We’re currently in the process of putting together a new report looking at all the solutions’ vendors and one of the interesting by-products of the research is the number of suppliers who are adding smartphone apps to their product portfolios. Companies like Distribution Technology, True Potential and others are really pushing hard the sort of services that are more accessible whilst ‘out and about’ with clients or prior to a face-to-face meeting.
There’s been a lot of noise this week around the manufacturers, with HTC’s new baby, the EVO 4G, selling out in the US and, of course, the Apple iPhone 4 being announced at Apple’s WWDC conference in San Francisco last Monday.
The AT8 crew are all iPhone 3G (or GS) users, and so I followed the conference live from the blogs and would describe the announcement as evolutionary not revolutionary, despite Steve Jobs’s spin. There are some real benefits to the new device:
- Bigger battery = longer standby/talktime – from a personal perspective, I really need this
- Smaller form factor – should fit in my shirt pocket even easier now
- Higher resolution screen – I’m looking forward to seeing this ‘in the flesh’
- Video Conferencing – using a new open standard called FaceTime and utilising a new front facing camera, but only using Wi-Fi at the moment
- Higher resolution camera – up to 5M pixels, with LED flash
I must say, it looks good, too – I like the metal finish and also the glass front and back, which should add to its durability.
The big question is, though, can it shake off the competition of an ever-growing adoption of Google’s mobile operating system Android, with it’s latest incarnation, codenamed FroYo, hitting the newer devices now – I’m not sure and Steve Jobs in his recent interview at the D8 conference, appears to shrug off the competition – certainly, Apple are manoeuvring away from Google, with the inclusion of Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo search in the new iPhone operating system renamed iOS 4 – incidentally, iOS 4 can also be loaded onto some more modern iPhones and iPods, with it being available for iPad’s later in the year.
Anyhow, I’ve already approached my service provider, who gleefully tells me that I’m going to have to wait a few more days to get an idea of the UK pricing – once I have one, I’ll let you know my first impressions.
