AT&T Takes A Beating For iPhone Missteps → Re: iPhone buyers are not the brightest bulbs in the string.

I agree with ydoucare, Windows Mobile has all the features of the iPhone minus one very important feature that secured my decision in never buying an iPhone - no remote "kill switch" in the WM OS. Many WM devices have: bluetooth, GPS, wifi, 3G+, ect.1) My HTC Fuze lasts about 6 hours without needing a charge. That's with 3G on.
2) »forum.xda-developers.com ··· hp?f=260 I'm sure in that 500 pages of apps you can find something you like. First off lets clarify some facts because it seems you are sugar coating the truth. According to wikipedia:

Windows Mobile:

quote:

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Some current estimates suggest that 80% of the 50 million Windows Mobile devices made have been built by one contract manufacturing group, HTC, which makes handsets as for several major companies under their brands, as well as under its own brand.

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Apple:

quote:

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The company sold 3.8 million iPhone 3G units in the second quarter of fiscal 2009, ending March 2009, totaling 21.4 million iPhones sold to date.

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To answer your question: Windows Mobile.

If you wanted to be technical we can add in iPod Touch, but I can't find any sales numbers for that. Can someone pull those up?Name an application that the iPhone that you think that the WM platform doesn't have, I am sure someone here can pull it up for you. Please don't say the "I am rich" app either.This is a fallacy but I don't which one...I will point out why. You are saying that the iPhone 3Gs isn't that big of an upgrade that got release in a year but yet you claim that the other device manufactures do the same thing. Thing is, the new device that the other manufactures release is usually a new design, and new hardware instead of just a new OS. I went from my AT&T Tilt to the HTC Fuze and let me tell you they are radically different, and it is a good comparison because the Tilt is like the Fuze's little brother (according to wikipedia).

To add insult to injury, the Windows Mobile SDK is free. You have to pay for the iPhone SDK.

The iPhone isn't the only phone with a remote kill switch, so you've got another phone to add to your list. Google's Android also has a remote kill switch, which is actually spelled out in their terms: "Google may discover a product that violates the developer distribution agreement ... in such an instance, Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your device at its sole discretion". Both the iPhone and Android kill switches are used to disable specific applications, not your entire phone. Haven't heard of either being used yet.

Also, Windows Mobile is very expensive to develop for, three times more expensive even. It costs $300 write an application for Windows Mobile, plus your bandwidth to distribute your app. The iPhone costs $100 to write an application and bandwidth to distribute is included if your app is accepted. Ad Hoc or Enterprise subscriptions are alternative methods.

On the iPhone, if your app is rejected, however, you're SOL.
Unlike WinMo with its paid hosting. And unlike Android entirely (since you have an App Market *and* can install 3rd party apps).

Why does it cost $300? The SDK is free and the IDE is free, what else do you need? And bandwidth is dirt cheap. Hell for ~84/year I can get all you can eat from bluehost. And my WM app wont ever get taken down.

You must have short term memory loss. I proved you wrong right here: »Re: Windows mobile wins again

To recap. Here's the requirements to write for Windows Mobile:
1) Windows computer running Windows XP SP2 or higher.
2) Visual Studio Standard or higher. $299
3) Windows Mobile SDK. Free.

NOTE: Visual Studio Express is free, but does not support writing for Windows Mobile.

The requires for iPhone are:
1) Mac running OS X 10.5 or higher.
2) iPhone Developer account. $99
3) Xcode. Free.

All 4,900 of them. (thats how many BB has for the android).

iPhone has 50,000+ apps and growing.

Thats not true at all. If your app is rejected you have all the opportunities in the world to fix it and re submit it. Apple is very clear in what they say is wrong in the app, and most of the time they even tell you how to fix it.

You know everyone bashes the iPhone for simple things it didn't have, but yet they don't give it credit for things it does/has that no other phone still has or does even remotely well.

And features that other phones have started putting in that the iPhone perfected are complete shit. The touch screen for example, there are only 2 other phones besides the iphone that have decent touch screens (G1/Pre) all other touch screen phones flat out suck because there screen is total shit.

Even the G1/Pre haven't matched the iPhone on its touch screen.

