The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

[hobbes]

I am a gadget fan. I love gadgets. But only when they're worthy of the name.
My phone contract expired in August after 3 long years with the same old Sony W910i phone.
It's a great bit of kit, to be sure but I've only had it for 3 years because my last upgrade - an HTC Touch Dual - was an utterly unusable bag of arse. So poor in fact that I only used it for 3 weeks before giving up.
So my next one has to be 100% definitely the bomb as my 910i won't last another 18 months.

Sony have, since may been touting the Satio. An all-singing, all dancing monster of a phone that'll make the evil iphone look like a bag of arse.
I've read reviews, leaks, rumours etc for 6 months getting more and more excited at the thought of finally getting my paws on a new bit of Sony kit. (I'm a bit of a fanboy you see.)
I was slightly put off when it was finally released on Vodafone a week or so ago with people saying that although the camera is great, it plays music and videos really well and is a good phone, that the touch interface is cruddy and unrepsonsive and very very slow. But then I figured that was just sad apple-fans hating the idea of a challenge to their favourite wank-pad.
Yesterday, it was finally finally released on Orange. I went to my local Orange shop at lunchtime desperate to get my hands on the demo model, confident of rubber stamping my desire to have this bit of multi-media gold as my friend, confidant, recorder of experience, map, communicator, entertainment centre and life organiser for the next 18 months. 18 months that will see the biggest change in my life since I moved out of home.
And...
...It's bollocks. You need a hammer to make any of the touch screen icons work. The virtual keypad is as responsive as a comatose sloth and the screens change in geological time. It's totally counter-intuative, far too complicated and in real life looks about half as good as it does in the adverts. There was almost a tear in my eye as I realised the horrible horrible truth.
I'm going to have to get a fucking iphone, aren't I? Fuck.

[David Agnew]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

No!

The latest Nokias have been absolutely golden. And this comes from someone who hated Nokias until I got my N85 last year.

The iphone is just marketing over substance. Like Nokias used to be.

[hobbes]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

Oh it's miles better than any nokia I've ever played with. But still, Nokia aren't where the goalposts are anymore, are they? And with 18 or 24 month contracts, one can't afford to make a mistake.

[Pinback]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

In general I loathe Apple, I don't buy into their design myths at all, and I find their approach to computing annoying and restrictive.

Having said that, I've owned an iPhone since February, and I've never owned a gadget that I've enjoyed using more, that's been as useful, and that has been as good value for money. I use the damn thing all the time, for podcasts, gaming, music, email, browsing and even making the occasional phone call.

I don't think I've ever met anyone who's regretted getting one, they're simply a triumph of software/hardware integration. Thoroughly recommended.

[Cavalry Trouser Tips]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

I love my E71. I can run third-party applications in the background AND I have a non-annoying tactile full keyboard. Suck on that iPhone...

[hobbes]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

Keyboard schmeyboard.

[pebblethefish]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

Cavalry Trouser Tips wrote:

I love my E71. I can run third-party applications in the background AND I have a non-annoying tactile full keyboard. Suck on that iPhone...

I understood every word in that. And none of the meaning, except the last sentence.

My phone has currently decided that the number 4 button won't work (OK, it was actually after throwing it on the floor after a somewhat tetchy conversation with the bank, but even so) which means I have to go through the linguistic shenanigans of trying to text messages without using the letters g, h or i.

[JtS]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

iPhones a great

[Pinback]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

For what it's worth, I don't find the pseudo keyboard on the iPhone to be a problem.

The downside to the device in my experience is its poor battery life and the amount of pocket space it the thing takes.

The important thing is the operating system. Using it, you have the same feeling of 'rightness' that the early Nokias gave. Everything works easily and elegantly - so you end up actually using all the features instead of forgetting that most of them exist as I have done on other less well integrated devices.

I don't have the sense of loyalty to a brand that CTT is exhibiting with his passionate 'suck on that iPhone' remarks. If a better phone came along my iPhone would be on ebay tomorrow. But as things stand, only Palm appear to have responded to the challenge, and they haven't yet managed to get the hardware right. So even after a couple of years, Apple are still some way ahead of the gang, and the market seems to agree.

[Cavalry Trouser Tips]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

Pinback wrote:

I don't have the sense of loyalty to a brand that CTT is exhibiting with his passionate 'suck on that iPhone' remarks.

Get over yourself. I'd have an iPhone if they would let me have it for a hundred quid down at twenty five quid a month for 18 months on a decent network.

It's ludicrously overpriced. Good if you can afford it, but people shouldn't stretch themselves (as I know a lot of people I know who own one have) for what is essentially a telephone.

[Pinback]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

Well, no, it's essentially a highly specified mobile computing device with a telephone tacked on. But yes, it's a bit expensive.

For what it's worth, I paid £150 for the 16meg one and have a £30/month contract.

[diggedy derek]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

I'd definitely buy an iPhone if the price was right. I've got an iPod touch as it is, synced with my office Mac and own laptop so that all the contacts, bookmarks calendars are shared across the three devices. It's really user friendly, so I'd love to get an iPhone.

I imagine prices will come down somewhat when they are rolled out across other networks.

[Guest]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

Surely a good reason for not wanting an i-Phone, is that so many people have one.
No matter how good it is (isn't the camera mediocre?), it feels better to be different....

[DCI Harry Batt]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

I have a definite anti-i-anything bias. The name, more than anything.

And I love SE phones, have done for years.

Tricky.

[Crusoe]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

The camera's crap, the battery's awful, but the internet and email access has been really useful to me and having a selection of genuinely useful applications and decent games (with a beautifully designed interface) means I don't regret buying an iPhone at all.

But as for "being different", why is that important? It's only a mobile phone, not a status symbol (yeah, I know some may think otherwise, but they're dicks). And can you really be different by owning something equally mass-produced by Nokia, or Sony-Ericsson, or Siemens, etc, etc?

[hobbes]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

I'm like you TonTon. I've never had a completely satisfactory phone that wasn't Sony Ericsson. A couple of alright Nokias, but anything else was unbearable. It's a ball-ache alright.

Sony are bringing out an Android phone but that's probably noot until January and there's no guarantee it'll be on Orange anyway.
Not sure if I'll hold out that long even if my current phone does.

All the things that the iphone does badly, the Satio does spectacularly well - phone, camera, audio etc.
But al the things the iphone does well - the OS, apps, ease of use etc. the Sony is spectacularly bad at.

[DCI Harry Batt]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

I'm not so bothered about the other stuff really, so I'll probably manage to avoid an i-phone for a good while yet. "Phone, camera, audio" is plenty for me.

I'm not bothered about networks, either. Been on three (and am now on 3), and they are all useless thieving shitbag cunts.

[hobbes]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

It's more for stuff like tapping out a text or an email. The general everyday stuff.
The screen is a lot less responsive that the iphone and it's really slow.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

Aren't Nokia suing Apple because the iPhone is a complete rip-off? I'm sure I read that somewhere.

[gt3]

The Crushing Weight of Disappointment

Rogin, you're right:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/22/telecoms-nokia

I have an iPhone and having the internet in your pocket and access to e-mails can be really handy - I've even posted on here from it in the past.

I was chatting to Villain yesterday about this very topic and before I even said, "...so when my contract expires I'm going back to a Nokia..." he said I'd already said enough to put him off ever getting one...And I love gadgets.