, its just looks crap (then again a lot of other mobile OS's do too). I know the HTC touch thing tried to do something, but that was just a front-end. I saw a few demos of it and the touch bit was great. But as soon as you went to something like email then you were back to the old Windows look and feel. Completely at odds with the initial look. Shame.

How, if someone can do a complete re-skin of Windows Mobile with a consumer look and feel then Microsoft might have something that will work. Come on, admit it everyone - we all want zoomy flashy things that look cool. Its just a shame that only a few manufacturers have actually managed so far.

[FourWheelDrift]

off_again said:

How, if someone can do a complete re-skin of Windows Mobile with a consumer look and feel then Microsoft might have something that will work. Come on, admit it everyone - we all want zoomy flashy things that look cool. Its just a shame that only a few manufacturers have actually managed so far.

MS Deepfish or Skyfire both claiming better, faster zooming browsing experience, desktop on a mobile. There's already Zumobi on beta release as was Deepfish, Skyfire is on the way.

You can also get a full iPhone make-over if you want.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Czz9yotdE8

[cyberface]

Noger said:

iPhone sales are "slowing" in the UK and Europe however (failed to meet target in Q4 IIRC), and you don't exactly see them glued to the ear or finger of every teenager and there is never anyone fiddling with the one in the O2 stores anymore.

Thank for that eh??

I was pretty exclusive back in August 2007 on the trains to London messing about (i.e. hacking trying to get the thing working, heh) with my iPhone.

Now I'm expecting everyone to have one, and yet I've not seen another iPhone (being used, as opposed to being in the person's coat playing tunes like an iPod) on my mainline commuter train to the City every day. Everyone is still using Crackberries. I was expecting to have to paint mine with magnolia emulsion to avoid looking like all the other fashion-victim Apple-user clones Instead I'm still the only iPhone bloke on my train. Or is that the only iPhone FOOL? Who knows

Hey ho - I couldn't care less - if I had the spare cash I would have picked up one of the OpenMoko Neo-whatsits a while back just for the hacker fun, and Android is almost certainly going to appear on the phones built for Linux first. I love my iPhone but I probably don't use the phone aspect quite so heavily as the haters, who seem to be estate-agent Fast Show types who want to be constantly calling, SMSing to millions of people, etc.

As a light phone user, the iPhone is a brilliant device for me because it has the *best* mobile web browser, can do full SSL IMAP email from multiple accounts at ease, and is bloody fast on Wifi. Unfortunately because I'm not an O2 customer I only get GPRS which is slow everywhere else, but it still works. And it's got easy 3rd party apps, and it runs OS X, and I can SSH into the thing to hack around and have fun.

It's a good laugh to use as a user interface as well - no frustrating crap, just point, wiggle or pinch. Very intuitive, and showing photos etc. is a cinch. I'm waiting for the updated LocateMe app to work more effectively (it uses GSM tower locations to work out your position, and then brings up Google Maps to show you where you are) - it's not that good now, but will get better, and uses sod-all power compared to integrating GPS onto the chipset...

[cyberface]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I suppose it depends on who you get the sales stats from.

Last week's news claimed that around 40% of iPhones in the US were unlocked.... now Apple won't release sales figures like that because it'll piss off their 'exclusive' telecoms partners, so it'll be interesting to hear where they came from, and whether Apple are going to do anything about it.

Apple win either way - they still sell units, whether they get their kickback from their telecoms partner or not. After all, it's a boggo GSM / GPRS device. Once unlocked, it works with any provider's SIM card.

There's a *big* deal about unlocking iPhones though. I was there at the beginning (groan, yeah it's cheesy) and it wasn't just a couple of clever hacker kids messing about (like it was marketed as - George Hotz getting fame as a result) - there was proper money behind the cracking attempts. There was demand, and obviously no shortage of supply. If Apple only sold phones to the networks' retail chains (i.e. in the US, AT&T stores, and in the UK, O2 stores) then this wouldn't have been so much of a big deal.

