You can arrange any iPhone icons any way you want. All my favorite apps are on my first page.
You can even delete the apps from the device itself. You don't need iTunes for anything. In fact, I haven't used iTunes for anything except to load some music on.
I sync via MM not iTunes.
LOL
My iPhone is set up the same, except I have six screens of applications. There is no quick way to get to the last screen. I would have my apps organized more intuitively on more screens if I could just jump around from screen to screen rather than needing to swipe back and forth.
What's interesting is that the Nexus One bests the iPhone in just about every technical respect (processor power, memory, screen quality/resolution -- you name it) but watch one of the video demos. In spite of all that power, the animations are jerky and slow. The Android software still has a long way to go to catch up to the iPhone. There are plenty of phones that are good or better than the iPhone in terms of hardware, but none of them have a patch on the iPhone OS.
Alternate form factors for the iPhone would be great. There should be an alternative with a physical keyboard, or something like the motorola backflip.
Video conferencing is finally possible without having 2 built-in cameras in the phone.
Very, very innovative phone. It would be great to see a motorola backflip like phone from Apple.
I disagree. Springboard is lacking in funcionality. It is dumbed-down and devoid of useful options.
No folders? Having to scroll 11 times to access icons? No ability to place icons where you want them, and have them stay there? No ability to use better icons or more intuitive labels?
The iPhone UI sucks big time.
In those regards, yes, the iPhone UI feels quite dated in function even to my BlackBerry. But for overall experience, it's one of the best OSs. Like I said, they're 90% of the way there.
I personally still lean towards liking the look of Android more, as I'm not forced to look at the boring, endless rows of icons. The live widgets being there to provide me information without having to search for and open an app appeals greatly to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheWatchfulOne
All the other phone makers are still trying to catch up to Apple. Who does Apple need to catch up with?
Only in infrastructure the other makers are still catching up. And they will. Dispite all the doom-and-gloom of fragmentation, Android is rocketing ahead in development every month. The competitors have definitely passed Apple in the hardware realm and even in certain places for the software.
All three iterations. Unlike some people, I actually know what the hell I'm talking about. I am understandably upset that I can't do even simple stuff like listen to pandora and use other applications. Who would have thought that they couldn't listen to pandora or have an IM program running in the background?
So, let me get this straight... You've known since the first iteration that you can't have background applications and yet you continued to purchase newer models!?
You knew from the first model that the battery was not user-replacable, and you absolutely cannot live without a second battery, and yet you continued to purchase new models?
You knew you couldn't upgrade the "memory" on any of the models, but you purchased all three versions so far?
Wow.
Was gonna ask if you were insane, but this may actually qualify you to be just that; becoming emotional over an outcome that you know to not be possible and yet continuing to subject yourself to it.
I consider myself to be an Apple enthusiast and have used Apple products since the early 80's, but I wouldn't subject myself to any company's products like that, not even Apple.
With regards to replaceable battery... I've often thought about it and unless you get a defective battery I personally have only owned one device where I've actually bought a new battery because the device itself outlasted the battery. And that was my unlocked Treo 650 but shortly after I bought a 2G iPhone and retired the Treo 650 still a fantastic phone.
With regards to battery life it's very very subjective... if you have an unreliable network and your mobile device has to work harder to keep a connection with the network. AT&T in New York is like that at 4:30PM you have to constantly redial to get a line out alot of times I'll get a No Service... and their 3G data is not very responsive. I'm originally from Canada and use Roger Wireless where the network is much more responsive and I get at least 4 days of standby + moderate data use surfing the web to look up things on the Go and I have Push notifications/Exchange Active Sync running with Gmail. On AT&T I have to recharge my battery every night sometimes I'll charge it during the day at the office so I have enough juice going home.
The Nexus One will definitely push Apple to innovate even more they actually have a formidable competitor that doesn't just slap any O/S on a piece of hardware. I'm more interested in how they will change the wireless industry through their sales model (selling unlocked phones). I wish Apple promoted unlocked iPhones more.
Apple has done more than just build great devices if you think about it they changed the way we buy music and movies... they changed a prehistoric selling model (RIAA) they changed industries outside of their own.
What's interesting is that the Nexus One bests the iPhone in just about every technical respect (processor power, memory, screen quality/resolution -- you name it) but watch one of the video demos. In spite of all that power, the animations are jerky and slow. The Android software still has a long way to go to catch up to the iPhone. There are plenty of phones that are good or better than the iPhone in terms of hardware, but none of them have a patch on the iPhone OS.
