Why is iPhone not considered a smartphone?

[testacon]

Originally Posted by schettj

Well, anyone who used a computer before 1996 had plenty of experience connecting modems (you know, those whacky things that connect your computer to your phone) scanners, printers, and whatnot via serial cables. Heck, you could even connect your TeleVideo terminal that way, so you could, you know, interact with your computer.

Ah, good times.

So, no, I and anyone else over 35 might not noyersayin'

Wow, I must really be old then, my Commodore 64 had a 300 baud modem, it couldn't even dial on it's own. I had to wait till the phone rang and disconnect the rj11 cord out of the handset and plug it into the back of the modem before the BBS hung up on you.

[BooDaddy]

shoot man... I remember buying my first 2400 baud modem so I could get on the local BBS's and play Legend of the Red Dragon!!! I was a kid back then.
I also remember saving a crap ton of money to go out and buy a US Robotics 28.8 Sportster. Man those were the days!

[testacon]

Originally Posted by NIKKG

Why do people on this site state the iPhone is not a “real smartphone” but WinMo, Android supposedly are?

With my Jailbroken Iphone 4, I can:

1. Tether through wifi and use it as a wifi hotspot free

2. Customize the lock screen with weather, calendars etc.
3. Run all sorts of great apps and games and can multitask
4. There are all sorts of legal and illegal apps and hacks
5. Use GPS, Music Player, Bluetooth, Wifi, 3G
6. Take pictures and Hi-Def videos and have a built in flash
7. Browse web sites just as fast and good as on my laptop
8. Built in email and calendar syncs with my outlook at work
9. On top of all that, it still makes phone calls and text messages, plus I get great ATT service.

To me, this is not only a smartphone, its like a laptop replacement. My laptop just collects dust now, I don’t see what’s the point of turning on a laptop when I can do almost everything right on my iphone with that beautiful hi-def screen.

My turn...

First and most important where's Flash 10.1? Without it, no it's NOT a laptop replacement, HTML 5 is simply not there yet. Every website I go to sucks because I can't see flash videos, except youtube linked ones.

While I think that the iPhone is a fantastic piece of hardware and software the potential to be a real smartphone is there, the simple fact is that Apple dictatorship hampers this from being a reality.

The fact that "Steve Jobs" is a smartass, doesn't make the iPhone smart!

If I create an app that "I" need and Apple doesn't approve it, it's not the phones fault it's Apples. I should be able to install ANYTHING that I want/need once I drop my hard earn dollars on it. Whether I want to buy it or create it myself. Once you jailbreak the iPhone I think it becomes a true smartphone but then leave it to Apple again to break the jailbreak with an update (which is dumb), leaving you with a less then smartphone.

Antenna gate issues aside, I thank Apple for it's impact on the smartphone world. If Microsoft didn't bail on WM, and Apple was more open and not with AT&T, Android probably never would have stood a chance. I rather have Google "spying" on me then someone telling me what I can and can't have.

So my defination of smartphone is simply, "Is it smart enough to do what I want it to do?", and unless its jailbroken and truely usable, my answer is NO...

It still wouldn't stop me from buying one though--IF it wasn't bundled with AT&T, and carried on Sprint. My wife would just love the simplistic menu systems...

[BooDaddy]

Oh heres one.. what about the modems that had the handset cradles? You dialed up the ISP on the actual phone you talk on, then lay the handset in the cradle. THats some old skool junk right there!

[fozmsu]

Why do people say the iphone isn't a smartphone because Apple is too strict? That has little to do with it. Other people try knocking it by saying you have to jailbreak it to be able to do smartphone stuff. That just means it is in fact capable. I unlocked every WM phone I had and flashed it to get it to work the way it should have out of the box. What's the difference? Saying the iphone isn't a smartphone because it doesn't support flash means that there wasn't really any smartphones until about a month ago. I really wish WM would just die. It turns you into a crack addict with all the constant ROMs coming out everyday. You can't stop. I would load several ROMs onto my SD card before work everyday just so I could flash via SD all day at work. It affected my family, friends and work. Thank God for that intervention. From now on, I'm staying clean. Nothing but iOS or Android for me.

[NIKKG]

Originally Posted by fozmsu

Why do people say the iphone isn't a smartphone because Apple is too strict? That has little to do with it. Other people try knocking it by saying you have to jailbreak it to be able to do smartphone stuff. That just means it is in fact capable. I unlocked every WM phone I had and flashed it to get it to work the way it should have out of the box. What's the difference? Saying the iphone isn't a smartphone because it doesn't support flash means that there wasn't really any smartphones until about a month ago. I really wish WM would just die. It turns you into a crack addict with all the constant ROMs coming out everyday. You can't stop. I would load several ROMs onto my SD card before work everyday just so I could flash via SD all day at work. It affected my family, friends and work. Thank God for that intervention. From now on, I'm staying clean. Nothing but iOS or Android for me.

Dude your so right! That's why I dumped my TP2, the only activity I did on it was flash roms, it was like that everyday like a drug addict needing another hit. What a sad OS Winmo had become, they need to take that old dog out and shoot it. Its not a surprise everyone jumped on Android, the only ones left are the sero users.

