More features do not make a product better. Hardware and additional features are both usless when the operating system required to use them is unstable and poorly designed.
It is obvious that you would rather focus on the relitivly small problems of the iPhone while ignoring the core issues of other mobile operating systems. The iphone is by no means perfect, but it is the best currently avalible.
***
The best for playing itunes music, but little else. The list of useful features on the iPhone is very small, and missing features very big. If tethering was relatively small, why the furore about its appearance and disappearance?
Couple of points Daniel. About updates and iPhone v n95 sales.
The lack of updates from other vendors is overplayed here and quite incorrect.
Apple *has* to provide updates because the iPhone is missing features. Your list of complaints is simply a list of features the other guys wouldn't miss out in a 1.0 release never mind a 2.0. The other guys aren't really missing features so no need to update other than for bug fixes. Their features might not be so pretty but they are there.
For Nokia and Sony Ericsson you either get over the air updates from their site or download an update and install it using their sync software. My SE p910i which is now about 4 years old now shipped with Exchange and BES support, MMS, video recording. An update added a new home page app and IMAP IDLE support. It's done Office docs viewing AND editing since day 1. It's had bulk SMS/Email delete/move/copy support from day one. Copy and Paste from day one. I've never felt the urge to update it or thought - "hey, it doesn't do ..."
App store and Media store - meh. I've a choice of dozens at least. Both Nokia and SE have their own official stores btw.
iPhone outselling the N95 - I don't think so. Nokia sold 10 million Nseries last quarter (Source: http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1236588) and 2 million Eseries (same os), 15 million S60 phones in all. If you've got data to say otherwise then please quote it Daniel. Yes, I know, they don't break it down by model but does that matter, they're essentially the same platform. You get N95s free with boxes of cereal in Europe. So they're selling 40-60 million Nseries phones a year roughly. The iPhone 3G is going to be a hit but lets not get ahead of ourselves - the Nseries phones are huge sellers by comparison.
That table at the end. Copy & Paste should have been on it. iPhone games are not "console-quality". At least not in my opinion. They are excellent though - well some of them. And as for stability... 1.0 - 1.1.4 was excellent, but 2.0 is less than good. 2.0.1 looks like it's going to be good however.
Couple of points Daniel. About updates and iPhone v n95 sales.
The lack of updates from other vendors is overplayed here and quite incorrect.
Apple *has* to provide updates because the iPhone is missing features. Your list of complaints is simply a list of features the other guys wouldn't miss out in a 1.0 release never mind a 2.0. The other guys aren't really missing features so no need to update other than for bug fixes. Their features might not be so pretty but they are there.
For Nokia and Sony Ericsson you either get over the air updates from their site or download an update and install it using their sync software. My SE p910i which is now about 4 years old now shipped with Exchange and BES support, MMS, video recording. An update added a new home page app and IMAP IDLE support. It's done Office docs viewing AND editing since day 1. It's had bulk SMS/Email delete/move/copy support from day one. Copy and Paste from day one. I've never felt the urge to update it or thought - "hey, it doesn't do ..."
App store and Media store - meh. I've a choice of dozens at least. Both Nokia and SE have their own official stores btw.
iPhone outselling the N95 - I don't think so. Nokia sold 10 million Nseries last quarter (Source: http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1236588) and 2 million Eseries (same os), 15 million S60 phones in all. If you've got data to say otherwise then please quote it Daniel. Yes, I know, they don't break it down by model but does that matter, they're essentially the same platform. You get N95s free with boxes of cereal in Europe. So they're selling 40-60 million Nseries phones a year roughly. The iPhone 3G is going to be a hit but lets not get ahead of ourselves - the Nseries phones are huge sellers by comparison.
iPhone games are not "console-quality". At least not in my opinion. They are excellent though - well some of them.
More so than any phone it's going to be tricky getting good quality games with just accelerometers and a touch screen. Most phone number pads are also pretty terrible for gaming on and you can quickly knacker the phone playing games on it.
Even Nokia's Ngage phones and games aren't that thrilling an experience although perhaps calling them "simple games" in the table is more than a little unfair.
My favourite games on my phone are the LucasArts adventures via a ScummVM emulator. Those are just perfect for touch screen phones and don't rely on rapid button pressing. Works great for a "simple game".
