I really wanted to buy an iPhone but...

... I ended up buying one of these: HTC Touch Cruise

Initially, I was waiting for Apple to bring out a model with UMTS/HSDPA support. But finally I got bored waiting for it and decided to buy the latest HTC. It has everything you would (or wouldn't) expect in a smartphone: Bluetooth, Wifi, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, 3MP autofocus camera, FM receiver, microSD expansion slot, GPS, ... And, oh yes, you can also use it to make a phone call.

The home screen of the device is really cool: HTC created an add-on that continuously displays graphical weather predictions for your location. Nice idea.

I already installed a chess program, tetris, a graphing scientific calculator, a sudoku program, a program to predict the tides with a worldwide database, and an astronomical ephemeris tool. All of them were freeware. I'm still looking for a small musical score editing program to add, and perhaps an on-screen musical keyboard to experiment while I'm on the move.

One of the coolest things I have seen in a while is the free Google Maps add-on for it that I installed. It shows your real-time position on top of Google Maps (with satellite pictures if you want), linked to the internal GPS receiver. Because of the HSDPA connection, it all works very fast. The application perfectly integrates with the address book on the phone, so for example you can directly show a contact location, and obtain travel directions.

But I will miss the excellent design of the iPhone, its gorgeous large screen, and its unparalleled UI. The "touch" interface of the HTC is really only a thin layer with some silly eye candy, and very rapidly you find yourself using the provided stylus again. It doesn't even come close to the elegant user-friendliness of the Apple device. Hopefully, the next generation iPhone will have 3G and GPS and whatever is hot at that time.

 

Well, I really had my mind set on the iPhone for a long time. But, given the facts, I decided that not looking at the alternatives would have been a clear case of mental gymnastics!

The web browser on the HTC really is at least up to the one in the iPhone (it has Opera). But the iPhone's real advantage comes from easy the way you navigate through pages, and of course from the high-res big screen.
But that's the theory. Have you ever surfed on the web using EDGE? It's so ridiculously slow that the whole idea is just simply futile. The web browser in the iPhone is really only usable if you have Wifi access. But usually, in those cases, I would use my laptop.

I like the flatness of the iPhone (who doesn't). But the HTC is a bit shorter, narrower and a lighter. So I would give both equal points here. After all, we are talking of a difference of 4mm in thickness.

That's what several people say. But I don't necessarily bit that. Interestingly, the battery life on the HTC device is listed better if UMTS is used rather than GPRS. I have been using HSDPA intensively and affects the battery less than wifi. I think that your argument is a case of mental gymnastics to justify a flaw in an Apple product

If Apple comes out with an iPhone with GPS and HSDPA, I will switch it immediately. We will see how long I will use my current HTC device.
But then I will miss my chess program, my scientific calculator, my tide prediction tool...

 

Alric boy, the twists you put your brain in to defend just anyting Apple makes are really making me laugh while I'm typing this. There are plenty of ultra-thin HSDPA compatible phones that are smaller than the iPhone and get good battery life. As I said, HSDPA uses less battery power than wifi, which the iPhone does have. There seems to be a whole community of Apple folks that will just bity any argument to justify any shortcoming in an Apple product, regardless how silly that argument is. Do yourself a favour and use your brain the way it was intended to use!

To claim that a phone with HSDPA only browses "slightly" faster than a phone wit EDGE must be a new high point in mental flexing, even for you. I checked between the HTC and a friend's iPhone (on EDGE), and there was a consistent factor of more than five. That's the difference between being usable and being unusable.

Get over it. The iPhone is an excellent device that really shines in a lot of aspects, but it is not up to the competition when it comes to a few features. Whether there are important or not is a decision everybody must make for themselves.

I for one will wait for the next generation and hope that they will be addressed. I also hope that, by that time, developing software for the iPhone has been opened up, and that an active community will exist making useful freeware tools for that phone.

And now I hear you coming: yes, but those 4mm...

 

The HTC does that trick also, if you did not switch on the GPS receiver. It gets you something, but in a city is just simply useless to get travel directions while driving. In most cases, it just can't determine the correct street automatically. If this is as good as any GPS unit you have used before, than you must have had very bad devices. Sorry, but that sounds just like mind flexing to justify anything Apple pumps out.
In fact, the Google Maps is fun and fascinating, but for serious navigation I installed Tomtom on the HTC (provided with the device) to get decent navigation with spoken turn-by-turn directions.

