Slow Release of iPhone Updates - Page 2

You must have fat fingers.

Well said, THT.

To darngooddesign and bavlondon2, along with any other critics about the iPhone, the iPhone suits me better than any other cell phone on the market and it will get better. That doesnt mean Im trying to convince you to buy one. Love it or hate it, to each their own.

But Im not going to argue over the value of the iPhone compared to other cell phones any more than I would waste time arguing over whats the best car or television to buy, as that depends on each person and whats best for them.

And if the iphone is so high and mighty then why is it being outsold in the UK by the LG Viewty?

Dec. 14, 2007
LG Viewty Notches Phenomenal Performance in First 5 Weeks
Seoul, Korea, December 17, 2007 LG Electronics has announced that its LG Viewty featuring five-megapixel camera phone (model: LG-KU990) has recorded impressive sales performance of over 310,000 units since its introduction to the European market.

With its innovative functions and distinctive design, LG Viewty, the professional-level camera phone earned extensive media and consumer attention even before its launch. The high-tech phone has achieved even wider acclaim since entering markets across Europe including UK, France and Germany notching around 6,300 units daily. This number exceeded the initial records of LGs successful earlier models, LG Chocolate and LG Shine comparing with the same period.

The secret behind the successful sales performance can be credited to the astounding blend of technology and features that LG has packed into this handset. An advanced, full-LCD touch screen complements a rich array of camera features allowing consumers to enjoy high quality image, editing and image-sharing. All of the rich features of LG Viewty surpassing those of any handset currently on the market have been designed to bring maximum benefit to consumers who place a priority on their viewing experience.

Stylish design also factors into the Viewtys popularity, as LG has always placed a premium on design as proven through LG Chocolate and LG Shine. LG Viewty has now achieved a harmony of high technology and sensational style by winning the 2008 iF product design award.

We are thrilled about the immense interest from consumers. In some countries, our product supply is even running low. This impressive result is attributable to the perfect balance between technology and design developed based on consumer insight, said Dr. Skott Ahn, President & CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. LG Viewtys success is a significant achievement for LG as it is the first product in a high-technology line of handset at LG Electronics. With the confidence gained from our brisk sales activity, we will continue to improve areas of both features and premium design.

Sales of LG Viewty are expected to continuously grow throughout the world since it has currently launched into the Asian and Middle East markets and been spotlighted as the best Christmas gift item for packing a sleek handset together with a high-quality digital camera.

For more information,
Please visit LG Viewty Microsite: http://viewty.lgmobile.com

http://www.lge.com/about/press_relea...E%7CMENU.jhtml

LG has announced that they have sold 310,000 LG Viewty handsets since launch 5 weeks ago. I believe that this means the LG Viewty is outselling the iPhone in Europe, even though the Viewty hasnt been supported with the massive PR and advertising budget of the iPhone. Apple, on the other hand have been very quiet with regards to their sales figures in Europe, I wonder why?

Not that Apple are ordinarily so reticent. On the 30th Oct 2007, a few days after the launch of the new Mac operating system, the Apple PR machine released a statement proudly stating that Apple Sells Two Million Copies of Mac OS X Leopard in First Weekend. Since the European launch of the iPhone, however, on the 9th Nov, we havent heard a thing from the usually very vocal Apple.

What we do know is that the iPhone launch in the UK was a flop, considering all the hype and advertising £s which were spent. Since its launch on 9th November, official reports from O2 have said that tens of thousands of iPhone have been sold in the UK, one of largest European markets, quashing the silly numbers which were banded around like 100,000 sold in the first weekend, yeh right!

It has also emerged that Apple have blocked the iPhone sales figures from been reported by Gfk, the UK research agency. Gfk collect EPOS (Electronic point of sale) data from all the major UK mobile phone retailers, then produces reports which are commercially available. As far as Im aware this is first time that a mobile phone handsets sales have been blocked, again, I wonder why?

Overall, there are no official figures available, but if the iPhone has only sold tens of thousands in the UK, it seems unlikely they have sold over 310,000 across Europe.

Why is the Viewty outselling the iPhone? Well

1. The Viewty is a better phone The Viewty has a 5 mega-pixel camera vs. the iPhones 2mp, The Viewty is 3g enabled (HSDPA) which is way faster than the iPhone (2.5g), The Viewty has a Xenon flash so it can take pictures at night. I could go on but it will take up too much space, you will be better off reading this: 51 Reason not to buy the iPhone.

2. The Viewty is available on all the major phone networks - 02, Orange, Vodafone, T-mobile, Virgin Mobile, and 3, unlike the iPhone that is just available on O2.