It's clear though that Apple knew that the lock-in wouldn't last... customers don't want it... so made sure that supply was available to everyone else. I'll bet that their cost vs. profit calcs aren't predicated on all iPhones being 'legit' and including the 'kickback' from the 'official' provider. Certainly not with up to 40% phones being unlocked, and certainly not with teh Steve's comments at the time about 'it's cat and mouse, and we're not sure whether we're the cat or the mouse'....

[cyberface]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Agree completely. The unlocking trick has nothing to do with USA vs UK, it has to do with which bootloader version the phone was supplied with. All Euro phones had a new bootloader that wasn't readily crackable - all US phones until that point had the old version that was crackable. The stats I quoted were about the US - so since so many of the US phones had the early bootloader and were crackable (and then sold on to the rest of the world - check eBay for iPhone sales explicitly quoting the bootloader version for crackability!!!) then that 40% stat is almost certainly not anywhere near the rest of the world.

Apple know this. They're caught with strong legal contracts with their 'exclusive' suppliers... but as long as they don't sell the devices *only* to the networks, then I bet the cracks will continue to appear for Apple-store-bought phones.

I'm completely in agreement that Apple's business model here stinks - I've ranted about this on this forum since August when I got mine. But it seems odd that Apple didn't set their legal assault team on iPhoneSimFree, nor did they try to bankrupt George Hotz' parents... it smells to me.

But you're right, they'd sell more if they were network-independent. Perhaps they couldn't meet demand if the phones were SIM-free from Apple stores?? (unlikely, since the iPod Touch seems to have no problem with supply). I bet the networks were scared by this and wanted a piece of the action.

Regardless, it may just be a fancy frivolity that peters out. But what it WILL do is to light a fire under Nokia, SE, etc's arses and make them develop decent user interfaces. Which is good for all of us. But you can bet that Apple don't want their *true* sales figures to come out if they are showing that 40% of their sales aren't being taken up with 'official network' contracts... since that will piss off AT&T, O2, etc. But Apple want to sell lots of iPhones (they're cheap hardware inside - 6 chips, a battery and a nice screen - lots of profit). The big loser in this will be O2 - they've invested real money in upgrading a last-generation network to EDGE when all of their UK competitors are spending their investment budgets on 3G and HSDPA, plus faster versions... if Apple bring out an iPhone 2.0 with HSDPA then O2's investment will be wasted, especially given how cheap the devices are off-plan...

[kazste]

how about sony ericsson p1i, dont know why no one else has suggested it, full wifi, opera browser,3.2m camera, video player,music player, large touch screen with a usefull qwerty keyboard (its amazingly easy to get used to it). plus the great bonus that not every one has them only seen one other so far!
i am assuming that people dont like them for some reason but honestly cannot think why, yes it hangs sometimes out of the box but upgrade the firmware using sony's site and all will be fixed.
just interested on others thoughts on this phone and why no one appears to like it?

[Civpilot]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Devils advocate mode: Nokia lead the phone market for a very simple reason... They make phones , you remember those, they just make phone calls and can send text messages?
And despite what those in this thread and loads of others want there is a massive (ing massive) market for phones that just make calls and send texts. In fact I know more people with simple phones than I do smart phones.

As far as the iPhone goes I myself bought an iPod touch. The phone is flawed as a phone in many ways and for me is far too large to carry around all the time.
Everything it does apart from this flawed phone side is available on the touch (a recent update added maps, weather & email, and when jailbroken you can add so much more) and I have twice the storage capacity. My simple Nokia 6300 can do the phone thing far better than the iPhone, and can be easily carried around (I don't need my iPod or internet in the pub so leave it at home with ease).

When the iPhone goes 3g and increases in capacity I might upgrade, but personal preference is for small phones so even then I'm torn on the matter.

Ps. Agree about the haters thing, most people who I have met who hate the iPhone are tired around by a 5 minute play on my iPod touch (same interface). Funny how their opinion changes so quickly when they actually try the thing out.

this post entered on my ipod touch with its superb browser

[off_again]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Recent changes to the O2 iPhone contracts mean it is much more affordable. £35 a month for 600 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited data is actually a pretty good tariff, so its not normally an issue on the cost front. As for locking, I still don't get this.

