Rukas said:
The iPhone is going to rock, I just hope the touch screen tech they "invented" is better than current touch screen technology.
Ive used PDAs in the past, and the phones they have listed on one of those links, and in my opinion the better system for communication is still hands down the QWERTY keyboard a la the Sidekick/hiptops. Its just so convenient. and easy. If Apple had gone the sidekick or even Imate sliding screen format I would be sold, right now its still a touch and go (pun intended) device for me.
Im hoping its good, but I get the feeling it will best be used as a Ipod music/video device with occassional calls and TXT/IMing so I will probably get one but stick with a sidekick for hands on communication.
The iPhone will be the ultimate phone. I have been waiting for this since I became a PDA regular. Rukas, as you know, I was once a Sidekick person myself. Had the Sidekick III been a more updated than it was from the II, I would have been sold on it. The Sidekick III is nothing more than a 2.5. I think the Sidekick is moreso of a beginners PDA. It's moreso on the 2-way end rather than a PDA anyhow. Don't get me wrong, nothing negative can be said about the Sidekick. It's the ultimate messaging phone. What the Sidekick has going for it is that it's fun. It's easy. It's quick. What makes the Sidekick perhaps the most marketable phone (aside from the over-hyped RAZRs) is the messaging. When my contract expired and I was due for the upgrade, it was right when the III came out. The III fell short of expectations in my eyes and it's far behind in technology. This isn't a bad thing for most people. I just needed more. I needed wifi. I needed a fully-functional web-browser. I needed a
real SD slot. A real camera. Etc. There's no room to modify the Sidekick.
I moved on to real PDA's. PDAs have everything I need on the go. The only downfall about PDAs (and I learned this the hard way) is that they are mostly Windows-based. Of course, you have the Palm OS, but lets not get into that joke. While PDA's have just about everything you need, there are so many key flaws because they're Windows-based. No PDA comes with instant messaging clients other than MSN Messenger. You can download 3rd party software that run trial versions like Trillian, but I'm not paying extra when the time is up. There are many many flaws with the Windows Mobile OS. But the major one is you cannot close programs. You x them out, but they are still running. This drastically slows down your phone. The only way to close your programs is by going to backdoor method of getting to your processes and shutting it down, but the average person won't figure it out.
As I've been reading up on this all day, it appears Steve Jobs and Apple realize this and are just shitting on the PDA world. I'd have to test this phone, however. I'd only have two key issues. One is just like Rukas said--the touch-screen technology. My current PDA and most PDAs lag on touch-screens. This better be fast, especially since the keyboard is only touch-screen. If it's fast, there should be no problem. Otherwise, it's going to be a killer typing on that keyboard waiting for the text to catch up. Secondly, it needs to have Mac's iChat so I can log into all of my messaging clients. If I can't do that...forget it. If those two things meet my expectations then this is the phone of my dreams.
PS: Rukas I'm not ignoring your ims. I see them over at my computer, but I'm too lazy to get out of bed. I'm on my phone (how ironic).