3. The Viewty is available on a 12 month contract unlike the iPhone, which has a minimum contract length of 18 months.

4. The Viewty is a lot cheaper The Viewty is FREE on an 12 month O2 contract (200 mins and 200 texts per month), for £30 per month, plus £55 cashback, so the total price over the contract length is £305, whereas the cheapest iPhone contract will cost you £899, (£269 for the handset, plus 18 months x £35 for O2 200 price plan, 200 mins and 200 texts. Even if you compare the 18 month contracts the iPhone is 122% more expensive than the Viewty. (Viewty FREE on 18 02 month contract (200 mins + 200 text), £25 p/m minus £45 cashback = £405 total over contract length)

LG Viewty to be launched in the USA?

So Apple better look out because if LG launch the Viewty in the US they will have a very serious competitor. Will the Viewty outsell the iPhone in Apples own country? Probably, I would have thought there are a lot of Americans whod want a better phone than the iPhone, for a cheaper price, and one which is available on networks other than just AT&T.

iPhone wont reach its potential

The iPhone interface and usability are amazing but Apples greed has resulted in the iPhone sales falling way short of its potential. The iPhone could have been market leader but when it costs so much, is only available on one network, and is only available in certain shops and websites, it is never going to reach its true potential.

Before you get happy jumping to conclusions. I've had my 8GB since launch day and hacked it to provide what apple left off; however, some things can't be added by anyone other than Apple and they are sorely missing. All that being said I still value what it offers me higher than 3g and a better camera. I'm willing to be patient for what Apple will hopefully give us. I also didn't interpret the software upgrades to mean everything has to happen in 6 months, and it looks like they're giving us a bunch of good stuff in 113. I also think Apple is waiting to see what the first round of killers offer software-wise before they drop OS2.0 on us next year.

Yeah initially the Viewty will be a better phone, then Apple will release its updated phone and software which will make it better. Then LG or someone else will release a phone and A will respond.

That's how the game is played, and that's why Apple is prob holding back with the software so they can improve it to match the new features coming out on the competition.

Thats how the games played? By holding back functionality to suit the company instead of giving it to the customer all in one?

Of course it is.

Apple held off on talking about Leopard until Vista was done enough so Microsoft couldn't really ape their ideas.
Apple also kept mum on the iPhone until it hit FCC, look at all that functionality they held back so no one else would ape their ideas.

Why would Apple drop everything before the other company's release their competition when they can wait a month or three longer and not have their ideas mimicked. Plus this gives Apple a little longer to really polish their update. Apple said they would do software updates, they never said it would all happen in the first 6 months.

Lets assume they drop an update in March and then the next major one won't happen for another 8 months.

Apple can give you smaller updates every two or so months which makes you feel like progress is continually beiing made on the platform between major updates, or Apple could give you all the March stuff in November and then you'd have a whole year to feel like the platform stagnated.

Bavlondon2, just so you know, I read the first sentence of your previous posts then skipped everything else. Perhaps for you it's the attitude "if the iPhone is so high and mighty" is an attempt to turn this into a child's "mine's better than yours" topic. To at least some of us here in the forums the topic is about the "slow release of iPhone updates", and I merely spoke up as to how relatively speaking the releases are going pretty fast. Let’s try not to take things too seriously here, it’s a cell phone.

If bavlondon2 wants to give links and reciting text and examples to show how one cell phone compares to another - fine - but as THT said - the world's a big market with numerous cultures and tastes and combined with what I said - to each their own.

Hey, bavlondon2, how about you look at our sneakers and tell us how much they don't sell in the Amazon jungle? Is what we wear popular everywhere, in every country? What’s our favorite restaurant – I guess it doesn’t hold a candle to another one you know, right? We should worry about how your marketing and business rating system defines where we shop and what we buy, right?

Is our watch water resistant or sync with our computers? Does our car have GPS and a voice system keyed into our cell phone? What's the storage compacity on our mp3 player and can it record up to an hour of voice audio? Does it taste great or is it less filling, hehe?

Oh my goodness, nobody look now but I think bavlondon2 will say my toaster sucks because there's twenty countries that don't import it.

Bav,
Sales figures are helpful for companies chasing market share. A lot of people think Market-Share is important. Apple, you might have noticed, goes for profitability instead.

The two are different.

Dell has more market share. Apple has more profitability. Who has the biggest Market Cap?

Oh right, being more profitable is really just greed. I keep forgetting that.

I think youre on to something there , Carniphage. Ive got a question, though. When any one of us tries to make more money, such as asking for a raise or getting a second job, are we being greedy? Maybe things magically change for a business. I get confused some times.

