On Friday, before I left the states I canceled my AT&T plan, which I signed up for to get an iPhone. I called customer support and told them I was leaving the country and I no longer needed the plan. I was told that since I was within 30 days of activation that I did not need to pay the early termination fee of $175, which I was pleasantly surprised to hear. I then went ahead and paid my bill and I was done. There was no mention of returning the phone or paying a fee. Pretty sweet deal.
Once again, Apple’s marketing team has managed to amaze me. The only question I have is, why don’t other companies, like say Microsoft, learn from Apple’s marketing strategies? They really are nothing short of brilliant.
Now I know this is Aryeh’s area of expertise, and I know nothing about marketing, except of course as an average consumer I know when marketing achieves its goals, i.e when I want to buy the product that is being marketed, but besides that, not much. However, after watching Apple’s video presentations, that they always post on their site right after a product is announced, I somehow always want to buy their product.
For example, 5 minutes ago, I was not interested in buying a new Macbook, nor did I know what the new Macbook offered that the old ones did not. I innocently surfed to Apple.com, maybe to check out some trailers, maybe to look at one of their innovative products. But before I could get to my destination, I clicked on a video presentation of the new Macbook, and guess what? I want one! I have officially been transformed from a PC to a MAC, in 5 minutes!
Isn’t that what marketing is all about?
This is not to mention Jobs’ brilliant keynotes, or any of their other marketing strategies, I already talked about those here. This is just a simple combination of caring enough to post a video presentation on the site, and making it just great enough, that after watching it, I know what I want for my birthday.
There really is no way to post about all the new handsets that are released on a daily basis. The trick is to pick the ones that generate the most hype or offer the most innovation. Well, the Sony Xperia is definitely bringing a lot of hype, but is it justified? Does the Xperia do anything that the iPhone, Omnia, HD, or Innov8 doesn’t?
Well, to be honest, I do not have an opinion, YET! I am not wowed by the phone, but then again, I might not have given it the attention it deserves, I was kinda busy looking at new phones like the Tube and the HD.
I am not generally a huge fan of Sony Ericsson’s phones, but I could be wrong, it has happened once or twice before. Just because my old Sony Ericsson K610 was a pretty boring and unimpressive phone, doesn’t mean they all are.
In fact, the specs on the Xperia are quite impressive. It offers a 3 inch wide VGA (800 x 480) touchscreen display, 3.2 megapixel camera (with photo light), A2DP Bluetooth, aGPS, WiFi, and microSD, just 400MB on board. Navigation is accomplished via touch, arc-sliding QWERTY, 4-way key and optical joystick.
I will study this phone and read people’s reviews more carefully before I express my opinion (wow, my wife would be so impressed, I am actually thinking before talking), but in the meantime, check out these videos:
-Hillel
I’m visiting family in the states for a few weeks and I got bored, so I bought an iPhone. I have been thinking about it for a while now and I finally did it. I had to buy the phone with a plan and I am planning on canceling the plan and paying the $175 early cancellation fee. The people in the AT&T store claim that I will need to return the phone but I called AT&T and they said I wouldn’t. I will update when I try to cancel the plan.
Now how I unlocked the phone? You need something called a turbo sim that you attach to the sim card in the phone and it tricks the phone to thinking that it is the original sim card. You can check it out here.
So the total cost will be: $199 +$175+16.75 = 390.75 Not bad for an unlocked iPhone that is still under Apple Care because the turbo sim is totally external so no breach of warranty.
I’m happy with the phone and enjoying all the features. Ill blog about them later.
I don’t know when it happened, but it seems to me that in the world of cellphone manufacturers, HTC came out of left field, and is now a market dominating player. After announcing highly impressive handsets like the HTC Touch Pro, the ever-so-talked-about G1, and of course my all time favorite, the Touch HD, looks like HTC is wowing us once again with the introduction of the HTC T8290.
The T8290 is yet another full touch screen handset, with a display matching that of the Touch HD, a whopping 480 x 800 pixels, 3.8 inch screen. As if that was not enough, the T8290 offers something else to the consumer, something that its competitors do not, WiMAX!