[gTen]

Originally Posted by NIKKG

Dude your so right! That's why I dumped my TP2, the only activity I did on it was flash roms, it was like that everyday like a drug addict needing another hit. What a sad OS Winmo had become, they need to take that old dog out and shoot it. Its not a surprise everyone jumped on Android, the only ones left are the sero users.

And those that..need it for CDMA/GSM functionality.and those on legacy plans... But to be fair WM kinda needed some decent hardware and maybe some actual drivers...then it may have not been so bad :/

oh US Robotics..you bring back so much memories..I remember upgrading my 133mhz Dell pc(this was before anyone knew what dell was and they made pcs in the US..it took them 2 weeks to build it and they had a step by step on how they were building it each day) with a US Robotics 56k modem...whatever happened to them anyways :/

[testacon]

Originally Posted by fozmsu

Why do people say the iphone isn't a smartphone because Apple is too strict? That has little to do with it. Other people try knocking it by saying you have to jailbreak it to be able to do smartphone stuff. That just means it is in fact capable. I unlocked every WM phone I had and flashed it to get it to work the way it should have out of the box. What's the difference? Saying the iphone isn't a smartphone because it doesn't support flash means that there wasn't really any smartphones until about a month ago. I really wish WM would just die. It turns you into a crack addict with all the constant ROMs coming out everyday. You can't stop. I would load several ROMs onto my SD card before work everyday just so I could flash via SD all day at work. It affected my family, friends and work. Thank God for that intervention. From now on, I'm staying clean. Nothing but iOS or Android for me.

And how is Apple any better? You jailbreak your phone, then Apple comes out with a new iOS and you upgrade, breaking that jailbreak. You impatiently wait and wait for the new jailbreak and the cycle continues on and on again. I flashed my phone, maybe, once every few months. It all goes toward that leading edge vs bleeding edge, after a few hundred people test it for me, only then do I reap in the benefits.

Maybe not classifying the iPhone as a smartphone is too extreme of a statement. It's just a lame smartphone (because of Apple's policies) that you have to keep screwing with it to make it usable. So I'm kind of confused why your bashing WM when Apple is really not any better. Sure there is 100,000+ apps but I really don't need 99.9% of them, just most of the ones that they refuse to approve.

See as previously stated a "smartphone" should be smart enough to run ANYTHING that was programmed for it. Apple's smartphones are only smart enough to run anything that THEY say can run on it. If you cripple a smartphone abililty to run programs, how can you justify calling it a "real" smartphone?

[fozmsu]

Originally Posted by testacon

And how is Apple any better? You jailbreak your phone, then Apple comes out with a new iOS and you upgrade, breaking that jailbreak. You impatiently wait and wait for the new jailbreak and the cycle continues on and on again. I flashed my phone, maybe, once every few months. It all goes toward that leading edge vs bleeding edge, after a few hundred people test it for me, only then do I reap in the benefits.

Maybe not classifying the iPhone as a smartphone is too extreme of a statement. It's just a lame smartphone (because of Apple's policies) that you have to keep screwing with it to make it usable. So I'm kind of confused why your bashing WM when Apple is really not any better. Sure there is 100,000+ apps but I really don't need 99.9% of them, just most of the ones that they refuse to approve.

See as previously stated a "smartphone" should be smart enough to run ANYTHING that was programmed for it. Apple's smartphones are only smart enough to run anything that THEY say can run on it. If you cripple a smartphone abililty to run programs, how can you justify calling it a "real" smartphone?

That's just it. It is smart enought to run anything. You just need to abuse Apple's policies to use some of it, but it can still do it. It's not any different than WM in that aspect. Hell, when I first got the HTC mogul it couldn't send mms without a hack. The stance from HTC was that it wasn't their problem and Sprint had the balls to say it wasn't capable even thought it was the top of the line phone they had at the time. Someone then came up with a work around and Sprint followed up by contacting the developer and making them stop. I believe they even demanded the source code for the program so they could block it out. All under the threat of lawsuit. Of course they came out with an official update that enabled mms and all was well after. That is not much different than the Apple practices you are complaining about. And by the way, even though I was unable to send or receive picture mail, Sprint still forced me to pay for it for the privelage of owning the Mogul. The business practices of the manufacturer and the service provider don't make the phone any dumber or smarter, just more challenging to use. And flashing is like sex. If you aren't always thinking about it or doing it or doing it feverently, you're probably not doing it right. Flashing WM is a drug. You better believe that one. As far as the old computers go, the first one we had was a Texas Instruments. I believe it was like T100 or something. I am sure one of you remembers better than I did. I remember copying programs for games out of magazines and saving them to casette tapes on a recorder that was plugged into it. Memories are a bit fuzzy considering I was like 10 at the time. Where's the emulator for that?

[schettj]

Originally Posted by BooDaddy

Oh heres one.. what about the modems that had the handset cradles? You dialed up the ISP on the actual phone you talk on, then lay the handset in the cradle. THats some old skool junk right there!

Yep. Hayes 300 baud acoustic coupler modems ROCKED. Yep, that's 30 characters per second, baby! Top THAT!

(and you were calling into your local BBS, not an ISP. At that time, your ISP choices were Nada or Nil. Compuserve ('77) and AOL (83) didn't come online until much later. Hell, I remember when phone companies threatened to charge extra for "excessively long" local calls, because people would spend hours dialed in)