No one should make *any* smartphones unless they can
immediately top the iPhone. If you can't top the iPhone
on day one, then just don't bother competing at all.
> But it’s still effectively tied to the smallish T-Mobile cell phone network.
No it's not. So far as I can tell, you can use it on AT&T's network. The only catch is the you can't use AT&T's 3G with it. But this seems to be a one or the other choice. AT&T and T-Mobile apparently use different frequencies for their 3G (T-Mobile's is non-standard), and no one seems to be putting out phone that support both (in my limited research on the topic). This leads me to believe that there must only be chips that support one or the other. In that case, there's no pleasing everyone. If you choose AT&T, you'll piss off a bunch of people, but you'll also piss off a bunch of people if you choose T-Mobile.
> And the Nexus One lacks the convenience of being connected to iTunes.
So... the only phone that will ever appease you will, by definition, need to be an Apple-branded phone.
> The Android app store is a fifth the size of Apple’s.
It's the quality, not the quantity of the apps that matters. Comparing on size alone is useless. There have been a number of articles on the number of crappy and rehashed apps that get poured into the AppStore marketplace by people hoping to use the shotgun approach to AppStore success. And how exactly is Google supposed to remedy this with the launch of a phone? Make the phone iPhone-compatible and hack their way into AppStore access?
> Meanwhile, Apple is getting ready to announce an entirely new iteration of its iPhone in three weeks — the tablet — that will likely make every other player in the market look like a laggard — again.
This is the stupidest thing I have read lately.
> Why didn’t Google offer a phone with both a GSM and a CDMA radio that would work on any U.S. cell phone network?
It's not that simple. See the GSM 3G comments above. I thought that there used to be GSM/CDMA chips. Maybe they were part of that whole Qualcomm lawsuit a few years ago?
OK, but of course if we make a default assumption that the same percentage of apps are actually good on both platforms, you'll end up with five times as many good apps on the iPhone. So unless you're suggesting that Android has better quality apps on average, I really don't see what your point is.
Honestly, I'd personally expect to find better quality apps on the AppStore - Apple vets them for UI coherence and basic functionality. Plus devs don't have to try and target multiple types of device, all iPhones share the same basic functionality in terms of screen size, input devices etc.
IIRC, Qualcomm are preparing the very first baseband/radio chip(s) that can support both. I believe it's a soft-radio, so you can reprogram it for whichever frequencies and protocols you need to support.
So... the only phone that will ever appease you will, by definition, need to be an Apple-branded phone.
Also, Apple purposefully breaks this compatibility if it's there.
That would effectively cripple the phone. So while it may be possible to use on other networks, it's really only practical to use on T-Mobile.
You can use it on almost any GSM/3G network in the world (instead on only AT&T). How is that crippling the phone?
It's definitely a disadvantage though, but to say that it will not work with AT&T is false.
(I don't live in the US)
It is standard for everywhere except the USA; mobile usage has been traditionally significantly higher in Europe than USA, so you wouldn't really want to miss out on that market!
"Meanwhile, Apple is getting ready to announce an entirely new iteration of its iPhone in three weeks — the tablet — that will likely make every other player in the market look like a laggard — again."
The tablet is aimed at a different niche than the "mobile phone/mp3 player" space. Very few are going to buy a tablet and ditch their phone.
"Why didn’t Google subsidize the Nexus One so it was half the price of an iPhone, instead of the same price?"
Perhaps because they like making money?
And that's ignoring fully Windows/Linux capable systems like Samsung's Q1's, and Viliv's range.
It is probably more likely that they don't see apple and the iphone as a direct threat and are instead trying to corner the market on the other three major phone networks in the US.
What exactly makes a phone an iPhone clone?
Maybe its just the developer inside me screaming, but I cannot deal with Apple and how they deal with the guys who are really making the iphone popular -- the programmers.
Of course in itself it's pretty much only a rant, with fallacious arguments, but it fulfills its goal of generating a lot of "how can you say that it's stupid" answers.
I mean, I even clicked on it just for the sake of the title, like probably many did. Mission accomplished, so, people click and react on it.