“When Apple rocked the cellphone world Tuesday by unveiling its radical and gorgeous new iPhone, it was bad news for Palm Inc., whose Treo smart phones will be severely challenged by the new iPhone when it goes on sale in June,” Walter S. Mossberg writes for The Wall Street Journal.
Mossberg writes, “I attended the iPhone launch event, and was able to use one for a little while. That’s too brief an encounter to allow me to write a proper review. But I can say that it has the largest and most beautiful screen I’ve ever seen on a cellphone, even though it’s incredibly thin. It felt great in my hand. It has a brilliant new user interface; the handsomest email program and Web browser I’ve ever seen on a phone; a full-blown iPod music and video player built in; and even a cool new voicemail system.”
Mossberg writes, “The iPhone has some potential downsides — it doesn’t use a physical keyboard, instead relying on a virtual keyboard on the screen, which may put off heavy email users. It runs on the relatively slow EDGE cellular data network, though that flaw is partly offset by the fact that it can also use speedy Wi-Fi wireless networking. And, with a $499 base price, it’s expensive.”
Mossberg writes, “Still, the iPhone made my relatively new Treo 700p seem primitive in many respects when I compared them side by side… if you’re in the market for a smart phone and can afford $499, you might want to wait until June for the Apple iPhone. The Apple entry is so full of promise that anyone buying a smart phone in 2007 should at least wait for the full reviews and a chance to try it out.”
Full article, which also looks at Samsung’s BlackJack and Palm’s Treo 750, here.
Related articles:
NewsWeek’s Levy interviews Apple CEO Steve Jobs about iPhone – January 11, 2007
Why Apple’s iPhone doesn’t do high-speed mobile phone networks (yet) – January 11, 2007
RealMoney: Apple just blew up the whole damn mobile-phone supply chain with its new iPhone – January 11, 2007
ZDNet: Hands on with Apple’s iPhone: ‘elegant, ravishing, simple, sleek; impeccable & intuitive UI’ – January 11, 2007
Apple iPhone FUD campaign begins – January 10, 2007
Nine ways Apple changed the face of consumer electronics yesterday – January 10, 2007
Analysts and investors applaud arrival of Apple iPhone – January 10, 2007
Top 10 things to love and top 10 things to hate about the Apple iPhone – January 10, 2007
How Apple kept the iPhone top secret for 30 months – January 10, 2007
Hands-on with Apple’s iPhone – January 10, 2007
The only thing really wrong with Apple’s iPhone is its name – January 09, 2007
Is Apple building ‘The Device?’ [revisited] – January 09, 2007
Analyst Bajarin: Apple’s iPhone and Apple TV are industry game changers – January 09, 2007
Time: ‘iPhone could crush cell phone market pitilessly beneath the weight of its own superiority’ – January 09, 2007
Analyst: Apple iPhone should be given its own category – ‘brilliantphone’ – January 09, 2007
Cingular to use Synchronoss Technologies’ platform for Apple iPhone – January 09, 2007
iPhone photos from Apple’s Macworld Expo booth – January 09, 2007
Enderle: Apple’s iPhone is going to do very well – January 09, 2007
Apple debuts iPhone: touchscreen mobile phone + widescreen iPod + Internet communicator – January 09, 2007
FUD Alert: Analyst – I am pretty skeptical Apple’s iPhone can succeed – January 11, 2007
The Register’s Ray: Apple ‘iPhone’ will fail – December 26, 2006
Analyst: Apple iPhone economics aren’t that compelling – December 08, 2006
CNET editor Kanellos: ‘Apple iPhone will largely fail’ – December 07, 2006
Palm CEO laughs off Apple ‘iPhone’ threat – November 20, 2006
Thanks Walt, your check is in the mail!
(j/k)
Why is Walter Mossberg “more respected” in the industry than other guys who give their opinions on a national stage? I don’t know too much about this guy, other than the fact that he always states the blatantly obvious.
Walt, don’t worry, the Apple wireless Bluetooth keyboard will be compatible.
Geez, there’s going to be like, 100 iPhone articles a day for the next three months here at the ol’ MDN. You guys might have to temporarily change your name to iPhoneDailyNews.
Not that I’m complaining or anything.