WiMAX, for all of you who have not heard, is the next big thing. It enables you to connect to broadband, just like a WiFi hotspot, with one major difference. A WiMAX signal has a 30 mile radius. That means if you are within 30 miles of a WiMAX tower, you can surf the Web at speeds even higher than the ones we use today.
Anyway, this is the kind of phone that can change the way we think completely. Let’s hope other manufacturers follow in the path of HTC, both in terms of design as well as technology.
Sorry for the corny title, but Engadget already used every other play on the word storm. The new Blackberry Storm was recently announced and will be hitting shelves pretty soon. It is definitely a very attractive handset with some even more attractive specs.
The Storm is RIM’s very first touchscreen phone, mounting a 3.26-inch 480 x 360 glass display on a unique clickable surface so that the entire thing can be pressed downwards just like a real button for tactile feedback when making selections (hmm, seems like a good idea to me). It includes a full HTML browser, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint editing capabilities, Bluetooth 2.0, 1GB of on-board storage (1GB?) with an 8GB microSD card bundled in the box (OK, not too shabby), 3.5mm headphone jack (take that, G1), automatic orientation and ambient lighting sensors, and a 3.2-megapixel autofocus cam with dedicated flash.
Did you notice something missing among those specs? Why, oh why, RIM, would you leave Wifi out of such a phone? I just don’t get it. Anyway, another thing that makes this phone attractive to yours truly, is the fact that there is a CDMA version of it, the 9530 (yes, I am sorry to say, I am still on CDMA).
Although many handsets being introduced today claim they support push mail, none of them do it (as far as I know) as smoothly and flawlessly as the original Blackberry technology. I am saying this, after I was just told by an iPhone 3G user, that with push mail activated, the battery lasts 1.5 hours. Na, we can’t have that.
I have to conclude by saying that with the advantage of real push mail, this could have been a real HD killer (have you not heard? The term “iPhone killer” is no more, ever since the HTC Touch HD filled those shoes. We are now on the lookout for an HD Killer. I think I am officially coining the term “HD Killer”). But with the lack of Wifi, I think the HD will stay on its thrown for now.
A lot of cool things developing today in the cellular world. Just thought I would mention a few of them.
Let’s start with a great and comprehensive article on Techradar.com that compares the iPhone, G1, and Tube. It really puts all aspects of these three handsets to the test. You can read it here, but for all you lazy people who just want to know the conclusion, it was a tie between the iPhone and G1.
He sums it all up by saying:
“Well, which one do we like the most? The iPhone is complete in most areas, the Nokia Tube has some nice touches and decent features, especially in the media and camera section, yet the G1’s Android interface is super-smashing-great.
It’s surprising, but it’s a tie between the G1 and the iPhone at three wins each, and that’s with the G1 not even being nearly at full potential just yet.
So well done to the iPhone and the G1… if you get either of these in your stocking, you should feel pretty smug with yourself”.
Another piece of exciting news is that Cnet has a full review of one of my favorites, the Omnia, you can read it here. There conclusion is, to sum it up in my own words, they did not love it! Oh well.
The last piece of exciting news is that HTC now offers a full emulator of how the G1 is going to look and perform. You can access it here, but don’t forget to press the Emulator option and not just the 3D image of the G1.
That’s all folks! Nothing else to report now, besides of course that I spent some time in the new Israel Apple store and had a great afternoon looking at things I will probably never be able to afford. It just seemed more fun then spending the afternoon in the flea market!
Just to end off on a positive note, check out this hands-on video of the Nokia Tube…
Nobody was surprised today when Nokia officially announced the release of the Tube or the 5800 XpressMusic handset. It is an OK looking handset, I guess. I think, like many other recent announcements, it would have been huge news prior to the launch of the iPhone. I am sure Nokia is kicking themselves now that they did not release this earlier. There is no avoiding the iPhone comparison, and from the short reviews that are out there, it looks like the Tube is just another touchscreen that will stay in the shadow of the iPhone.