You're missing my point. If you haven't noticed, there is no such thing as a phone with every feature that everyone wants. That's why I'm tired of the iPhone complaints about missing features. Every phone will fall victim to missing features.


Yeah, but it's a feature somebody wants and the N95-8GB sucks because it doesn't have it. On the opposite end with the normal N95 with microSD slot, well, for $700, they better give me at least a 2 GB microSD card.


So one can input data faster with less frustration. That's a no brainer. And the N95 sucks because it doesn't have it.


Nokia N810. The infinitude of HTC models. Samsung F700. They try with their 2.8-3" screens, but they just are skimping on the screen sizes and ripping me off if they don't at least have a 3.5" screen. There's even room in the N95 to put a 4" screen. Nokia even has a clamshell with a 4"-ish screen. Too bad it costs $1000.


I wasn't talking about the iPhone, I was talking about the N95 only supporting craptacular Flash lite 2.x. Real web browsing should support Adobe Flash 9. It obviously sucks if it doesn't have that.


I don't know what you're smoking. Video recording? No not in the USA. In the USA we like QWERTY's and push email. 5 MP cameras and video recording capabilities on a phone is silly. My cheapo Aiptek A-HD does both better, and it only cost me $120!


Sure. We could do the feature comparison. I rate web browsing and video viewing as the most important feature above everything else in such a device. I don't SMS much at all, don't MMS at all, don't need to take pictures (Canon Powershot S2 IS does fine for me when needed), don't take video (Aiptek A-HD does fine for me when needed), and don't need GPS at all. So, I know which one I would have more fun with. Also, I'd rather have the device in my back pocket, and I really don't like sitting on a 0.8" brick.

As for the N95 having so many features that it opens up its potential market? Well, at $700 unlocked, it doesn't sound like a big market to me, especially in the USA. And it doesn't have a nice 3.5" or bigger screen.

Sarcasm aside, the point with Apple products is that it isn't about featuritis, it's about having fun using what you have. That's their DNA. Ease-of-use and pleasure-of-use are features in of themselves that aren't on spec sheets. If the iPhone does the features it touts well, is easy and fun to use, well, Apple will have a marketing vector and niche for which to sell it, and do it very profitably. Does this mean world domination? Obviously not. They even say as they only want 1% of the total cell phone market, a wealthy 1%, but only 1%.

Just wait another month for Apple's financial report. We should know how many iPhones have been sold in Europe. No need to get conspiratorial, especially with the sales strawman you've built with the Viewty.


Do you want to do 51 reasons not to buy an LG Viewty? I bet you it'll be easy, and I haven't even read the 51 reasons not to buy the iPhone link.


I bet you Apple will make more money off its European iPhone sales than LG does with its European Viewty sales. Apple may make more money out of its European iPhone sales than LG does with Viewty sales in total.


I actually like the LG Viewty, and definitely think it should be made available, free with 2 year contract no less, in the USA. It'll be a nice kick in the pants for Apple. Even the HTC Touch is doing pretty well. Apple needs to be pushed with the iPhone as I'm waiting for a UMTS/HSPA version with at least 16 GB storage.

Btw, it seems that the way you talk abot the Viewty, it's really a better camera than the iPhone, not a better phone. I don't think that'll hurt Apple's iPhone market. Low price certainty will though, and it'll be nice if the cost of entry for the iPhone got down to $200. Not to mention driving the price of umlimited data plans to <$10 a month either. I'd take the cheaper service over cheaper phone any day.


Do go thinking that you are smarter than the people running this or that company, because you're not. Chances are, they are just as smart as you, and have a lot more experience with these sorts of things. The point here is that I really don't think you know what Apple's motives and plans are with the iPhone.

The only thing we do know is 10 million iPhones in 2008 (or 1% of cell phone sales in 2008). That's really about it.

I presume you don't know the browser on Nokia S60 based phones is running Apple's WebKit browser framework. It should render pretty much identically to the iPhone.

That's usually true except when Jobs announced the iPhone he talked about capturing 1% of the mobile phone market in 2008. Clearly their concern then was market share, not profitability.

LOL!

Have you seen them both?

If Mobile Safari on the iPhone was a car it'd be a Corolla.
If the browser on the N95 were a car, it would be a wheelchair.

Actually, my dad has an N95. I compared it to my iPhone. The pages do render the same, with the exception of the iPhone having much nicer font smoothing. But layout is identical, once you've turned off "Small screen mode" on the Nokia.

The way that the iPhone wins is the ability to zoom/pan the page with ease. Navigation's a lot faster.