All he did was look at it through the damn glass case like everybody else did.
LMFAO. I scroll down to see that my MW is infact “glass.”
To: Steve’s 2nd Half Brother Twice Removed
Soooo… “The Wall Street Journal” and “The Mossberg Report” aren’t national stages?
Has everyone missed the fact that it has built-in blue-tooth and should, for all practical purposes, be able to support a REAL KEYBOARD!
Really now… This *is* the Walt Mossberg we’re talking about… If an ABC News correspondent was allowed to actually manipulate the functions of the iPhone in-hand, Walt certainly was allowed as well.
Mossberg is respected because he at least gets his facts straight. Unlike the dipsh*t Enderles and Turdrotts of the world.
From: Mr. Obvious: “Geez, there’s going to be like, 100 iPhone articles a day for the next three months here at the ol’ MDN. You guys might have to temporarily change your name to iPhoneDailyNews.”
They could just change the name to AppleDailyNews and then it would be fitting seeing as how Apple Inc. is in more than just computers these days.
It’s a very impressive piece of hardware and software and there isn’t much going on in the world of Mac computers right now, so it makes sense to post the article about the iPhone.
Tony C…
Of course they’re national stages, and I realize that Walt Mossberg is well known. But everything this guy ever says about consumer electronics, I could easily say as well.
But, having said that, I digress. There are lots of people out there who will now buy an iPhone because Mr. Mossberg said it’s a thing of beauty. So…I hang my head and walk away kicking stones in shame.
The iPod and iPhone aren’t computers? Could have fooled me.
I live in Sacramento. I bopped over to the Sprint Store in the Elk Grove Laguna Area today. I am, of course, having problems with my Palm Treo 650 and was thinking of temporarily going over to the 700p. Well, they tried to demo it for me and it just kept crashing. So, during the conversation the discussion of renewing my contract came up and that they could really reduce my out of pocket expense. I replied “uh, no…I don’t want to renew…I am waiting on the iPhone.”
The sales manager said, “oh yeah. That is the buzz around here. The new phone is going to take away many apple and other customers this summer. She said, “I completely understand”. Then we started laughing at the palm treo as it was rebooting again! In fact, both the palm treo 700p and windows based one failed at the same time. Could not get them to connect to the EDVO networks. Meanwhile, the Dell laptop with XP loaded on it also crashed as she was trying to surf to the Apple home page to look at the iPhone.
Yeah, the iPhone is going to cream the competition.
Too bad the Iphone is a cingular Wireless exclusive. All you sprint/verizon/uscellular folks better switch over to the allover network.
“Too bad the Iphone is a cingular Wireless exclusive. All you sprint/verizon/uscellular folks better switch over to the allover network.”
Not gonna happen for this Verizon user. Not that I’m completely thrilled by Verizon’s customer service, but their call plans/pricing are hard to beat.
Besides, Cingular has over 3X the customer service complaints with the FCC that Verizon has. Customer service complaints are something I think is going to cause Apple PR problems of the “guilty by association” variety when (not if) iPhone users start having Cingular-related problems with their iPhones.
When it comes to wireless carriers, they all lack. I had AT&T several years ago before they became Cingular. Lots of dropped calls. T-Mobile was good, but no reception in a lot of buildings. Verizon has the best signal, but they suck in many other ways. I don’t know where their customer service is, but I can’t understand them. I think a lot of people can’t and as a result there are always long lines at their stores with customer service related issues. Verizon (who I have now) has also crippled a lot of my Treo700p’s features that I like, like bluetooth. Won’t miss them. One is not better than the other. Just a different set of problems. I will love my new iPhone. If I lose my signal, I’ll text or email whoever I was talking to.
I think Walt is respected because he’s up on a national stage, and he says the same things as people who aren’t on a national stage would say.
It’s hard to do that, especially when you have to suck a lot of cock to get onto that national stage in the first place. People who have national stages want to make money from it, and for you to get onto it, you have to say what makes them the most money.
So Walt is respected because he’s there, but his message isn’t altered.
“So Walt is respected because he’s there, but his message isn’t altered.”
Walt is respected in this forum because he is blatantly pro Apple. It wouldn’t have mattered what the iPhone was, he would have reviewed it positively.