Impatica ShowMate is a small, lightweight hardware accessory to project:
PowerPoint presentations from smartphone. Simply attach the ShowMate to the VGA port of any projector or monitor and your handheld delivers your PowerPoint presentation wirelessly using Bluetooth technology. You can now roam the stage and interact with the audience to deliver a more engaging presentation, without being tethered to a laptop. In fact, you can now travel laptop free!
I've been trying to break v2.0.1 since last night and I can't. None of the issues I had with v2.0 still remain so saying it's the most unstable smartphone seems a little extreme. Though it has been over 6 months since I've used another smartphone so I don't know if the OS quality of the others have improved.
I haven't updated mine yet. I've currently got an icon stuck on "installing" and another stuck on "updating" and I get the occasional "launch an app and immediately reboot" with 2.0.
It does seem like Apple's starting to get its ducks in a row. I submitted my first app to the App Store on Friday afternoon and it was posted Monday afternoon. I suspect as Apple starts letting the third-party bugfixes through the floodgates apps will generally get more stable as well.
Really, the iPhone is a really nice piece of hardware with a really nice OS. But does AI really need to shovel so much innuendo and FUD on the competition? It undermines the credibility of the rest of the article.
People who play Scrabulous should be laughed off the stage?
He could have said 'People who play Scrabulous should be laughed off the planet'.
Couple of points Daniel. About updates and iPhone v n95 sales.
The lack of updates from other vendors is overplayed here and quite incorrect.
Apple *has* to provide updates because the iPhone is missing features. Your list of complaints is simply a list of features the other guys wouldn't miss out in a 1.0 release never mind a 2.0. The other guys aren't really missing features so no need to update other than for bug fixes. Their features might not be so pretty but they are there.
For Nokia and Sony Ericsson you either get over the air updates from their site or download an update and install it using their sync software. My SE p910i which is now about 4 years old now shipped with Exchange and BES support, MMS, video recording. An update added a new home page app and IMAP IDLE support. It's done Office docs viewing AND editing since day 1. It's had bulk SMS/Email delete/move/copy support from day one. Copy and Paste from day one. I've never felt the urge to update it or thought - "hey, it doesn't do ..."
App store and Media store - meh. I've a choice of dozens at least. Both Nokia and SE have their own official stores btw.
iPhone outselling the N95 - I don't think so. Nokia sold 10 million Nseries last quarter (Source: http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1236588) and 2 million Eseries (same os), 15 million S60 phones in all. If you've got data to say otherwise then please quote it Daniel. Yes, I know, they don't break it down by model but does that matter, they're essentially the same platform. You get N95s free with boxes of cereal in Europe. So they're selling 40-60 million Nseries phones a year roughly. The iPhone 3G is going to be a hit but lets not get ahead of ourselves - the Nseries phones are huge sellers by comparison.
Ha ha, keep playing with your phone, if it is such a perfect device.
If you can't see the quality and the leap ahead the iPhone represents, it is not for you. You will be stuck with crappy software on a crappy device, wondering why everyone else is using an iPhone.
In this case I would say, it really really isn't hard to see the revolution coming.
A dozen apps in four years, versus one thousand in a few weeks, yeah, you must be right.
Complaining of the archaic software of other platforms when they have more software features than you certainly confirms your fanboy status.
The 'amazing platform' that is OSX Mobile did not bring cut and paste. It does not include most bluetooth profiles. It does not support dail up networking or other forms of internet sharing. It does not allow the user the full use of the OS, with their apps being stuck inside a sandbox.
And its buggy despite all the restrictions.
Its clear that when the iPhone started playing with the big boys, the vacuousness of its pretty interface gets exposed.
You miss the point completely. It was pointed out - as a matter of fact - that software of other platforms is archaic. So, dispute the arguments and don't change subject.
Some people, like you, have an (obvious) flaw in rational thinking. If a device misses a few features (that can be added later) but is otherwise revolutionary, it is still revolutionary.
Ha ha, keep playing with your phone, if it is such a perfect device.
If you can't see the quality and the leap ahead the iPhone represents, it is not for you. You will be stuck with crappy software on a crappy device, wondering why everyone else is using an iPhone.
In this case I would say, it really really isn't hard to see the revolution coming.
A dozen apps in four years, versus one thousand in a few weeks, yeah, you must be right.
There are more than a dozen or so S60 apps.
And what is the point of 1000 apps when 90% of them are tip calculators
I find it so funny that people don't like to hear Al criticise other OS's or products.
What I do like about Al, is he does his homework better than any journalist, and having done it, is NOT afraid to 'call a spade a spade'.