And everyone please SHUT THE FUCK UP about the camera. I am so sick of the "oh its only got 3MP my 2 year old camera has 5MP, or 8MP" yea and it still takes shitty pictures. Anyone with half a brain knows the MP rating doesn't really matter.

If you don't want to submit your application to Apple and want to retain control over distribution just like WinMo, then sign up for an Enterprise developer account for $300, the same price as Visual Studio Standard. Then you don't submit anything to Apple, you distribute your app yourself through your own internal "store", and you can centrally manage it.

All the benefits of WinMo just went away.

And, regardless of how your Android app is distributed, the remote kill switch will still kill it. So saying you can install 3rd party apps means absolutely nothing, because the same rules apply.

As long as you're a well connected musician who can affect sales, absolutely it's not an issue.Like what? What does the iphone have that no other phone has or does remotely well? Again, I hear this from the fanbois, but other than making them feel better in their hearts, there's not much to it.Unfortunately, resistive touch screen requirement is an issue with *WinMo*. The reason other touchscreen phones sucked is because they were all winmo and were resistive touch.

I can give Apple credit for pushing for change on this front.I disagree, but that's just me.Ok then. How about "it's a shitty quality camera"? Make you feel better in your tummy? You can get better quality cameras at higher megapixels than Apple. For a multimedia phone, that's a stupid move.

Says who? Last I checked, the remote kill-switch refers to apps from the market - identical to the AppStore. Has no effect on 3rd party apps.
For an example, look at some of the tethering apps. Some of them have been removed by Google from the Market. None of them have been removed from any devices.

Not true. I'm an iPhone developer. And I have had my apps approved and rejected. And apple has been 100% clear on why the app was rejected 100% of the time with me. They even gave me a link to there documentation on how to fix what ever the problem was.

At times I do forget things, I must have missed it in the post tracker thing on DSLR, but making personal attacks does not help your argument.

Sorry, I was under the impression you could indeed write WM apps using the express editions. It wasn't any concern for me because since I am attending college I get all their software for free (legally). You are right on that matter and I can't find anything that says otherwise.
However, your first comparison is a little unopen minded. You don't NEED Windows to compile MSVS applications. Since VS IDE is just a front end to its command line tools, there is nothing that says you can't compile it in Linux using Wine. Granted, yes, it may not be perfect (or even work), but if we are going to nitpick then we should look at all possibilities.
»codingstyle.com/articles ··· ine.html

And if we are going to be specific, you might as well add another point for iPhone development - You need an actual Mac computer. Because, as much as I disagree with the TOS they say that can only install Mac OS on an Apple computer which will usually cost you even more.

And hey you know while I am still here, Microsoft has released eVB6 and eVC++ as freeware which is older than dirt, yes, but its free.
eVC++: »www.microsoft.com/downlo ··· ylang=en
As far as eVB...its buried somewhere on the internet as it seems Microsoft doesn't want people to have it, and who can blame them but this tutorial does reference it and I have used it in the past:
»www.developerfusion.com/ ··· l-basic/

A few things here:

1. I own an HTC Touch Pro. Upgraded from an HTC Mogul. Got teh mogul before the iphone and guess what, I use the Touch Pro every day.
2. You DON'T have to pay for the iPhone SDK. You DO have to pay to get an app into the app store. Two different things, thugh you're right if you're saying that the cost to develop an app is more on the iPhone. Since you have to buy a mac to use the iPhone dev tools.
3. The iPhone brought the smartphone market mainstream. This is from a person who has been using Palm products for years and whose main phone runs Windows Mobile. I've seen plenty of people with smartphones before the iPhone and after, but many people have iPhones who wuldn't have a smartphone if it were not for that device.
4. 40 million iPhone OS devices in the world or more, saith Apple at the WWDC yesterday.
5. The 3Gs has a few upgrades in it as wel. Pretty significant ones actually. HSPA 7.2 (the older iPhone didn't have HSUPA). Built-in compass. 3.2 megapixel camera with AF and video. Faster processor. Not earth-shattering but a decent upgrade. Plus the older iPhones get some perks, with the 3G getting stereo Bluetooth and MMS.
6. I know about the upgrade coolness of HTC's next-gen devices. Though they seem to be taking some cues from the iPhone...a good thing but not to be overlooked. I like my Touch Pro much better than the Mogul. There are a lot of upgrades in there, though I can't name real new features vs. the newest Mogul firmware. Just a big design overhaul and TouchFlo.
7. There are apps out there that will do on WM what the apps do on iPhones, except for games like Trism where there's a single dev making something creative and who chooses their mobile platform judiciously. The iphone App Store provides lots f eyeballs for applications, so more get made. You might even see your app on TV ds. Try that with WinMo.
8. Battery life wise, 6 hours is pathetic. My laptop lasts that long. The iphone will last a day or two. If your phone can't survive two days on a charge with your usage pattern, the manufacturer should fix that problem. My Touch pro certainly can't, and it's the one thing that drives me mad about that phone and, to a lesser extent, my Mogul (it had better battery life than the Touch pro has).

