I spent quite a lot of time evaluating smart-phones this last week, including having hands-on time with the Nokia E71, the Blackberry 8900, the iPhone & iPod Touch, with a firm eye on their capabilities as a mobile computer, more so than a mobile phone or a mobile entertainment device.

My conclusion: the iPhone (or respectively iPod Touch) are interesting insofar as interfaces are concerned that either require mouse-like interaction or that require no interaction whatsoever, e.g. listening to music. And it’s pretty consistent with my first post about the iTunes app store, where I wrote that developers should focus on developing games and other visual applications, rather than on typing-intensive apps.

Now I may be perfectly wrong about this and if you’re a long-time iPhone / iPod Touch user and are able to type long messages without a problem, please drop a comment.

There’s no denying that the Apple gadget (whichever version) is h.o.t. But I think it’s a matter of the software-features being over-hyped and people forgetting that the hardware isn’t mature yet.

• First of all: touch-keyboards, really? It just doesn’t seem precise enough for accurate typing.
• Second: 400 dollars/euros for 32GB of space seems way over-priced, more so because it’s also a video-device and increased video-quality also comes with (much) increased file-sizes. Add to this that streaming video from your Mac doesn’t seem possible, unless you employ one hack or the other.
• Thirdly, I think that the web2.0 hype of developing application after application after application has strongly spilled over to the iTunes appstore, which is one of the few digital venues to have some kind of business model, but it totally overshadows any hardware deficiencies the iPod and iPhone may have (and I mean that only in terms of typing and storage, as I think apps for gaming and other entertainment work perfectly fine).

My gut tells me that iPods are mainly for entertainment and not productivity and even so that there’s a better deal to be had waiting for at least another generation beyond this.

Once again, I’m very open to you (trying to) convincing me that I’m am completely and utterly wrong.

Vincent

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