“It has been nearly a year since Apple Inc. launched the elegant and easy-to-use iPhone. Since then, our perceptions on how we can use a mobile phone have changed,” Eric Benderoff reports for The Chicago Tribune. “But the essential lesson of the iPhone has yet to be learned: The magic is in the simplicity of using Apple’s software.”
“That became abundantly clear as I wrestled with two new touch-based phones. They have their merits but are no threat to what Apple offers,” Benderoff reports.
“The LG Vu and Verizon’s XV6900 (an, ahem, attention-grabbing name; another missed lesson) are both handsome from a hardware standpoint… But based on usability, they are so far behind what Apple achieved that it seems unfair to even make a comparison,” Benderoff reports.
“Essentially, the one thing these phones have in common with the iPhone is touch. And even that needs work,” Benderoff reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Disappointingly, Benderoff fails to make the distinction between uni-touch (which all fake iPhones employ) and multi-touch (iPhone). That’s a major difference and ignoring it is what the iPhone-fakers rely upon; that’s why you see Verizon ads screaming “touch” in the U.S., but the “touch” they offer is rudimentary at best and, as Benderoff does clearly state, can’t compete with iPhone.
Benderoff continues, “Perhaps the next few efforts at a touch-screen phone, including Sprint’s Instinct, will provide the fun and function Apple got right in its first effort. So far, if someone asked me to suggest a cool touch phone, there’s still only one worth buying.”
MacDailyNews Take: Again, it’s not touch that’s the issue; it’s Multi-Touch that’s helps set iPhone apart (along with obsessive attention to detail throughout the UI and apps vs. competitors’ attention only to making the home screen look as much like an iPhone as possible and ignoring the rest of the user interface and software.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Peter T. in Oak Park” for the heads up.]