Yeah, well, you can't tell that to tech spec whores.
So, let me get this straight... You've known since the first iteration that you can't have background applications and yet you continued to purchase newer models!?
You knew from the first model that the battery was not user-replacable, and you absolutely cannot live without a second battery, and yet you continued to purchase new models?
You knew you couldn't upgrade the "memory" on any of the models, but you purchased all three versions so far?
Wow.
Was gonna ask if you were insane, but this may actually qualify you to be just that; becoming emotional over an outcome that you know to not be possible and yet continuing to subject yourself to it.
I consider myself to be an Apple enthusiast and have used Apple products since the early 80's, but I wouldn't subject myself to any company's products like that not even Apple.
hehe, tell that to the Apple guy in this thread who spends $60 every time he needs to charge his iPhone without access to an alternate power source.
Yeah, well, you can't tell that to tech spec whores.
If you actually used it you would know that the iPhone is just about as jerky as the new android phones. You can't tell that to the Apple whores though.
This conversation has really degenerated into the apple die-hards saying that missing features on the iPhone are actually features, and that features on competing phones are actually minuses. Comical.
What's interesting is that the Nexus One bests the iPhone in just about every technical respect (processor power, memory, screen quality/resolution -- you name it) but watch one of the video demos. In spite of all that power, the animations are jerky and slow. The Android software still has a long way to go to catch up to the iPhone. There are plenty of phones that are good or better than the iPhone in terms of hardware, but none of them have a patch on the iPhone OS.
Which videos are you watching? Some from when the Nexus One was just rumored as the "Google Phone" and Android 2.1 was an early release, it seems like.
All the recent ones from all the blogs I've seen show nothing but smoothness going from one action to the next on Android 2.1. It's no worse than the 3GS.
I disagree. Springboard is lacking in funcionality. It is dumbed-down and devoid of useful options.
No folders? Having to scroll 11 times to access icons? No ability to place icons where you want them, and have them stay there? No ability to use better icons or more intuitive labels?
The iPhone UI sucks big time.
I disagree... the iPhone UI for what it is works for ALL people... I've seen 60 year old men and woman whip out iPhones and iPod Touchs.... when you can capture that kind of demographic You're doing something right. You may not love the UI because you're a power user with 6 pages of applications.
The number of people that own and use an iPhone is insane... males ages 15-35 is an easy market to get... but you have retirees, you have woman of ALL ages... do you know how hard it is to get woman to buy electronics. The console industry has had an extremely hard time captivating woman.
You're thinking solely for one market which is kind of a niche.
It is innovation when you are able to make extremely compact phones without resorting to screwing the end user with a non user-replaceable batteries. Plain and simple.
Frankly, making a single unit design is a cheap manufacturing slight of hand that is worse off for the consumer and better for the company that gets paid to replace batteries.
Honestly, who ever requests being limited to one battery as a must-have-feature??? Apparently you do, but practically nobody else wants to be limited.
This smacks of the Onion video of the Apple wheel, a laptop with no keyboard, where the mac fan says that taking the keyboard away WAS A FEATURE.
This whole post is just a big pile of horse poo AFAICS.
You use hyperbole so casually and so repeatedly that it's just impossible to talk to you. For instance your first sentence (with the unnecessary and pejorative "screwing the end user" part removed), would almost make sense, but then you go off the deep end later by blankly stating that sealed units (universally), leave the consumer "worse off" and that "nobody" wants that.
Try to state your own preferences as preferences and not universal truths that "everyone knows" and you might get closer to the truth.
Try to think about product design as actual product design, and not just as a waiter taking a design order from a consumer. In fact, try reading a few books about design and the problems industrial designers face on a daily basis, and you wouldn't be making any of these statements.
If products were designed the way you thought they were and apparently want them to be, we'd all be driving cars like this:
This whole post is just a big pile of horse poo AFAICS.
You use hyperbole so casually and so repeatedly that it's just impossible to talk to you. For instance your first sentence (with the unnecessary and pejorative "screwing the end user" part removed), would almost make sense, but then you go off the deep end later by blankly stating that sealed units (universally), leave the consumer "worse off" and that "nobody" wants that.
Try to state your own preferences as preferences and not universal truths that "everyone knows" and you might get closer to the truth.
Try to think about product design as actual product design, and not just as a waiter taking a design order from a consumer. In fact, try reading a few books about design and the problems industrial designers face on a daily basis, and you wouldn't be making any of these statements.
