One thing that I think has been grossly overlooked about the iphone is that on top of imposing lots of the usual Apple kingdom restrictions like DRM and a specific provider, it only offered a 2 mega pixel camera. Anything sound weird in that?
All of the top notch handset providers have been recently competing on how high res their cameras are. I’m assuming because they correctly assumed that their users were more often taking great pictures, sending each other the list of cover bands at the concert they are at, etc.
We have come to embrace amateur photography and are offered great tools that we can operate easily and get great quality pictures from. So why this lame camera on the phone thats supposed to redefine the way the cell phone industry functions? Does this indeed show a user-centered design? Is it a coincidence that Steve, in his keynote talks over and over again about “those great digital cameras”… hellooooooo noone is interested in carrying one around anymore! This is why that particular convergence has been so successful in terms of usage.
Don’t get me wrong, i like the iphone, i think it looks cool, and never having owned an ipod and having one of the oldest phones around i can say this is an appealing product… but i think the question still poses itself, would i rather be able to take great pictures on the go or listen to Alanis Morissette ?
most pundits seem to think that particular oversight is the result of the US being a bit backwards when it comes to mobile phones. The edge data network only is a similiar problem. if the camera has a good sensor it might still be a fine camera though but i might be holding out for version 2.0 myself.
Yeh, good point, i keep forgetting they’re behind in terms of cell phone usage. But you’d think since they’re the initiators of such great photo sharing services, they would have gotten the hang of it by now :)
I was just at the T-Mobile store in Cambridge and took a look at the phones in the store. All of the PDA-type phones have a 1.3 Megapixel camera. So by that standard, 2MP is huge! =)
Oh, and as someone who’s been trying to move a bunch of large files around (backing up to Strongspace), this utopia of sharing hi-rez photos and large files will take some time to arrive (at least in the US) because of the paltry upload speeds on so-called “high speed” internet.
I’d be a much happier camper uploading files to Flickr if it didn’t take so dang long.
Dave, well im talking about the European standards in this case, coz everything around here is around 3 megapixels minimum… if they only want to affect the american market that’s fine, but its not a trademark of Apple who have done a great job with the iPod of being fairly international in their impact and reach.