Let's face it, Microsoft has been the Emperor with no clothes for some time. Very few people were willing to say it. We need more people to call things as they really are and not pussyfoot around being politically correct.
Keep up the great work Al, and as your thoroughness of investigation drew me to Apple Insider, do not fear about readership levels!
I made a broad statement about AI and I need to clarify my position. In terms of scooping the competition, hardly anyone surpasses AI. They tend to be quoted by more online sites than any other. Usually you will see: "as reported by Apple Insider" on most other sites. My problem concerns the sometimes (my opinion here) overly favorable coverage that Apple receives at the detriment of other products and services. When the reporting is balanced (my opinion again) it is spot on.
I am typically ambivalent about DED/PM reviews. I fully expect that an Apple enthusiast site like AI will probably be too forgiving of Apple product shortcomings but I guess I figure this just more-or-less evens out the equally overly harsh reviews found elsewhere. And DED's pieces do often pull together some of the "big picture" aspects that often get overlooked in a checklist review. But I do not like like the way Apple's competitors are denigrated. It's fine to compare features and implementations and state your preference and the reasoning behind it, but the reckless potshots are unnecessary and usually lead to inaccurate conclusions.
I have always preferred SE handsets over Nokias and I think that the "Comes with Music" is about as boneheaded an idea as I have seen (just more of the record labels assuming that everyone in the world is stealing their music), but I also recognize that Nokia is a formidable competitor for other handset manufacturers: Nokia has solid engineering, effective marketing (their handsets are everywhere) and the resources needed to tackle big projects. It may be difficult for them to challenge some aspects of Apple's fully-integrated solution but Apple has also stumbled in its ambitions, and Nokia has a demonstrated competence to partner with others, as needed. I seriously doubt that anyone within the iPhone division (or even Steve, when he is not on stage) is as dismissive of Nokia as this article is.
According to many of the game manufacturers, it is. Some of them have even praised the iPhone as being more advanced than many of the recent consoles that they have developed for.
Guys, you know Apple inside out but every time you mention Nokia/Symbian it's simply embarassing.
You seem to spout a mixture of FUD and ignorance. It's obvious that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. It's like listening to the average American talking about soccer. Very, very painful.
Even worse, the initial version of the new iPhone 2.0 has eroded away the facade of near flawlessness Apple rolled out with the original iPhone last year, resulting in a product that is simply harder to be unreservedly enthusiastic about.
What self-centered moron wrote this article? Copy and paste journalism? It was obviously written to with a single purpose in mind, to spread FUD.
According to many of the game manufacturers, it is. Some of them have even praised the iPhone as being more advanced than many of the recent consoles that they have developed for.
Agreed! Wasn't it Carmack recently stating that it was more advanced than both the DS and PSP combined?
"Nokia's European N61 phone is revered for its fantastic WiFi and VoIP features, but here in the US it's only sold as the crippled N61i, with support for neither."
Please try and keep your facts straight. Or try to have facts.
A: There is no N61, or N61i, however there is an E61 and E61i.
B: The Nokia E61 was primarily sold in Europe, although it was available on import sites
C: The Nokia E61 had WiFi and VoIP
The Nokia E61i is available stateside through importers and sites such as dell.com
E: The Nokia E61i also has WiFi and VoIP
F: The phone you are attempting to talk about that was crippled, was crippled by AT&T, it was AT&T branded, and it was sold exclusively through AT&T as the E62. It had a mini-usb port instead of the Nokia Pop-port (which couldn't charge the device), it had no wifi, and consequentially no VoIP.
If someone wanted the E61 and E61i, they could buy it from other venues.
I see no reason to ever buy from carriers anyways as they always load their handsets full of bloated branded garbage. This is the best way to tell carriers you'd rather not choose from their poor crippled handset selection. Alas, consumers don't do that, thus the situation we are put in.
All that said, for a carrier to support UMA they need back-end infrastructure to handle call handoff between the cell network and the wifi network, it's not something as simple as some magic app that you launch and presto, UMA. (Thus the two-number scenario mentioned in the article.) Anyone that's used T-mobile's UMA for any period of time has probably suffered at least a few instances of the service failing, being booted back to the cell network, dropped calls, firewalls closing down the audio to half the connection, etc. It's not a magic carrot.
Considering all this, the iPhone is especially refreshing, in that it doesn't have any of this carrier-branded cruft on it and you don't even need to go to a carrier store to buy it.
