Can you think of any other product whose introduction would merit special coverage by the international media? What other product would cause people with houses and jobs to sleep out in the street to get first crack at a limited inventory (more limited if you want the white one)? Well the iPhone 4 has arrived.
I got to see one of the first ones, and I didn't have to sleep on the sidewalk in a beach chair to do it. My pal Lloyd's son Scotty is a major iPhone fanatic, and he was one of the lucky 600,000 who got on the mail order list. I got to see it last night, and while I only had it in my hands for a few moments, the changes from the earlier models were readily apparent.
The new iPhone is noticeably thinner and more elegant than its predecessors. The new retina display is as crisp and bright as anything I've seen, and it has the classic solid, weighty feel of other iPhones. The one thing I noticed in particular was the front glass. I like things tidy, and smartphone screens with grease and facial oils (don't even get me started on makeup) smeared all over them drive me to distraction. The specially fabricated glass Apple had concocted for the iPhone 4 does seem to be able to battle all but the aftereffects of a bacon cheeseburger.
The best thing that Scott told me about his new iPhone was that when he called his grandma, she could actually hear him. So it seems that in the current iteration Apple has finally come to the realization that if your product is a "phone", people might actually might want to talk over it.
I did a post a few weeks back that covered the technical details, but I didn’t have much time to go beyond the physical attribute on my initial inspection. Importantly, Apple has added some enterprise application and security enhancements. The iPhone can now synchronize calendar, contacts, and calendar entries with more than one Exchange account. They will also have onboard encryption, and enterprises will be able to store and distribute in-house applications directly without having to resort to iTunes distribution--both capabilities IT departments have been looking for.
Lost in the iPhone ruckus was the announcement of Motorola's newest model of the Android-based Droid X. Due to be released July 15 through Verizon, Droid X has Team Android is bringing out the heavy guns. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt appeared on CNBC's Power Lunch Wednesday with Motorola co-Chief Executive Sanjay Jha, Verizon Wireless' CMO John Stratton, and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. They did not take the bait and rip directly into Apple, but they did stay on-message with their pitch for an open, competitive market and "may the best man win".
Among the key features with the Droid X is a 4.3-inch display to better the iPhone's 3.5 inches. As video is the next frontier for smartphones, Motorola is hawking their support for Adobe's Flash--hence Adobe's Mr. Narayen's appearance. Apple has been famously pooh-poohing Flash support in favor of HTML 5. It is entertaining to hear Apple flouting the benefits of openness. Adobe's response is that 75% of video content is on Flash, so if you want video, you want Flash. Unlike the iPhone 4, the Droid X does not feature a front-facing camera so Motorola's idea of video is something you watch or something you record, not a video teleconference.
Of course, you don't get Flash right out of the box. That capability along with the Android 2.2 version of the operating system will be delivered via an over-the-air update planned for later this year. In the meantime, it appears the new Droid will be supporting "Flash-lite" like other Android devices. However, Google claims that 160,000 Android phones are activated each day and that shipments have been surpassing iPhones. The reason for that can be attributed to slower sales of the iPhone in anticipation of the iPhone 4's release.
Looking at both devices, it is clear that consumer capabilities are being brought to the fore while you have to read the fine print to find the enterprise features; the Droid X will have an 8 Megapixel camera to the iPhone's 5 Megapixel version--if there are any enterprise users who care.
While the hardware specs will continue to improve, the part of the Android development that I will be watching is the applications environment. Apple will continue to exert ironclad control of iPhone applications, but Google is dead set on the open applications model. The big question will be whether Google will be able to ensure that all of those different applications will all be able to work on all of the different Android handset models running on all of the different carrier networks. Mobile device applications development is different from desktop development, and thus far only the "control freak" approach has proved to be effective. Microsoft is changing to that model with their Phone 7 O/S.
Clearly consumers are enthralled with their smartphones, and there will be a lot more where these came from. And best of all, now you can talk to your grandma.