If products were designed the way you thought they were and apparently want them to be, we'd all be driving cars like this:
So, what it comes down to according to you, is that having a user-replaceable battery is the equivalent of a Homer Simpson-designed automobile.
Pretty much Apple needs to catch up with everyone else. I didn't mention a physical keyboard, which is something Apple should really offer in a version of its phone. A physical keyboard version and a software-only keyboard. It can have 2 different models of the iPhone and make more people happy.
Steve Jobs disagrees with you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by g3pro
Usability is more than just being familiar with an operating system and a particular iteration, which is what a lot of people think usability is.
"Ease-of-use" might be a better term then, but that's still the biggest big part of usability. What good is along list of features if half of them are a pain to use?
Quote:
Originally Posted by g3pro
Just because something is different does not make it less usable. Android 2.1 is the most advanced operating system for a mobile phone today and it is setting the standard for usability.
Wrong. Apple's iPhone has set the standard for usability. I know this because iPhone is the paradigm that everybody else (including Android) is trying to copy and "catch up" to. Why else is every other phone these days refered to as an iPhone killer?
Of course, while copying, they make just enough changes in their own products so they don't appear to be copying. But they are still copying.
Quote:
Originally Posted by g3pro
One of the most usable and coolest features? Voice-input for text fields. No longer do you have to dink around on a tiny keyboard with mistakes and all that. Just speak into the phone and it translates it.
I agree that does sound cool and maybe even usable. And I bet there's an app for that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by g3pro
Another usability feature is multi-tasking of all applications on the phone. Want to listen to pandora while receiving a text message on the iPhone? NOT POSSIBLE. That is NOT usability. That pisses me off.
I can see where that could be annoying for some people. I don't listen to Pandora radio myself. I listen to music synced via iTunes which does keep playing while I read and reply to texts/email, etc. Surely battery technology will have improved enough so that Apple feels comfortable with implementing/allowing some form multi-tasking for 3rd party apps in iPhone OS 4.0
Quote:
Originally Posted by g3pro
The iPhone does not have these key usability features among many others, which makes it less usable than others.
Except that the features you've named are not key.
N1 has 512MB of memory vs. iPhone 256MB, however Android has a much larger memory footprint than OS X, <100MB for OS X, >200MB for Android
The 512MB is NAND flash, in this case for the OS and applications. The 4GB is additional storage for media. The SD slot is there for another 32GB of additional storage. The N1 will probably have 256/288MB RAM (My HTC Hero has 288MB), comparable to the iPhone 3GS.
Quote:
N1 has an SD slot for extra storage, but not for applications,
This won't be an issue for longer as this limitation is being removed in a near future update. So you'll be able to have up to 36GB of applications and media, etc.
Quote:
N1 has a 1GHz CPU vs. iPhone's 600MHz, and yet the iPhone interface is still more responsive and fluid.
Most of the interface fluidity will be down to the graphics unit within the system, not the CPU. The iPhone accelerates the UI very well with the PowerVR SGX graphics inside and Core Animation and other frameworks. I believe the Qualcomm chip uses something else.
There are issues with Android, but there are also many pluses. It's progressing very quickly, and looks set to take a good portion of the smartphone market.
I have a GSM cell phone. I disabled the phone's internal phonebook memory so now all contacts are added to the SIM card. Why would I do this? Well lets say one day I drop my phone, it gets, wet, ect and goes dead, I can peel apart the pieces of my phone and assuming the SIM itself hasn't been damages take it out. The I go to a local electronics store and buy a new unlocked handset (I can even buy a prepaid handset since I'm a T-Mobile subscriber and their prepaid phones will work this way, too). I put my SIM into the new phone. BOOM, all my contacts are now on my new phone. If I'd been using the phone's built in NON REMOVABLE memory, I would have been S.O.L. since the phone is too damaged to run so I can try getting them off.
This same scenario could play out on a smart phone with a mSD card. You can't pull the flash memory chips off the iPhone's board to save the contents. Neither can you take the flash chips off and give them to a friend temporarily so he can use or copy the contents off to a different device.
Android phones sync contacts automatically with Google, so they're always available on whatever device you're using. No worries about having to sync with your computer, or store them on the SIM only (losing all of the other data you can store regarding your contacts).
I believe that the Palm Pre also does this.
The iPhone can sync with MobileMe (for an annual fee?), and of course iTunes sync will do it when you remember.
Wrong. Apple's iPhone has set the standard for usability. I know this because iPhone is the paradigm that everybody else (including Android) is trying to copy and "catch up" to. Why else is every other phone these days refered to as an iPhone killer?