Comments
More features do not make a product better. Hardware and additional features are both usless when the operating system required to use them is unstable and poorly designed.
It is obvious that you would rather focus on the relitivly small problems of the iPhone while ignoring the core issues of other mobile operating systems. The iphone is by no means perfect, but it is the best currently avalible.
***
The best for playing itunes music, but little else. The list of useful features on the iPhone is very small, and missing features very big. If tethering was relatively small, why the furore about its appearance and disappearance?
The lack of updates from other vendors is overplayed here and quite incorrect.
Apple *has* to provide updates because the iPhone is missing features. Your list of complaints is simply a list of features the other guys wouldn't miss out in a 1.0 release never mind a 2.0. The other guys aren't really missing features so no need to update other than for bug fixes. Their features might not be so pretty but they are there.
For Nokia and Sony Ericsson you either get over the air updates from their site or download an update and install it using their sync software. My SE p910i which is now about 4 years old now shipped with Exchange and BES support, MMS, video recording. An update added a new home page app and IMAP IDLE support. It's done Office docs viewing AND editing since day 1. It's had bulk SMS/Email delete/move/copy support from day one. Copy and Paste from day one. I've never felt the urge to update it or thought - "hey, it doesn't do ..."
App store and Media store - meh. I've a choice of dozens at least. Both Nokia and SE have their own official stores btw.
Nokia - http://www.softwaremarket.nokia.com/
SE - http://applicationshop.sonyericsson.com/
iPhone outselling the N95 - I don't think so. Nokia sold 10 million Nseries last quarter (Source: http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1236588) and 2 million Eseries (same os), 15 million S60 phones in all. If you've got data to say otherwise then please quote it Daniel. Yes, I know, they don't break it down by model but does that matter, they're essentially the same platform. You get N95s free with boxes of cereal in Europe. So they're selling 40-60 million Nseries phones a year roughly. The iPhone 3G is going to be a hit but lets not get ahead of ourselves - the Nseries phones are huge sellers by comparison.
Eh Dan?
couple of points daniel.
lol
Couple of points Daniel. About updates and iPhone v n95 sales.
The lack of updates from other vendors is overplayed here and quite incorrect.
Apple *has* to provide updates because the iPhone is missing features. Your list of complaints is simply a list of features the other guys wouldn't miss out in a 1.0 release never mind a 2.0. The other guys aren't really missing features so no need to update other than for bug fixes. Their features might not be so pretty but they are there.
For Nokia and Sony Ericsson you either get over the air updates from their site or download an update and install it using their sync software. My SE p910i which is now about 4 years old now shipped with Exchange and BES support, MMS, video recording. An update added a new home page app and IMAP IDLE support. It's done Office docs viewing AND editing since day 1. It's had bulk SMS/Email delete/move/copy support from day one. Copy and Paste from day one. I've never felt the urge to update it or thought - "hey, it doesn't do ..."
App store and Media store - meh. I've a choice of dozens at least. Both Nokia and SE have their own official stores btw.
Nokia - http://www.softwaremarket.nokia.com/
SE - http://applicationshop.sonyericsson.com/
iPhone outselling the N95 - I don't think so. Nokia sold 10 million Nseries last quarter (Source: http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1236588) and 2 million Eseries (same os), 15 million S60 phones in all. If you've got data to say otherwise then please quote it Daniel. Yes, I know, they don't break it down by model but does that matter, they're essentially the same platform. You get N95s free with boxes of cereal in Europe. So they're selling 40-60 million Nseries phones a year roughly. The iPhone 3G is going to be a hit but lets not get ahead of ourselves - the Nseries phones are huge sellers by comparison.
Game, set, match: aegisdesign
iPhone games are not "console-quality". At least not in my opinion. They are excellent though - well some of them.
More so than any phone it's going to be tricky getting good quality games with just accelerometers and a touch screen. Most phone number pads are also pretty terrible for gaming on and you can quickly knacker the phone playing games on it.
Even Nokia's Ngage phones and games aren't that thrilling an experience although perhaps calling them "simple games" in the table is more than a little unfair.
My favourite games on my phone are the LucasArts adventures via a ScummVM emulator. Those are just perfect for touch screen phones and don't rely on rapid button pressing. Works great for a "simple game".
