New
#21
Yes
No
Maybe
For the iPhone: 30 hours of music. :)
http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html
I don't have an iPhone, so I don't know really, but considering up to 5 hrs of actual talk time on 3G (probably the most resource taxing thing you'll ever do), even that intensive usage would allow the battery to last for 1-3 days.
But you'd get roughly that without the music, because music is so relatively cheap in resource use.
That's not great, but I don't see it as bad enough to warrant purchasing a relatively bulky $200-300 player for just music and short video clips. Even if it is superior, it has to completely leapfrog all the competition to make that additional weight, complexity, and expense worth it. And besides if charging once every two days is too much, buy a external battery pack case. Would be cheaper and simpler than two dedicated devices.
The only market I see for this is for people who don't have a phone capable of playing music reasonably well, which is a shrinking. Much like PDAs and PocketPCs have all but been killed by smartphones, so will mp3 players.
This kind of thing happens all the time in technology, once functionality matures enough to be a commodity, it is integrated into simpler, smaller, all-in-one devices. (For similar reasons, I think with the advent of SSDs and other technological advances, laptops will start closing the performance gap with desktops within the next 2-3 years, and the desktop will continue on its slow relegation to professionals and niche gaming)
Last edited by jw12345; 18 Jun 2009 at 13:16.
iPhones used to suck (and still kind of do). I switched to a BlackBerry because it had copy and paste, flash camera, faster processor, multitasking, a tactile keyboard, and a java-based OS; and in my particular BlackBerry, I also have 7.2Mpbs HSDPA (Faster 3G than the iPhone).
Now that the iPhone 3GS is out, they aren't as bad.
There will always be a market for these devices due to some companies hand out Blackberries to their employees and dont let them put any other type of media on them.
I own a BlackBerry Curve, and it sucks as a mp3 player so Im one of the small market of people that will be keeping two devices with me at all times.
You're right, right now there's money in the market. It's just that Microsoft is betting against a clear trend. The market will have shriveled to insignificance before the Zune brand ever catches on.
It will take a few years before decent media playback proliferates to all products, especially business oriented phones, but right now there are numerous consumer devices that have decent media playback integrating into all-in-one devices. As technology progresses, it stops making sense to carry a camera, gps, mobile internet device, cell phone, pda, and mp3 player. Sure all these functions can be done better with a dedicated device, but once it's "good enough", the convenience of an all in one device outweighs the difference. All the trends point to computing to converge on ipod touch like devices that gradually gain new features that are decent enough to replace old devices. Heck, I could even see Apple beefing up the iPhone/Touch and throwing it in a netbook-like shell. The 3GS is already pretty good at most things a killer netbook would be used for, just doesn't have the IO of a larger display and keyboard.
I'm a 15-year-old-technophile and I have a BlackBerry Bold because I feel that the iPhone is inferior.
I used to have a WinMo Smartphone, but they didn't have, like, any apps for it. I bought an iPhone after the screen on my WinMo phone broke, and I didn't like being locked into iTunes, not having tethering, and having to constantly update. And I hated the iPhone's, "Keyboard." If you can call it that... I bought the BlackBerry bold because I wanted a phone with 3G and a better camera. I was impressed!
The way I see it, a good phone gets updates to improve it. The best phones doesn't need to be improved. Example A:
iPhone 2G > iPhone 3G > iPhone 3GS
Blackberry Curve 8300 series > Blackberry Curve 8800 series
HTC Touch/Touch Duo > HTC Touch 3G > HTC Touch Pro/Diamond/Viva/HD > HTC Touch Pro/Diamond 2
Blackberry Bold
Blackberry Storm > Blackberry Storm 2
See? My phone just seems perfect for me!
I honestly don't know a huge amount about the latest and greatest cell phones, but I think my point still stands no matter what phone brand you use.
As personal technology proliferates (camera/video recorder, gps, mobile internet device, cell phone, pda, voice recorder, and mp3 player), at some point you have to sacrifice absolute quality for practicality. When you can't carry 7-8 electronic devices on your person at a time, "good enough" implementations win.
Eventually you reach devices such as the iPhone, which is a misnomer considering how phone calling is such a small part of what it is used for.