I'm not saying that the iPhone is flat-out better than any other phone out there. If it was so much better than I'd be paying triple my current phone bill for service with AT&T on the device. Each devices has its strengths and weaknesses. However you see more iPods than Zunes out in the regular public, and you see more iPhones than BlackBerries, HTCs etc.

Maybe we should make a site 'Why WinMo" doing a point by point rundown of why you don't need an iphone to get the job done, whatever that job might be. Would probably save people money, get them better coverage, etc. Because right now Apple is gaining economies of scale because their hype machine is marketing a decent (though not stellar) product with a good UI. So devs follow and voila, you've got a huge market share, whether the product is crap or not.

You want to use BlueHost to host a WinMo app? C'mon, use a CDN...for that $4 you could get maybe 100GB of high quality bandwidth that's n par with Apple's Akamai stuff.

My Touch pro's touch screen, while not the brightest thing in the world, is great, especially considering it's resistive. Maybe my iphone is getting long in the tooth, but its touch screen isn't so hot these days.

On the camera, the new 3.2MP unit in the iPhone fixes the problem that plagues older iPhones: a crappy camera. Not horrible, just crappy, with fixed focus and no adjustments available. My Touch pro has a 3.2MP AF cmaera, which is fine, though colors are lacking in saturation. If I wanted a camera I'd use my $80 Kodak EasyShare Z1275...12 freaking megapixels. Though I wish my Olympus C 5050 came in a small modern package with an SD card slot and fast focus...the pictures that cam takes really are stellar.

Camera phones are always crap. Seriously. Even the decent ones are crap to any budget $50-$80 camera. I don't get why people get their panties in a bunch over camera phones that would've been good in 2002.

Camera phones will ALWAYS be crap. Ya know why? Even with a decent lens, you'll never have good flash because that takes power, which the camera has to share with THE PHONE ITSELF.

I agree the HTC Touch Pro is a better phone, but not a better all in one device. The iphone has better web surfing (well yes and no, no flash hurts this), and the appstore is like you said, mainstream.

I've carried around gameboys, and recently a ds and then a ds lite because I'm a hardcore gamer. The iphone has replaced that, and I can't really see myself going to another phone unless I also carry around a psp (No dsi for me)

I think you are missing the point. There really isn't any difference between 100GB vs 1GB unless you are talking about a high traffic application like Google Maps. I'll bet your indie app probably wont ever reach the amount that your thinking. And lets say you have 100GB backing the download to your app, it really wouldn't matter to the end users anyways because they can only download as fast as their ISP will let them, definatly not at 100GB/s. I don't know what network bluehost has but I bet its close if not greater to 100MB/s which is good enough for any indie developer.

Actually, LED flashes can get pretty darned powerful. Get a 3W Luxeon LED and drive it at 3.3V or so and you'll have just as much, if not more, light than a regular camera flash.

You can make a camera phone (phone emphasized) or a camera that makes calls, like they're doing in japan. If the camera's th focus it'll do well. if the phone's the focus (like the iphone) then the camera won't be the best. it's not the phone's main feature and thus I'm unsure why people are sweating over it so much.

About the Touch Pro it (and other WinMo phones) can use Skyfire. Firefox on the server, your phone is the client. Works like a charm in 3G areas. Flash, Java and everything, though you'll need something else to speedtest your connection

BlueHost is 5 Gbit/s I think. Maybe 10.