Of course, while copying, they make just enough changes in their own products so they don't appear to be copying. But they are still copying.
You could make the same exact argument for Apple copying the many PDA-phones which existed long before the iPhone.
But you wouldn't, because you hold Apple to a different standard.
Comments
Are you guys on crack?
You can arrange any iPhone icons any way you want. All my favorite apps are on my first page.
You can even delete the apps from the device itself. You don't need iTunes for anything. In fact, I haven't used iTunes for anything except to load some music on.
I sync via MM not iTunes.
LOL
My iPhone is set up the same, except I have six screens of applications. There is no quick way to get to the last screen. I would have my apps organized more intuitively on more screens if I could just jump around from screen to screen rather than needing to swipe back and forth.
Video conferencing is finally possible without having 2 built-in cameras in the phone.
Very, very innovative phone. It would be great to see a motorola backflip like phone from Apple.
I disagree. Springboard is lacking in funcionality. It is dumbed-down and devoid of useful options.
No folders? Having to scroll 11 times to access icons? No ability to place icons where you want them, and have them stay there? No ability to use better icons or more intuitive labels?
The iPhone UI sucks big time.
In those regards, yes, the iPhone UI feels quite dated in function even to my BlackBerry. But for overall experience, it's one of the best OSs. Like I said, they're 90% of the way there.
I personally still lean towards liking the look of Android more, as I'm not forced to look at the boring, endless rows of icons. The live widgets being there to provide me information without having to search for and open an app appeals greatly to me.
All the other phone makers are still trying to catch up to Apple. Who does Apple need to catch up with?
Only in infrastructure the other makers are still catching up. And they will. Dispite all the doom-and-gloom of fragmentation, Android is rocketing ahead in development every month. The competitors have definitely passed Apple in the hardware realm and even in certain places for the software.
All three iterations. Unlike some people, I actually know what the hell I'm talking about. I am understandably upset that I can't do even simple stuff like listen to pandora and use other applications. Who would have thought that they couldn't listen to pandora or have an IM program running in the background?
So, let me get this straight... You've known since the first iteration that you can't have background applications and yet you continued to purchase newer models!?
You knew from the first model that the battery was not user-replacable, and you absolutely cannot live without a second battery, and yet you continued to purchase new models?
You knew you couldn't upgrade the "memory" on any of the models, but you purchased all three versions so far?
Wow.
Was gonna ask if you were insane, but this may actually qualify you to be just that; becoming emotional over an outcome that you know to not be possible and yet continuing to subject yourself to it.
I consider myself to be an Apple enthusiast and have used Apple products since the early 80's, but I wouldn't subject myself to any company's products like that, not even Apple.
With regards to battery life it's very very subjective... if you have an unreliable network and your mobile device has to work harder to keep a connection with the network. AT&T in New York is like that at 4:30PM you have to constantly redial to get a line out alot of times I'll get a No Service... and their 3G data is not very responsive. I'm originally from Canada and use Roger Wireless where the network is much more responsive and I get at least 4 days of standby + moderate data use surfing the web to look up things on the Go and I have Push notifications/Exchange Active Sync running with Gmail. On AT&T I have to recharge my battery every night sometimes I'll charge it during the day at the office so I have enough juice going home.
The Nexus One will definitely push Apple to innovate even more they actually have a formidable competitor that doesn't just slap any O/S on a piece of hardware. I'm more interested in how they will change the wireless industry through their sales model (selling unlocked phones). I wish Apple promoted unlocked iPhones more.
Apple has done more than just build great devices if you think about it they changed the way we buy music and movies... they changed a prehistoric selling model (RIAA) they changed industries outside of their own.
What's interesting is that the Nexus One bests the iPhone in just about every technical respect (processor power, memory, screen quality/resolution -- you name it) but watch one of the video demos. In spite of all that power, the animations are jerky and slow. The Android software still has a long way to go to catch up to the iPhone. There are plenty of phones that are good or better than the iPhone in terms of hardware, but none of them have a patch on the iPhone OS.
Yeah, well, you can't tell that to tech spec whores.
That is a pretty key feature since a lot of the web is based on flash. That's a huge usability deficiency on the iPhone.
So, let me get this straight... You've known since the first iteration that you can't have background applications and yet you continued to purchase newer models!?
You knew from the first model that the battery was not user-replacable, and you absolutely cannot live without a second battery, and yet you continued to purchase new models?
You knew you couldn't upgrade the "memory" on any of the models, but you purchased all three versions so far?