Nokia have been locking their phones for some time now and you can readily find locked ones on eBay. Since the advent of the S60 OS for it (from release 1 and now to 3) they are virtually impossible to break. There are rumours that you can get them unlocked in certain countries, but I have yet to come across someone who has done this. So a 3 network Nokia cannot be unlocked to another network, even if it supports it.

What most of the providers will do is supply you with a network unlock code at the end of your contract (for a price naturally). But at that point they have factored in the costs and made their money, so it doesn't matter then. You can of course by a 100% unlocked Nokia to start with, but then again you pay the penalty for this as it will normally cost you twice as much. An N95 is typically free on a contract these days, but unlocked you can pay anything from £200 to £300 for them.

Don't see anyone complaining about this. Ok, its slightly different, but they are still network locked and the last time I looked a lot of the modern Nokia's are not available on some of the networks. Like not seen the N95 on 3 for example - I could be wrong, but it is still restrictive though not as bad as the iPhone with O2. I wanted an E90 but this is only available from a very limited number of networks - Vodafone and O2. So should I jump up and down and slag off Nokia for restrictive business methods?

On the other hand, I can see what Apple are doing. They don't want to be the next Nokia. Its a very fickle market and even the big players can screw up big time. Motorola recently saw a loss in its handset business with Samsung over taking them in the global sales. Its very competitive and long termers like Motorola can miss big time. Does Apple want to be in this market? Damn no. So a bit of creative thinking and business management and a heavy lock in contract means that the operators win and so does Apple. Remember this is their first handset and its been a roaring success for them, way outstripping what they expected. Jobs was originally talking about selling a million in a year but still making a profit. They have sold 4 million and its not even a year yet. That has to be a success! So lets see what happens in the future, but I think we can be assured that the iPhone is here for some time.

At the end of the day, if you don't like the phone then don't get one. If you don't like O2 then don't get one. Its pretty simple. I dislike Porsche cars. I won't be buying one, ever. Does that make them bad? No, not at all. That is just my personal preference and as a result I will not be going around saying anyone who buys a Porsche is an idiot to be buying an overpriced piece of tat that is all about image - when the new Ford Focus RS will do more for half the money..... the parallels are the same but its down to personal preference.

[cyberface]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Because UK phones were released with the 4.06 bootloader that can't be cracked (yet). Up until the UK launch, you could go into a store in the US, buy a phone without contract (and 3.09 bootloader) and then unlock it.

Now, you can still go into a US store and buy a phone for £200, but you can't unlock it. I think Hotz has managed to get a hardware unlock going on the new 4.06, but it's beyond the means of most individuals.

You somewhat missed my point. Right now, you can't easily unlock a *new* iPhone (bootloader 4.06) regardless of where you buy it from. Back before the UK launch, all US phones had 3.09 bootloaders and were easily unlocked.

This is why guaranteed 3.09 bootloader phones are more expensive to buy on eBay than regular 'out of the box' new iPhones, because the new ones can't be unlocked easily.

That was what I was getting at really - forget the difference in purchase price and data plan costs... if you're talking about 'unlocking' phones, it has only been possible to unlock the US phones that were built before the UK launch, due to the bootloader exploit differences.

It's a bit offtopic but I can give you the real detail on what went on if you like, because I was involved in it - and had my iPhone working here on UK Vodafone on Sept 12th. There's a LOT of misinformation on the internet regarding unlocking phones, because it is big business for the iPhone...

[Durruti]

I've been quietly following this thread as I'm about to take the plunge into mobile life primarily to give mobile access to e-mail etc. Because the company set up is windows based and I run vista at home I'm currently debating about the Xda Stellar although O2 have just thrown a spanner into the works by launching the Orbit 2 to business customers this week. Apart from the obvious lack of keyboard on the Orbit 2 I can't see any downside to it. Anyone on here actually had any hands on experience with one yet?. As ever, all opinions welcome.

[master L]

iphone alternative is the samsung F490 comes out on Vodafone on 22nd February

[Murph7355]

If email's your gig at the minute, Blackberry's Pearl is hard to beat IMO (good form factor, quick at what it does, pretty polished mail side, works well as a phone).

I'm waiting to see what Apple do with the next release of the iPhone and O2 do with the tariffs. GPS and 3G might be worth sacrificing the form factor of the Pearl for.