Impatica ShowMate is a small, lightweight hardware accessory to project:
PowerPoint presentations from smartphone. Simply attach the ShowMate to the VGA port of any projector or monitor and your handheld delivers your PowerPoint presentation wirelessly using Bluetooth technology. You can now roam the stage and interact with the audience to deliver a more engaging presentation, without being tethered to a laptop. In fact, you can now travel laptop free!
http://www.impatica.com/showmate
We need thousands for our University. From Keynote and PowerPoint full blown NATIVE files (transitions, animations, video, etc).
I've been trying to break v2.0.1 since last night and I can't. None of the issues I had with v2.0 still remain so saying it's the most unstable smartphone seems a little extreme. Though it has been over 6 months since I've used another smartphone so I don't know if the OS quality of the others have improved.
I haven't updated mine yet. I've currently got an icon stuck on "installing" and another stuck on "updating" and I get the occasional "launch an app and immediately reboot" with 2.0.
It does seem like Apple's starting to get its ducks in a row. I submitted my first app to the App Store on Friday afternoon and it was posted Monday afternoon. I suspect as Apple starts letting the third-party bugfixes through the floodgates apps will generally get more stable as well.
Really, the iPhone is a really nice piece of hardware with a really nice OS. But does AI really need to shovel so much innuendo and FUD on the competition? It undermines the credibility of the rest of the article.
People who play Scrabulous should be laughed off the stage?
He could have said 'People who play Scrabulous should be laughed off the planet'.
Couple of points Daniel. About updates and iPhone v n95 sales.
The lack of updates from other vendors is overplayed here and quite incorrect.
Apple *has* to provide updates because the iPhone is missing features. Your list of complaints is simply a list of features the other guys wouldn't miss out in a 1.0 release never mind a 2.0. The other guys aren't really missing features so no need to update other than for bug fixes. Their features might not be so pretty but they are there.
For Nokia and Sony Ericsson you either get over the air updates from their site or download an update and install it using their sync software. My SE p910i which is now about 4 years old now shipped with Exchange and BES support, MMS, video recording. An update added a new home page app and IMAP IDLE support. It's done Office docs viewing AND editing since day 1. It's had bulk SMS/Email delete/move/copy support from day one. Copy and Paste from day one. I've never felt the urge to update it or thought - "hey, it doesn't do ..."
App store and Media store - meh. I've a choice of dozens at least. Both Nokia and SE have their own official stores btw.
Nokia - http://www.softwaremarket.nokia.com/
SE - http://applicationshop.sonyericsson.com/
iPhone outselling the N95 - I don't think so. Nokia sold 10 million Nseries last quarter (Source: http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1236588) and 2 million Eseries (same os), 15 million S60 phones in all. If you've got data to say otherwise then please quote it Daniel. Yes, I know, they don't break it down by model but does that matter, they're essentially the same platform. You get N95s free with boxes of cereal in Europe. So they're selling 40-60 million Nseries phones a year roughly. The iPhone 3G is going to be a hit but lets not get ahead of ourselves - the Nseries phones are huge sellers by comparison.
Ha ha, keep playing with your phone, if it is such a perfect device.
If you can't see the quality and the leap ahead the iPhone represents, it is not for you. You will be stuck with crappy software on a crappy device, wondering why everyone else is using an iPhone.
In this case I would say, it really really isn't hard to see the revolution coming.
A dozen apps in four years, versus one thousand in a few weeks, yeah, you must be right.
Complaining of the archaic software of other platforms when they have more software features than you certainly confirms your fanboy status.
The 'amazing platform' that is OSX Mobile did not bring cut and paste. It does not include most bluetooth profiles. It does not support dail up networking or other forms of internet sharing. It does not allow the user the full use of the OS, with their apps being stuck inside a sandbox.
And its buggy despite all the restrictions.
Its clear that when the iPhone started playing with the big boys, the vacuousness of its pretty interface gets exposed.
You miss the point completely. It was pointed out - as a matter of fact - that software of other platforms is archaic. So, dispute the arguments and don't change subject.
Some people, like you, have an (obvious) flaw in rational thinking. If a device misses a few features (that can be added later) but is otherwise revolutionary, it is still revolutionary.
At least you recognize a pretty interface.
Ha ha, keep playing with your phone, if it is such a perfect device.
If you can't see the quality and the leap ahead the iPhone represents, it is not for you. You will be stuck with crappy software on a crappy device, wondering why everyone else is using an iPhone.
In this case I would say, it really really isn't hard to see the revolution coming.
A dozen apps in four years, versus one thousand in a few weeks, yeah, you must be right.
