Thread: Apple vs Nokia
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Wizard69 is offline Wizard69
2007-11-01 , 06:04
Posts: 27 | Thanked: 0 times | Joined on Oct 2007
#75
Originally Posted by Hedgecore View Post
It's small because it's a phone. I couldn't imagine holding a laptop up to the side of my head whenever I wanted to annoy every person around me with one-sided details of my mundane life (I don't have a cell phone - - could you tell?)
Size is relative! The problem is that if you have a big head and big hands the iPhone starts to look kinda small. Add in the fact that you have the eyes of a +45 year old individual and the thought of a bigger screen isn't all that bad.

One of the biggest things that irks me about the potential for tablets is feature creep. Imagine if you had a tablet that had Wifi/Bluetooth connectivity, cell, video/audio playback, GPS, a full 7mp camera w/video recording options, a hardware keyboard, etc, etc, etc. It would only perform several of those tasks well.
Contrary to popular opinion some of those features can be very compelling. From the camera on I can take or leave those features.

Also it is rather surprising just how well these little guys can do some of those tasks. The vast majority of these devices are more powerful than half the computers I've owned over the years. It is more a question of doing things in a way acceptable to the user.

Feature creep is a dangerous thing that only diminishes the final product for most. I think the greatest example of this that I saw was a cheap $10 mouse from some overseas sweatshop that had a dialpad on top. Your phone handset or headset would plug into the mouse and you'd use the mouse to dial...

That said, I think there *are* some combinations that can be pulled off. The n810 is a good combination of many features but the conflicting form factor considerations between it being a cell phone and it being an internet tablet are too great.
In my estimation the 810 is simply the best example of rolling all the wrong functions into a device. A lot of potential capability was sacrificed to add that keyboard.
How small can you make it before it's a good cell phone and a crappy internet experience & vice versa? The shoddy camera is fine - - I thought cell cameras were a horrid idea until I played with one at the bar one night.
Funny you should mention this tonight. I happened to stop into a local Wegmans (grocery store) and got a bit of a Halloween surprise. Two gals walk in dressed for the night, let me tell you more than a few cell cameras where whipped out. Made me wish that I had one with a camera. The big problem with this is that if I had a IT I probably wouldn't have been any better off.

By the way a testament to bad cell phone design was made that night. I got handed a cell to take a pic and the thing was practically unusable in that my thumb layed over the OK button in such a way that I had a difficult time snapping a pic. There are numerous problems with the common Cell phone, much of them due to the rush to make smaller and smaller phones. Too small to handle.


You're not taking wedding pics, you're taking spontaneous pics of funny things in the street or your drunken friends. Feature creep, but acceptable as you're not trying to marry a phone with an 10mp SLR camera.
They do have their uses and it comes back to being a feature that becomes a free ride on the Cell. People, most anyways, won't carry around a camera every day - cell phones are not a problem.

As to 10MP yeah it will probably be a while before they hit a cell phone. The key with cell camera technology is making the cameras better. There is still a lot to accomplish here. No one wants to hold an SLR to their head to take a call either but making snap shots on a phone should be a better experience than it is.

dave