It is true the specs on the Tube are not too shabby. It boasts a 3.2 inch display, 3.2 megapixel autofocus Carl Zeiss camera w/ dual-LED flash, a secondary front camera for video calling, stereo Bluetooth, WiFi 802.11 b/g, and integrated GPS. Those are not bad specs, but do they compare to those of the Omnia for example? Would this phone be generating so much hype without the Nokia branding on top? Not so sure!
Even with its decent specs, CrunchGear spent a few minutes with the phone and was not impressed. What was most unimpressive was the crowded UI and the Web browser. As I have said many times, in today’s market, with pretty much all the big players making amazingly impressive touchscreen devices, what separates the men from the boys is the user experience. Seems that Nokia has their work cut out for them if they want to maintain their market share for much longer.
Today’s new handset announcements are a clear sign of how fast the cellular world is developing. Just yesterday (not literally) the N95 shocked us all with its 5mp camera, the first of its kind on a phone. Today, Samsung and LG showed us all that we have come a long way since those ancient days of the 5mp N95, not to mention the 2mp iPhone.
Samsung announced the M8800, which has some pretty crazy specs, such as an 8 mp camera, auto focus, face recognition with smile detection and blink detection, WDR (wide dynamic range), ASR (advanced shake reduction), GPS geotagging, ISO 1600, WVGA (720×480 pixels) and VGA (640 x 480 pixels) @30fps video recording. That is just the camera’s specs. The phone has built in GPS, an accelerometer, and a feature that I found to be pretty cool, integrated Shozu. Shozu can be set up to automatically upload any video or picture you take, to Facebook, MySpace, or any other social network or email account.
The M8800 sounds like a pretty cool phone, but as I always say, no such thing as a perfect phone. In my opinion, its two down sides are its relatively small display (I know it is 3.2 inches, but I cannot help but to compare it to the 3.8 inch HTC Touch HD’s screen), and its LACK OF Wifi. Why, Samsung, why?
The lack of WiFi is going to be its downfall, and that is where LG comes in the picture. They announced the KC910 Renoir. Also an 8mp monster, with all the other features that the M8800 has, plus Wifi. So why is the Renoir not the perfect phone? Only a 3 inch screen! That is just too small for me.
Both these handsets, with their imperfections, are really groundbreaking phones. Who could have imagined just 3 years ago, that using your phone, you would be able to take a photo with enough megapixels to hang as a billboard on a highway or bridge?
In the never ending war between cellphone manufacturers, a lot has transpired over the last 24 hours. It looks like Nokia is going to be announcing their own iPhone Killer (I cannot tell you how much I hate that term, but it definitely says something about how revolutionary the iPhone really is). As I recall, the Tube (the name of the new Nokia, which leads me to my regular question: who comes up with these names?) was introduced (unofficially of course) before the release of the iPhone, so as opposed to the Omnia and others like it, it was not a response to the iPhone.
The Tube looks like a pretty nice phone, nothing we have never seen before, but as I have said many times, when it is being released by the market leader, Nokia, it does not matter what we have seen in the past from “small” players like Samsung or HTC.
In any case, Apple has no intention on sitting back and letting Nokia take over its touch screen market dominance. They have just begun to sell the first ever version of the unlocked iPhone in Hong Kong for $695. Worried, Apple? Maybe next time you should allow your users to replace their batteries or send an MMS!
What is left to be seen is, will the S60 full Touch UI compete with the iPhone’s interface? Because we all know that the user experience is what is going to be the deal maker or breaker for Nokia. Check out the first demo of the Tube’s UI in the video below.
I know you haven’t heard from me in a while but things have been pretty crazy around here. I launched my company’s online forum this past week and its a lot of work to get it off the ground. I haven’t been reading anything this past week except for the blog, and my Google Reader shows it, over 1000 unread. It’s really great that I have a partner in crime, Hillel, who has taken over the work and done a really great job, Thanks man!
Ok, on with my rant. Apple has extended its country list for planned iPhone distribution. On this list Botswana, Kenya, Mali, Malta, Senegal, Guinea, Egypt and Jordan. Why is Israel left off this list? I am not saying anything bad about Kenya but come on Apple, are Israelis that hard to deal with??