You don't see any benefit??? Let's have a look:
(1) Internet access at usable speed in the absence of Wifi (5x that of the iPhone)
(2) GPS, turning it into a powerful navigation device with turn-by-turn spoken guidance while driving.
(3) Simlock-free without needing a hack. Quite a big thing for me, because my unlimited data subscription is paid by my company.
(4) Software addons. Right now, my single HTC device is also
- A scientific calculator with graphing capabilities
- A chess computer
- A pocket game computer (sudoku & tetris, but more to follow)
- A worldwide tide prediction tool (great for diving and sailing)
- An astronomical ephemeris generator
- A pocket synthesizer with keyboard
- A musical score editing tool

That is all today. Compare that to an outdated, slow mobile data packet protocol, an unacceptable GPS surrogate that is unusable for real-life application, and a promise for the release of an SDK, so that in 2 years hopefully people will have developed some interesting applications. You still don't see any benefits? Maybe, but then we are expecting totally different things from a mobile device in the year 2008.

Yes, the iPhone has a great screen, the coolest UI and is 4mm flatter. But, for the time being, I decided that, at least for me, the overall balance flipped very convincingly towards the HTC device.

 

Same for me. In the end, it all boils down to personal preferences and priorities. I consider my phone as a Swiss Army tool that ideally should do everything you can think of, but not everybody thinks in the same way of course. But it could be fun exchanging our idea's about mobile phone's, couldn't it?

I have turn-by-turn GPS in the Prius and in the Volvo, but the HTC turn-by-turn GPS is really really great when you rent a car in another city (which I often do). Enter your destination, put it on the dashboard and off you go. Anywhere, anytime, instantly.

I have had several iPods for a long time already, and they perfectly fulfill my need. In fact, I'm not even going to use the HTC for that purpose. My current Nano gives me everything I want in this respect in a really small package that is small enough to carry with me everywhere, even to places where phones (with cameras) are not allowed.

When Apple releases the iPod SDK, I will have a close look at it and, depending on its power and versatility, I may decide to buy one of those iPhones right away and start developing applications for it myself. Should be fun. I think that, in the long run, Apple is the company if you look for stylish quality consumer electronics. One day I will be calling with an mobile phone from Apple, that is almost sure. Unfortunately, it's not today yet. Some work remains to be done.

 

Well, I agree that the disadvantages of the iPhone are not mind-blowing, but so are it's advantages. A bigger screen and 4mm flatter and a cooler UI is nice, but not the end of the world. So, as I said, it all boils down to what priorities an individual user has.
For me, the turn-by-turn GPS was one of the selling points, because I often travel for my work, and rent cars in cities I don't know. Just being able to use my phone at that time to guide me through the city with spoken commands is very nice. And I have it today.

As for the add-on development community, I'm sure it will take off, but most likely first with some rather mainstream applications. I doubt that a tide prediction program will roll out within the first year. The nice thing is that the HTC floats on top of 5 years of community development (just like my Palm I used to use), resulting in some excellent niche applications. In fact, I have been rather unimpressed over the last 15 year by the freeware development community of Apple. This is one area I think that PC users are much more active in (of course, there are more of them). I think that, now more than ever, Mac users tend to turn to that platform for its user-friendliness and not for turning it inside out (except for a small minority of course)

And I'm most definitely not interested at all in watching TV on a 3.5" screen.

 

I saw that for the iPod touch applications the other day. I also noticed that Apple will build in some control mechanisms to verify the software running on the device. I'm wondering what all this will mean in reality.

Incidentally, I also noticed that, in the Netherlands, EDGE is not supported anymore by no operator. It's considered a technology that is phased out in favour of HSDPA. I'm sure other countries will follow that path soon.

 

Theoretically, it could be that the iPhone uses a chipset that already supports 3G communication. Sometimes, some manufacturers use the same chipset (e.g. the Qualcomm MSM7200) in different lines of phones, but cut some functionality in order to differentiate the market positions.

The baseband chip used in the iPhone has been reported to be the Infineon PMB8876, which does not support UMTS. But it can be enabled through a WCDMA coprocessor. That seems to indicate that it should be fairly easy to modify it into support for 3G, but I strongly doubt that this coprocessor is present in the current versions.

 

That's what Steve Jobs was saying. But I don't bite that. On my HTC device, the standby battery life for HSDPA is reported to be longer than for EDGE, and the communication battery life is equal. And HSDPA certainly uses less power than Wifi on that device (and Wifi is supported by the iPhone).

 

For the Asian market, it will have to have HSDPA. Over there, in 2008 no one would buy such a phone without it. I expect it to come out some time in the first half of 2008.