Wow.
Was gonna ask if you were insane, but this may actually qualify you to be just that; becoming emotional over an outcome that you know to not be possible and yet continuing to subject yourself to it.
I consider myself to be an Apple enthusiast and have used Apple products since the early 80's, but I wouldn't subject myself to any company's products like that not even Apple.
hehe, tell that to the Apple guy in this thread who spends $60 every time he needs to charge his iPhone without access to an alternate power source.
Yeah, well, you can't tell that to tech spec whores.
If you actually used it you would know that the iPhone is just about as jerky as the new android phones. You can't tell that to the Apple whores though.
This conversation has really degenerated into the apple die-hards saying that missing features on the iPhone are actually features, and that features on competing phones are actually minuses. Comical.
Android is a hacked together clunky badly designed slow UI.
Or maybe you could use Android.
What's interesting is that the Nexus One bests the iPhone in just about every technical respect (processor power, memory, screen quality/resolution -- you name it) but watch one of the video demos. In spite of all that power, the animations are jerky and slow. The Android software still has a long way to go to catch up to the iPhone. There are plenty of phones that are good or better than the iPhone in terms of hardware, but none of them have a patch on the iPhone OS.
Which videos are you watching? Some from when the Nexus One was just rumored as the "Google Phone" and Android 2.1 was an early release, it seems like.
All the recent ones from all the blogs I've seen show nothing but smoothness going from one action to the next on Android 2.1. It's no worse than the 3GS.
Try to keep up. The "new way" is to have a big, bright screen and a higher-end processor.
If you like last-year's tech, that's fine too.
I have no idea what you mean by this unless you are replying to someone else's remark by mistake.
I disagree. Springboard is lacking in funcionality. It is dumbed-down and devoid of useful options.
No folders? Having to scroll 11 times to access icons? No ability to place icons where you want them, and have them stay there? No ability to use better icons or more intuitive labels?
The iPhone UI sucks big time.
I disagree... the iPhone UI for what it is works for ALL people... I've seen 60 year old men and woman whip out iPhones and iPod Touchs.... when you can capture that kind of demographic You're doing something right. You may not love the UI because you're a power user with 6 pages of applications.
The number of people that own and use an iPhone is insane... males ages 15-35 is an easy market to get... but you have retirees, you have woman of ALL ages... do you know how hard it is to get woman to buy electronics. The console industry has had an extremely hard time captivating woman.
You're thinking solely for one market which is kind of a niche.
It is innovation when you are able to make extremely compact phones without resorting to screwing the end user with a non user-replaceable batteries. Plain and simple.
Frankly, making a single unit design is a cheap manufacturing slight of hand that is worse off for the consumer and better for the company that gets paid to replace batteries.
Honestly, who ever requests being limited to one battery as a must-have-feature??? Apparently you do, but practically nobody else wants to be limited.
This smacks of the Onion video of the Apple wheel, a laptop with no keyboard, where the mac fan says that taking the keyboard away WAS A FEATURE.
This whole post is just a big pile of horse poo AFAICS.
You use hyperbole so casually and so repeatedly that it's just impossible to talk to you. For instance your first sentence (with the unnecessary and pejorative "screwing the end user" part removed), would almost make sense, but then you go off the deep end later by blankly stating that sealed units (universally), leave the consumer "worse off" and that "nobody" wants that.
Try to state your own preferences as preferences and not universal truths that "everyone knows" and you might get closer to the truth.
Try to think about product design as actual product design, and not just as a waiter taking a design order from a consumer. In fact, try reading a few books about design and the problems industrial designers face on a daily basis, and you wouldn't be making any of these statements.
If products were designed the way you thought they were and apparently want them to be, we'd all be driving cars like this:
This whole post is just a big pile of horse poo AFAICS.
You use hyperbole so casually and so repeatedly that it's just impossible to talk to you. For instance your first sentence (with the unnecessary and pejorative "screwing the end user" part removed), would almost make sense, but then you go off the deep end later by blankly stating that sealed units (universally), leave the consumer "worse off" and that "nobody" wants that.
Try to state your own preferences as preferences and not universal truths that "everyone knows" and you might get closer to the truth.
Try to think about product design as actual product design, and not just as a waiter taking a design order from a consumer. In fact, try reading a few books about design and the problems industrial designers face on a daily basis, and you wouldn't be making any of these statements.
If products were designed the way you thought they were and apparently want them to be, we'd all be driving cars like this:
So, what it comes down to according to you, is that having a user-replaceable battery is the equivalent of a Homer Simpson-designed automobile.