Amorya

So i take it youve used them both? They are pretty much identical in terms of what you seen on screen.

All this "I dont use that becasue I have this to do that" thas bollocks, this is 2008 and its all about convergence devices. Im sure there are many PMP players that play video better than the iphone so why not just get one of those? Same for mp3 playback, even the Nokia 5610 outdoes the iphone in RMA testing, a Sony NW S700 offers better playback. The point im making is that if they want to get maximum profitability then they should add more specs at least to what other phones are capable of, if they did then they wouldnt be a laughing stock in the UK let alone Europe.

Apple are just intent on charging you for everything (mp3 ringtones wtf?), closing things off, forcing you to use itunes to get your content on their. Its nice on the eyes but in terms of sheer content they still lose out to even Motorola who are plummeting like never before.

You talk about no one liking Nokias. They release a new phone more or less every other month. They are the proven unmactehd kings of making mobile phones. They sell more mid range phones than iphones are sold several hundered times over, so wheres the prfitability going there?

The mobile market is differnt to the MP3 market, its not the same as what they did with the ipod. People know what they want more, which is why it was the huge bonanza in the UK like Apple predicted.

As for video recording well im not American but I cant believe for a minute that this isnt a feature wanted by anyone in the states. The N93 first offered 30fps vga video what 3 years ago and iphone doesnt even soot video period? WTF? Actually you may find this extract interesting, I was just looking at trailers for new films, one in particular - Cloverfield. Heres what one said on Wiki:

"Reeves explained that the pedestrians documenting the severed head of the Statue of Liberty with the camera phones was reflective of the contemporary period. "Cloverfield very much speaks to the fear and anxieties of our time, how we live our lives"

Key point "camera phones was reflective of the contemporary period." ie - dont try and speak for everyone when you say no one uses such a feature. Im sure Nokia have sold moew phones than Apple have sold computers and ipods put together so they know what they are doing. - Yet another exmaple of stupid apple fanboyistic brainwashing.

"I dont use this feature", "it doesnt matter how many features it has as long as the 3 that it does look nice when you use them". Ive never heard so much malarky in my life. No wonder the American phone market is moving at a snails pace.

Call me when you get a network which offers decent coverage on 3.6MBps HSDPA.


Thank you!!!

But yes you are the right. Iphone no doubt comes out on top, nothing was ever going to touch it given the mix of such a big high quality screen and great browser. Its one of its saving graces infact.

Yup. See Amoya's post. The only difference is in the UI although if you're lucky/unlucky enough to hit a page with a Flash-lite compatible flash element or a bit of Java, the N95 will render that too whereas the iPhone won't.

Font smoothing in Symbian seems to be a complete bag of spanners as I find some fonts smooth and others don't.

Theres nothing to touch the iphone in terms of browsing we can all agree in that but full flash support I hope will be sorted by the next 4 months or so.

They are identical. Apart from the screen size, font rendering, ease of navigation, ease of text entry, speed of rendering... but apart from that ... identical!

C.

They're running exactly the same rendering engine and javascript library. Nokia's S60 Webkit build is a fork of Apples. Don't confuse the engine with the whole browser and the UI. I wasn't contesting Mobile Safari's superior UI, just that the actual pages will render pretty much identically.

Ok heres one thing you cant argue that the iphone needs - A2DP

With music being one of the iphones main points I find it silly that wireless music isnt supported yet.

Haha, bavlondon2, once again you have absolutely no idea what youre talking about. Youre the one that said you have inside info about the upcoming iPhone model(s) so why dont you know some of the most basic things about the current iPhone and its software let alone bother to waste time reciting links and text about demographics and sales figure? Who on this planet would care to give you inside info about the iPhone when you spend 98% of your time doing nothing but complaining or berating the iPhones features and saying how you want them to market it?

But, just for everyones amusement, to further show youre clueless about the iPhone, exactly what do you mean by saying

Webkit is a framework - it does not "render" anything. It builds a layout. The actual rasterization is performed by different software. Which is why web pages on the iPhone look like web pages, and on the N95 they look like ass. Ass on a slow ... tiny window.

Adopting Webkit is a good start, but i'll take Nokia years to catch-up with this class of software.

C.

I think its pretty obvious he meant that stereo bluetooth headphones are not support.

That's possible, darngooddesign, but he could be talking about something else.

Since the iPhone was released many companies had a blast marketing that the iPhone can only get their purchased music/content directly through a computer and not wirelessly. I'm just curious exactly what he means rather than, as can be guessed, he's just reading what other people say about certain technologies and features and then immediately assumes it means something else.