Though you're right, an indie dev might not get a ton of downloads. In the app store OTOH you get exposure and people have made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling a $3 app. Lots of downloads there, which is part of the reason Apple takes a 30% cut, but still, would you rather sell 100 copies of an app at $20 and keep $18 or sell 2000 copies at $3 and keep $2.10? Clearly the latter.

I would rather sell 100 copies and be able to distribute it under my own license for one.
Looking at it from If you are selling an app at $3 then its probably not worth getting in my honest opinion. But, if this is a serious app, such as say a SSH client (for example!), and you sell it at $3/pop to 1000 people. The probability of a problem happening goes way up, and can you really say by yourself you can manage the problems of a percentage of 1000 people? I would rather have a percentage of 100 people having a problem than a 1000.

Economies of scale; people have lowered the price of their apps so iPhone users would buy them in a demand vs. price fashion. $1, $3, $5 and $10 seem to be the sweet spots.

Also, the Apple hardware is homogeneous, as is the network, unless someone is using an unlocked iPhone on a different carrier (in which case it's easy to demarcate the problem).

The license thing is a valid issue, but again we're looking at economies of scale here and a unified experience for the customer. Go to the store, search for the app. Two taps and an iTunes password later, it's bought.

On the homogeneity deal, WinMo runs on tons of devices with no particular specification requirements. my HTC Touch Pro has 256MB of RAM I think. The Mogul has 64MB if I remember correctly. Big difference in the way things work. On the iPhone side, you can develop for one iPhone and the app will work for all of 'em. Since OS upgrades are free to iphone users and cheap to iTouch users, you only have to develop for one OS configuration.

Granted, the 3Gs has a compass and a video camera, and the iPhone has cellular data where the iTouch doesn't. But the homogeneity of the software and hardware makes problems easier to pinpoint and solve.

I apologize if I've insulted you. I was just surprised that it seemed as if you had completely forgotten the last discussion we had. BBR sometimes doesn't notify me of new posts in News threads, so maybe it has memory loss.If you really want to hack together a solution, then go for it, but I'm only concerned with the preferred, legal methods. Using that hack of a solution I miss out on all the wonderful tools in Visual Studio, especially the sweet debugger and the WinMo emulator. I'm also sure Microsoft has something to say about running their IDE tools on a non-Windows platform.But at the same time, I might as well add yet another point to WinMo development: I would need a Windows computer for writing for WinMo. However, by getting an Intel Mac and a copy of Windows, I meet two hardware requirements with one machine.Looks neat for a hobby, but I wouldn't trust that for serious business.

Since you're considering hacking the IDE tools or using esoteric methods to get around the standard WinMo limitations, then just jailbreak the iPhone. That gains you the same level of freedom that hacking at WinMo has.

Or just use Android.

Thank you for correcting me. I don't have an Android to test it with, but I did find this: »www.engadgetmobile.com/2 ··· -rascals

It seems that you've never used a Sony CyberShot phone.

Sony, as far as I know, is the only manufacturer that makes quality phones, music players, and cameras. Its w-series phones are indeed very good for music. Its K (or more recently, C) series phones are CyberShot quality. Xenon flash. Carl-Zeiss lens.

»www.sonyericsson.com/cws ··· en&cc=us

You may be sick of people getting their panties in a bunch over camera phones. I'm sick of people making broad statements like you did without knowing the alternatives. I'm gonna guess: You have an iPhone, don't ya?

There ARE Camera phones which take high-quality photos.
The below are photos taken with the older 5mp CyberShot k850i, and some are on the newer 8mp CyberShot C905. Both camera-phones have xenon flash.

»www.flickr.com/photos/br ··· 4772811/
»www.flickr.com/photos/br ··· 3183660/
»www.flickr.com/photos/om ··· 1213831/
»www.flickr.com/photos/br ··· 1674993/
»www.flickr.com/photos/21 ··· 1519906/
»www.flickr.com/photos/lc ··· 6339424/
»www.flickr.com/photos/su ··· 6609905/
»www.flickr.com/photos/su ··· 9486329/
»www.flickr.com/photos/29 ··· 0180369/
»www.flickr.com/photos/an ··· 7242036/

You have a Sony, don't ya.

Most people, are not looking for super high quality photos out of their phone. Obviously this is true or the iPhone would not be popular.

