New Rule: QVGA != iPhone Killer
As ArsTechnica observes in their article on the LG VX 10000, practically every new cell phone that has come out on the market with either a web browser or music playing capability has been dubbed an “iPhone Killer”. Of course, the people selling the phone have been reluctant to say that, but the media has done it because “iPhone killer” gets you eyeballs. In the case of this new phone though, apparently Verizon’s “Wireless Chief Marketing Officer” claims that the VX 10000 will finally slay the Apple beast. Really, he should be embarrassed.
So, let’s see how the phone compares to an iPhone. Well, it does EV-DO, so it can access the net faster than an iPhone…. just like my PPC-6700 and just about every other web-enabled phone on the market even six months before the iPhone’s launch. It has a full QWERTY keyboard, just like my PPC-6700 which is over two years old. It has a microSD slot, which is minor improvement on the miniSD slot on my PPC-6700, and is commonly found on web-enabled phones these days, including the PPC-6800, which is a refresh update of my phone. Does it have multi-touch? No. Does it have a proximity sensor? No. Does it have video voice mail, AFAIK, no. Oh, and the screen. There are two of them…. and they both suck.
Each of them is QVGA resolution (one in landscape, one in portrait mode). QVGA has been available in phones for years now (indeed, my PPC-6700 has it). I can tell you from first hand experience that that kind of resolution just plain sucks for browsing the web. Yes, specially designed mobile services can work fine with it, but you need more pixels to do the job right. Frankly, I’m embarrassed for the whole US mobile phone market. When the iPhone was first announced, it’s 480x320 resolution seemed to me as too little too late. QVGA phones had been on the market for years, and overseas you could find full VGA phones without looking too hard. It seemed like by the time the iPhone landed on the market, 480x320 was going to seem about as lame as the iPhone’s EDGE network. Wow, was I wrong about that. I don’t know what the problem is, even the OpenMoko project has a VGA phone, but the monopolies powers in the cell phone market seem to be preventing the concept reaching consumer’s hands.
So here’s a new rule: I don’t expect everyone to start shipping VGA overnight, but you can’t call a phone an “iPhone killer” unless it has one screen that is at least as high a resolution as the iPhone’s. You also have to be embarrassed at each new phone announcement where you don’t have at least ONE phone on the market that can match or exceed the specs of the Neo 1973.