Pretty much Apple needs to catch up with everyone else. I didn't mention a physical keyboard, which is something Apple should really offer in a version of its phone. A physical keyboard version and a software-only keyboard. It can have 2 different models of the iPhone and make more people happy.
Steve Jobs disagrees with you.
Usability is more than just being familiar with an operating system and a particular iteration, which is what a lot of people think usability is.
"Ease-of-use" might be a better term then, but that's still the biggest big part of usability. What good is along list of features if half of them are a pain to use?
Just because something is different does not make it less usable. Android 2.1 is the most advanced operating system for a mobile phone today and it is setting the standard for usability.
Wrong. Apple's iPhone has set the standard for usability. I know this because iPhone is the paradigm that everybody else (including Android) is trying to copy and "catch up" to. Why else is every other phone these days refered to as an iPhone killer?
Of course, while copying, they make just enough changes in their own products so they don't appear to be copying. But they are still copying.
One of the most usable and coolest features? Voice-input for text fields. No longer do you have to dink around on a tiny keyboard with mistakes and all that. Just speak into the phone and it translates it.
I agree that does sound cool and maybe even usable. And I bet there's an app for that.
Another usability feature is multi-tasking of all applications on the phone. Want to listen to pandora while receiving a text message on the iPhone? NOT POSSIBLE. That is NOT usability. That pisses me off.
I can see where that could be annoying for some people. I don't listen to Pandora radio myself. I listen to music synced via iTunes which does keep playing while I read and reply to texts/email, etc. Surely battery technology will have improved enough so that Apple feels comfortable with implementing/allowing some form multi-tasking for 3rd party apps in iPhone OS 4.0
The iPhone does not have these key usability features among many others, which makes it less usable than others.
Except that the features you've named are not key.
N1 has 512MB of memory vs. iPhone 256MB, however Android has a much larger memory footprint than OS X, <100MB for OS X, >200MB for Android
The 512MB is NAND flash, in this case for the OS and applications. The 4GB is additional storage for media. The SD slot is there for another 32GB of additional storage. The N1 will probably have 256/288MB RAM (My HTC Hero has 288MB), comparable to the iPhone 3GS.
N1 has an SD slot for extra storage, but not for applications,
This won't be an issue for longer as this limitation is being removed in a near future update. So you'll be able to have up to 36GB of applications and media, etc.
N1 has a 1GHz CPU vs. iPhone's 600MHz, and yet the iPhone interface is still more responsive and fluid.
Most of the interface fluidity will be down to the graphics unit within the system, not the CPU. The iPhone accelerates the UI very well with the PowerVR SGX graphics inside and Core Animation and other frameworks. I believe the Qualcomm chip uses something else.
There are issues with Android, but there are also many pluses. It's progressing very quickly, and looks set to take a good portion of the smartphone market.
I have a GSM cell phone. I disabled the phone's internal phonebook memory so now all contacts are added to the SIM card. Why would I do this? Well lets say one day I drop my phone, it gets, wet, ect and goes dead, I can peel apart the pieces of my phone and assuming the SIM itself hasn't been damages take it out. The I go to a local electronics store and buy a new unlocked handset (I can even buy a prepaid handset since I'm a T-Mobile subscriber and their prepaid phones will work this way, too). I put my SIM into the new phone. BOOM, all my contacts are now on my new phone. If I'd been using the phone's built in NON REMOVABLE memory, I would have been S.O.L. since the phone is too damaged to run so I can try getting them off.
This same scenario could play out on a smart phone with a mSD card. You can't pull the flash memory chips off the iPhone's board to save the contents. Neither can you take the flash chips off and give them to a friend temporarily so he can use or copy the contents off to a different device.
Android phones sync contacts automatically with Google, so they're always available on whatever device you're using. No worries about having to sync with your computer, or store them on the SIM only (losing all of the other data you can store regarding your contacts).
I believe that the Palm Pre also does this.
The iPhone can sync with MobileMe (for an annual fee?), and of course iTunes sync will do it when you remember.
Wrong. Apple's iPhone has set the standard for usability. I know this because iPhone is the paradigm that everybody else (including Android) is trying to copy and "catch up" to. Why else is every other phone these days refered to as an iPhone killer?
Of course, while copying, they make just enough changes in their own products so they don't appear to be copying. But they are still copying.
You could make the same exact argument for Apple copying the many PDA-phones which existed long before the iPhone.
But you wouldn't, because you hold Apple to a different standard.