I have a Canon 40d, I would never want to use ANY camera phone for ANY picture I care about. I suspect this is true of MOST users of MOST phones.

I doubt ANY phone can touch the quality of MOST quality stand alone cameras.

I think you are just upset that millions of people do not find these to be an issue with the iPhone. The things the iPhone does not do the "best", are far out shined by the things it does do the best. They will keep working on it im sure. I mean right there with the Sony you are linking I see some massive flaws, it will only hold a 8gb memory card. iPhones have been 8gb for 2 years and are now 32gb, why cant Sony step up? 8gb and you have to go buy a card to do that I bet? Thats weak. Lets not get into the smaller screen and a boring look. Thats just what I see from taking 20 seconds at the link. I am sure there is more.

Many of us, love the iPhone and there is nothing you can do to change that. Troll away.

Nope. But I'm open minded, and know a good phone when I see one.They're not looking for a quality camera phone because they make the same ASSumption you do: that all cameraphones are inferior to dedicated cameras. The links I posted have better quality photos than my old Fuji $99 camera ever gave me. And don't get me started on the pathetic Polaroid and Kodak boxes that pass as "digital cameras".This is a red-herring, but i'll bite.
I have a Digital Rebel XT. I also have an HD camcorder which takes very nice photos.

Neither of those is nearly as convenient as a camera phone. That is the entire reason to have a camera phone. You seem to be against the very idea of a camera phone, and if that's the case, just say so.Ahh, a shifting target now. Metatron stated that even decent camera phones are worse than those practically disposable kodak/polaroid /budget (but dedicated!) cameras.

Now you're raising the bar to the quality of a "quality" stand alone camera - something quite ambiguous indeed. Last I checked, most cameras sold are not D40's or any other SLR. They are simple point-and-shoot cameras, and the fact that you raise the bar concedes my very point: That there ARE quality camera phones which can replace your typical standard point-and-shoot camera (the device that camera-phones are intended to replace). The iPhone, and all of these other "multimedia" phones from the likes of Samsung/etc can do the same, but they keep it cheap because people's expectations are low.

Congratulations on having low expectations and making the Death Star and its allies (Apple/Samsung/etc) happy! No really, pat yourself on the back for being perfectly happy to pay more to get less.

I have a open mind. I have had Sonys/Nokias/Samsungs/Audiovox PPC 6700/and many others. So what can you say now? I used all of them, they do ok. They are NOT an iPhone. I am not loyal to the iPhone. I will buy the phone I feel does what i want it to do BEST. So far ive seen nothing that touches it. You are welcome to have a differening opinion but your opinion on what I should want out of a phone means squat.

I dont buy a phone for its camera, I could care less what the quality of the camera is. I have a nice point and shoot sony and a Canon 40d. I would never use a phone to take an image I cared about so it is a non issue for me. If it is for you thats great, stop trying to make it one for others. Its CLEARLY not one based on the iPhones sales.

My low expectations about phones were actually set with the many other brands I tried before the iPhone. It wasn't hard for the iPhone to win me over based on the poor quality of phones out there.

As if Sony and other companies are not after the same thing Apple is. Just because Apple is better at it doesn't make any of those companies more/less evil than Apple. I hope you dont kid yourself with that crap.

You actually think you could change anyones mind here? Everyone here had a phone before the iPhone, and they must have not been happy with it because they moved on. I have never met a person with a iPhone that didn't love it. Additionally many people here are power users and probably have had smart phones, pdas, and all sorts of phones. If these people have moved to the iPhone they probably did it for good reason.

I don't know.. is it perhaps people aren't looking for a good camera phone because having a camera in their phone simply isn't a priority to them over making a phone call, getting email, surfing the web, listening to music, watching video, working with their calendar, sending text messages, and the interface to do all those things?

Well said, to be honest the camera function is one of the least features I consider when looking at a phone. In fact the iPhone could be without one, I wouldn't care.

Good step, but I'd like to see camera phones on smartphones.

And yes, I have an iphone. I've also had a blackjack 2, a Moto Q, a Audiovox Maestro (OLD pda from 2001), just to name a few.

I wasn't aware of a camera like this btw. Thanks for the pictures. This makes me hope that a good camera will eventually come to a smartphone.