There are more than a dozen or so S60 apps.
And what is the point of 1000 apps when 90% of them are tip calculators
What I do like about Al, is he does his homework better than any journalist, and having done it, is NOT afraid to 'call a spade a spade'.
Let's face it, Microsoft has been the Emperor with no clothes for some time. Very few people were willing to say it. We need more people to call things as they really are and not pussyfoot around being politically correct.
Keep up the great work Al, and as your thoroughness of investigation drew me to Apple Insider, do not fear about readership levels!
I made a broad statement about AI and I need to clarify my position. In terms of scooping the competition, hardly anyone surpasses AI. They tend to be quoted by more online sites than any other. Usually you will see: "as reported by Apple Insider" on most other sites. My problem concerns the sometimes (my opinion here) overly favorable coverage that Apple receives at the detriment of other products and services. When the reporting is balanced (my opinion again) it is spot on.
I am typically ambivalent about DED/PM reviews. I fully expect that an Apple enthusiast site like AI will probably be too forgiving of Apple product shortcomings but I guess I figure this just more-or-less evens out the equally overly harsh reviews found elsewhere. And DED's pieces do often pull together some of the "big picture" aspects that often get overlooked in a checklist review. But I do not like like the way Apple's competitors are denigrated. It's fine to compare features and implementations and state your preference and the reasoning behind it, but the reckless potshots are unnecessary and usually lead to inaccurate conclusions.
I have always preferred SE handsets over Nokias and I think that the "Comes with Music" is about as boneheaded an idea as I have seen (just more of the record labels assuming that everyone in the world is stealing their music), but I also recognize that Nokia is a formidable competitor for other handset manufacturers: Nokia has solid engineering, effective marketing (their handsets are everywhere) and the resources needed to tackle big projects. It may be difficult for them to challenge some aspects of Apple's fully-integrated solution but Apple has also stumbled in its ambitions, and Nokia has a demonstrated competence to partner with others, as needed. I seriously doubt that anyone within the iPhone division (or even Steve, when he is not on stage) is as dismissive of Nokia as this article is.
Google maps it has me in the middle of Puget Sound...
iPhone games are not "console-quality".
According to many of the game manufacturers, it is. Some of them have even praised the iPhone as being more advanced than many of the recent consoles that they have developed for.
You seem to spout a mixture of FUD and ignorance. It's obvious that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. It's like listening to the average American talking about soccer. Very, very painful.
Even worse, the initial version of the new iPhone 2.0 has eroded away the facade of near flawlessness Apple rolled out with the original iPhone last year, resulting in a product that is simply harder to be unreservedly enthusiastic about.
What self-centered moron wrote this article? Copy and paste journalism? It was obviously written to with a single purpose in mind, to spread FUD.
According to many of the game manufacturers, it is. Some of them have even praised the iPhone as being more advanced than many of the recent consoles that they have developed for.
Agreed! Wasn't it Carmack recently stating that it was more advanced than both the DS and PSP combined?
Please try and keep your facts straight. Or try to have facts.
A: There is no N61, or N61i, however there is an E61 and E61i.
B: The Nokia E61 was primarily sold in Europe, although it was available on import sites
C: The Nokia E61 had WiFi and VoIP
E: The Nokia E61i also has WiFi and VoIP
F: The phone you are attempting to talk about that was crippled, was crippled by AT&T, it was AT&T branded, and it was sold exclusively through AT&T as the E62. It had a mini-usb port instead of the Nokia Pop-port (which couldn't charge the device), it had no wifi, and consequentially no VoIP.
If someone wanted the E61 and E61i, they could buy it from other venues.
I see no reason to ever buy from carriers anyways as they always load their handsets full of bloated branded garbage. This is the best way to tell carriers you'd rather not choose from their poor crippled handset selection. Alas, consumers don't do that, thus the situation we are put in.
All that said, for a carrier to support UMA they need back-end infrastructure to handle call handoff between the cell network and the wifi network, it's not something as simple as some magic app that you launch and presto, UMA. (Thus the two-number scenario mentioned in the article.) Anyone that's used T-mobile's UMA for any period of time has probably suffered at least a few instances of the service failing, being booted back to the cell network, dropped calls, firewalls closing down the audio to half the connection, etc. It's not a magic carrot.
Considering all this, the iPhone is especially refreshing, in that it doesn't have any of this carrier-branded cruft on it and you don't even need to go to a carrier store to buy it.