Quote:
Originally Posted by theTastyCat
...when she saw my new TP2. What would you say?
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1) Higher screen resolution (800x480) makes web browsing better (particularly when zooming in and out doesn't work quite as well on the TP2 as it does on an iPhone
).
2) A real keyboard is preferable if you do a fair amount of texting/note taking/etc.
3) Generally cheaper data plans (well, at least with Sprint, that I have)
4) None of this non-sense with the end-user not being able to easily add whatever software they want without Apple's approval. The whole notion of having to "jailbreak" *my own friggin' phone* is ridiculous to me.
5) More really powerful utility programs, like WMWifiRouter, AirNet, etc. if you're into tethering, war driving, security, etc.
I don't expect (4) or (5) matter with that many people, but they do to me. Still, I have nothing against iPhones -- if someone gave one to me (along with a paid service plan) I certainly wouldn't turn it down. Windows Mobile vs. the iPhone is a lot like regular Windows vs. the Mac OS -- the former tends to be a little more down and dirty (although it does wash up nicely), whereas the later is pretty "upper crust elite" which sometimes just isn't what you want.
I don't think anyone can deny that the iPhone really caught Microsoft off-guard and they've been scrambling to catch up ever since. (Recall that Windows Mobile 6.5 wasn't initially on Microsoft's planned release schedule at all. And it's kinda sad that HTC has had to expend so much effort with their TouchFlo 3D to make WM phones at least *look* nice compred to iPhones.)
At the *hardware* level, other than perhaps multi-touch, WM phones have been able to do everything an iPhone does for *years* now. Yet Microsoft was never really pushing to make their software really "polished" and "slick" (not to mention "bug free"). While I'm sure everyone here was using Mobile Internet Explorer and Mobile Office for years before the iPhone came out, you have to credit Apple with getting people to realize that a phone could do all these things... and they made it "fashionable" to boot, by paying so much attention to thinking about how to integrate this sort of functionality on a small touchscreen device. (Something Palm has always paid a lot of attention to as well...) I mean, I know that there's far more software for WM than for iPhones, but until recently did the average WM phone user even know that? I think not -- I'd bet that at least 80% of all WM phones never had one 3rd party application loaded on to them. Apple's integration of the "App Store" was a very smart marketing move, and of course this has now been coped by Microsoft (and Palm).
Competition is a good thing here... but we need to be careful that Windows Mobile remains "good" enough to keep plenty of good developers around -- I've read that a lot of former WM developers are now switching to becoming iPhone developers, and even SmartPhone magazine has now become iPhone Life magazine! Sheesh!
---Joel