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At least until people get wise to it and call you on it. Sadly people have been saying this since the first iPhone and still no luck. Its why MMS was a huge NEW feature for the 3G, and why the first iPhone was revolutionary with its single button, but now the new one has loads. Its all about marketing :(
sorry, I didn't write a word of that post. It was a complete copy and paste.
Interesting though, I still prefer Android. I hope the market follows Android from now on, but I like that Apple aren't trying feature for feature one upmanship. It's healthy that they try and evolve in a different direction, although it seems odd to me that they are pushing this video call bollocks that was available 5 years ago on 3 network and nokias.
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small chip cameras on phones are all shite. it's not about the megapixels, it's just a number for marketing people to use.
I know that (being a marketing person in the mobile phone industry) and you know that (being a proper photographer) but for Apple to make a big song and dance about it is somewhat lame.
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Interesting though, I still prefer Android. I hope the market follows Android from now on, but I like that Apple aren't trying feature for feature one upmanship. It's healthy that they try and evolve in a different direction, although it seems odd to me that they are pushing this video call bollocks that was available 5 years ago on 3 network and nokias.
The speed of growth of Android is quite something, but there are mutterings of discontent about how much Google control things. It'll be interesting to see how that pans out as the platform evolves.
As for video calling, it's only available via WiFi on the iPhone 4, i.e. it's not cellular, which is odd. It's failed before, as you point out, because people generally don't like being observed by the person on the other end of the phone and it was expensive. It'll be interesting to see if Apple can make it work, as they've proven before that they can get people using services that others have tried to provide and failed.
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David Foster Wallace on iPhone 4's FaceTime
The recently announced iPhone 4 includes a feature called [FaceTime](http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/facetime.html); it's wifi videophone functionality. In Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace wrote that within the reality of the book, videophones enjoyed enormous initial popularity but then after a few months, most people gave it up. Why the switch back to voice?[INDENT]The answer, in a kind of trivalent nutshell, is: (1) emotional stress, (2) physical vanity, and (3) a certain queer kind of self-obliterating logic in the microeconomics of consumer high-tech.
[/INDENT] First, the stress:
[INDENT]Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. A traditional aural-only conversation [...] let you enter a kind of highway-hypnotic semi-attentive fugue: while conversing, you could look around the room, doodle, fine-groom, peel tiny bits of dead skin away from your cuticles, compose phone-pad haiku, stir things on the stove; you could even carry on a whole separate additional sign-language-and-exaggerated-facial-expression type of conversation with people right there in the room with you, all while seeming to be right there attending closely to the voice on the phone. And yet -- and this was the retrospectively marvelous part -- even as you were dividing your attention between the phone call and all sorts of other idle little fuguelike activities, you were somehow never haunted by the suspicion that the person on the other end's attention might be similarly divided.
[...] Video telephony rendered the fantasy insupportable. Callers now found they had to compose the same sort of earnest, slightly overintense listener's expression they had to compose for in-person exchanges. Those caller who out of unconscious habit succumbed to fuguelike doodling or pants-crease-adjustment now came off looking extra rude, absentminded, or childishly self-absorbed. Callers who even more unconsciously blemish-scanned or nostril explored looked up to find horrified expressions on the video-faces at the other end. All of which resulted in videophonic stress.
[/INDENT] And then vanity:
[INDENT]And the videophonic stress was even worse if you were at all vain. I.e. if you worried at all about how you looked. As in to other people. Which all kidding aside who doesn't. Good old aural telephone calls could be fielded without makeup, toupee, surgical prostheses, etc. Even without clothes, if that sort of thing rattled your saber. But for the image-conscious, there was of course no answer-as-you-are informality about visual-video telephone calls, which consumers began to see were less like having the good old phone ring than having the doorbell ring and having to throw on clothes and attach prostheses and do hair-checks in the foyer mirror before answering the door.
[/INDENT] Those are only excerpts...you can read more on pp. 144-151 of Infinite Jest. Eventually, in the world of the book, people began wearing "form-fitting polybutylene masks" when talking on the videophone before even that became too much. -
sorry to keep copy and pasting stuff, but I follow quite an interesting blog via RSS
http://kottke.org/10/06/david-foster-wallace-on-iphone-4s-facetime
comes up with quite interesting stuff, quite regularly. give it a go if you're into geekery
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I was also wondering why with the iphone 4 they had really pushed video chat, this has been around for years on other devices, why would people want to start using it again? Also (correct me if I'm wrong) but most monthly plans don't contain video chat do they? Surely that's just another way to hike the prices up on the iPhone pay monthly plans?
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It's Apple looking for an increased market share, in a specific (gender) demographic, I believe. Also to just get people talking about it.....as you lot are doing here.....on the Android thread.
There are 2 iPhone/Apple threads. Maybe this Apple-centric discussion is best suited there? What Apple are doing isn't really that interesting to Android followers to be honest.
It's one thing to make a reference to, but another thing to drag a whole discussion here. Just a thought like.
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Snoops, I know for a fact that you appreciate a thread that can try to stay on-topic, like on the DIY Courier Bags thread. Therefore its not really unreasonable to have this one stick mainly to Android, with comparative references to other OS's and even Apple being acceptable. It just appeared that an Apple discussion was getting going on the wrong thread.
Apologies is I missed something.
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Some interesting figures from Gartner for global smartphone sales for Q1;
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1372013
Smartphones now account for 17.3% of mobile phone sales, up from 13.6% in the same period in 2009.
In terms of market share per OS, Android is really impressing going from 1.6% in Q109 to 9.6% in Q110. Symbian remains the market leader but has lost market share (down to 44.3% from 48.8%) although, interestingly, overall sales are up from 17.8 million units to 24.1 million units.
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Oh, and on the "other" thread, I've noted that their gushing isn't that noteworthy at all. This thread started after that one, but has had 4 times as many replies.
It's the same in the marketplace. Once we have caught up in sales, they will cease to be force. Aesthetics does not beat technological advances.
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• #1342
"the 'other,'" "their," "we." "They will cease to be a force."
Fanboy.
The new iPhone looks alright. I would never buy a phone because of the camera though, and, as has been mentioned, a front facing camera is not "game changing" (my HTC TyTyn had one. And it multi-tasked). So what's really so great about it? Reading reviews, the iPhone has simply caught up to other smart phones... So, what's the big deal?
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• #1344
The person doing most to derail this thread is you talking about derailing threads. Geez.
Also, Chris Crash uses the iPhone. Another reason to stay away.
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I am not Horatio, and Horatio is not me. I find it insulting that you can not tell beards apart. You fucking racist.
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Caught up to? Really?
Andyp, what's your view?
The iPhone has always been lagging behind when it comes to the current technology available in rival handsets. But that's kind of missing the point, what the iPhone has done is make the concept of the user experience central to selling phones, not the technology.
Nokia phones are jam packed with amazing technology but they aren't very good at marketing it in the way Apple are so no-one ever notices. Apple pick a handful of technologies and make them intuitive and easy to use for even the most technophobic user.
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T-Mobile My Touch looks a good buy, especially if very big screens don't appeal, but a promised update to Froyo does.
http://www.gsmarena.com/t_mobile_mytouch_3g_slide-3270.php
http://www.gsmarena.com/tmobile_mytouch_3g_and_3g_slide_will_get_the_froyo_treatment-news-1724.php
As a matter of interest, nearly all of my posts now onto this forum come from my HTC Desire. Including this of course.
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