So your telling me youve never heard of Bluetooth support for A2DP? Wireless headphones? I forgot you like things slow and old as they "look and feel nice" lol

Maybe I should dumb it down for you. I want to listen to music from my phone but dont want wires coming out of the headphones. The headphones lock up wiht my phone using Bluetooth. Comprende? Or do I need to draw pictures aswell lol?

Hey, everyone, it’s the “2007 Greatest Know-it-all that in fact knows-nothing” – bavlondon2! At it again, huh bavlondon2? Starting early to win the 2008 award?

Bavlondon2, perhaps I would ask you to draw pictures for me but you can't even spell check your posts and use proper grammer. Just to show more intelligence, try typing in something like "you're" instead of "your", and then "you've" instead of "youve", which goes likewise for your 3rd grade impression of "dont", "wiht" (you should say "with"). If you try taking a breath between trying to type then you won't mash words together like "aswell" instead of "as well".

Notice that many of us, me included, will misspell words every once in a while, but not several words out of every post. You, on the other hand, try to impress us with how smart you think you are, when you're not. By all means, it's rather amusing.

So is that how you draw attention away from the fact that you cant admit you didnt even have a clue what A2DP stood for? lol

[sigh]

Simply not true. Webkit's WebCore framework is a "rendering engine" used by Nokia.

http://opensource.nokia.com/projects/S60browser/

Sure, the Nokia's screen is smaller, it's graphics API different and more primitive than OSX (who's isn't!!!) and it's CPU/GPU may not be as fast but that changes nothing about the code that takes html, css and javascript and converts it into a bitmap you see on your screen. It should be essentially the same as Safari, Mobile Safari, Konquror and others - there's apparently a Windows Mobile version in the works. That's the point in using a common rendering engine - it looks the same regardless of platform.

Hey Kephisto, thought I'd let you in on a little wager between Bav and myself. Check out the "When will there be a new iPhone?" thread. You'll enjoy the wager that we have laid out. He may even have the name that fits your award in 16 days.

Actually hes trying to get you to weasel out of the bet.

Thanks for the update, LaEsperanza, haha. To me he's already earned that title. I made sure to update that topic as well. That way we can ask specific questions and get Bav to give all of us specific answers. Since he keeps restating he has "inside info" then he should as well tell us now.

Here's an idea, what kind of image should we create for the award?

Get a life mate. Your going to look just as silly as La Es......come the 15th. Just wait and see. And do you really think anyone is going to leak specific info on the phones this close to macworld? You obviously have no clue about phones whatsoever.

Haha! Bav, you really are the "2007 Greatest Know-it-all that in fact knows-nothing". Smarts and success have absolutely nothing to do with reading what's on a website and then going around on forums and pretending to know something. If you're still trying to impress us you're in way above your head because there plenty of people here that know far more about software, telecommunications, and all related technologies, than you can pretend to have, in the next ten years.

The same people you've called names to or otherwise insulted, including me, just might be attorneys, software designers, police officers, doctors, or maybe just unemployeed teenagers - but in the end we're here to have fun. You, on the other hand, clearly just want to play the child's game "I know something you don't know" and then whine and complain when someone calls you out on your bluffs.

The more nonsense you post just makes your 2007 title more fitting.

As for the 2008 MacWorld - bring it on! Regardless of what news is released, my opinion of you won't change a bit. You can't even spell most of your words right, so why on earth would I remotely consider you seriously worth betting on? You're like the teenagers that predicted what would happen in the last Harry Potter book - but overall, that doesn't make the ones making the prediction a genius.

The real winners here are the rest of us, bav. We're the ones that actually own an iPhone or at least soon plan to. Should MacWorld release new and improved iPhones - we win, not you. Depending on the features, I just might buy another one.

"Plan to own one?" Ha ha, even I plan to own one soon.

You forgot that the iPhone has a 3.5" 480x320 screen while the N95 only has a 2.6/2.8" 320x240 screen. That's double the pixels and nearly double the screen area. I'd think the difference is little bit bigger than intimated.

I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.

I agree, THT. Just about everyone I show the iPhone to is impressed how clear, crisp, and detailed the screen is compared to other phones. That's above and beyond how quick and easy it is to use the iPhone's onscreen controls.

Well duh of course it is. Thanks for stating the obvious.

The next software update should be a blast. The latest article about 1.1.3 (or whatever version they name it) looks promising. Perhaps they'll release it at the same time as the new version of iTunes. Maybe that way they can combine an online movie rental feature along with new updates for the iPhone.

I don't know. It's certainly worth waiting for though.