Why the iPhone changed the game

Now the iPhone has been around for a while and it is appar­ent that it’s changed the game. It’s changed what peo­ple expect from a mobile phone. The key behind its suc­cess being that it’s more than just a mobile phone; it’s a mobile plat­form, a plat­form that has evolved over time.

Fig­ure 1 iPhone 3GS The lat­est iter­a­tion of the iPhone plat­form.

Look­ing at the iPhone’s hard­ware specs, there’s really noth­ing that we haven’t seen on other devices. It has the usual fea­tures that are found in other smart-phones, Blue­tooth, Wi-Fi, large dis­play, plenty of mem­ory, a plethora of sen­sors and more recently GPS, 3G, com­pass and many other good­ies. So what sets the iPhone apart? Oth­ers may argue that it is the App Store that sets the iPhone apart but it is not. The App Store is merely periph­eral; it is the result of that which sets the iPhone apart.

Fig­ure 2 Lots of great mobile devices out there. From left the iPhone, Nokia n97, HTC Hero, Palm Pre, Sam­sung i8910 and the Sony Eric­s­son Satio

I’m by no means an iPhone fan boy, in fact, I’m almost a hater. I’m the kind of per­son who doesn’t like to fol­low the crowd and I’ve cho­sen other phones over the iPhone twice so far; big mis­takes. But I’m likely to do it again next time aroundJ. So what is it about the iPhone that’s made the world fall in love with it? This is some­thing that most peo­ple over­look when they look at the iPhone or any other phone for that mat­ter; sup­port.

The effort that Apple puts into the iPhone is what sets it apart. They put their heart and soul into it. They lis­ten to what peo­ple say and they make sig­nif­i­cant changes that have sig­nif­i­cant effects. The orig­i­nal iPhone was launched about 2 years ago and it is still evolv­ing with the same momen­tum it had from the begin­ning. Apple has remained pas­sion­ate and per­sis­tent with the iPhone even after it’s been around for so long. Other man­u­fac­tur­ers, such as Sam­sung, tend to back away from their prod­ucts just after they let them out the door. It’s almost as if any com­plaints made by users land on deaf ears.

Ini­tially the iPhone had no appli­ca­tions at all, just promises. Sam­sung had the same, lots of promises with the i8910 Omnia HD. After a while, some web apps popped up for the iPhone and before long the SDK came out and a lot of new inno­v­a­tive appli­ca­tions fol­lowed it. A lot of changes were also made with the user inter­face, more func­tion­al­ity and more fea­tures were added. The iPhone evolved into what it is today with no change in the hard­ware in the case of the orig­i­nal iPhone which has the same firmware ver­sion as the iPhone 3GS. There are of course a few dif­fer­ences to accom­mo­date the newer hard­ware and fea­tures of the 3GS.

Software-wise and support-wise, the orig­i­nal iPhone launched 2 years ago is bet­ter than the Sam­sung i8910 Omnia HD. With sup­port and actual progress made being the most impor­tant fac­tors for a mobile phone, this makes the orig­i­nal iPhone bet­ter the Omnia HD over­all. Despite the sig­nif­i­cantly supe­rior hard­ware, a pow­er­ful oper­at­ing sys­tem and a mas­sive head start, the Omnia HD falls short com­pared to the iPhone in many ways. I’ve already gone through the prob­lems with the Omnia HD in my report and it is really disheartening.

Fig­ure 3 Leg­endary iPhone next to the i8910, a ‘poten­tial’ mon­ster of a phone

Oth­ers still may argue that these are early days but they’re really not. We’ve seen the same pat­tern from Sam­sung with the G810 and more recently the i8510 Innov8 just a year ago. They were released with a lot of promise, a lot of hope and a lot of poten­tial but were aban­doned almost as soon as they were released.

Now don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is not per­fect. It has its flaws, users have their fair share of issues, but Apple seems to make a real effort to address them. For instance with cut, copy and paste. This is a fea­ture users requested from the get go and Apple deliv­ered. It’s a pretty big fea­ture and engi­neers had to really work to get it up and run­ning. Another thing is por­trait key­board for notes/mail app. A small request, but guess what? Apple deliv­ered. These are just a few exam­ples. Of the things users want from their i8910, Sam­sung hasn’t deliv­ered a sin­gle sig­nif­i­cant update to date!

Despite all that, all is not lost. There is still hope that Sam­sung will pull up their socks and get their act together before it’s too late. As with any other phone, since the iPhone came out (and before), peo­ple expect their voices to be heard, peo­ple expect changes to be made when over­whelm­ing num­bers voice con­cerns. We do not expect the i8910 Omnia HD to evolve as much as the iPhone has but we expect the exist­ing prob­lems to be resolved. The peti­tion that I started has been pro­gress­ing quite slowly but clearly a lot of peo­ple agree with my views.

Now, this is not the first time a mobile phone com­pany has failed to deliver. HTC failed to deliver graph­ics dri­vers for the TyTN II result­ing in the web­site http://www.htcclassaction.org/ with the tag “Because HTC dropped the ball, and it’s about time they pick it up!”. This was for graph­ics dri­vers only! Sam­sung raised the bar with the i8910 Omnia HD. They com­pletely walked off the pitch with this one! Wake up Samsung.