eComm 2008/iPhone review

I went to San Jose on the 11th of March, 2008. I came expecting to do 3 things. Go to eComm 2008 and learn a lot about the VOIP industry, eat at an IHOP, and get an iphone to take back to Canada to resell for a $150 or so profit. I am currently writing this on a plane, leaving the San Jose area around noon Pacific Time on the following Saturday. Of my goals, 1.5 of them happened - I learned about the industry (more than I had before - but to get on track, you have to have at least a year of experience in the field to understand companies, their competitors, how they work, etc.), didn't eat at an IHOP (no time - lunch and dinner was planned, and breakfast was spent half awake as a result of the jet lag, and it was once 7-11 and twice Dennys), and I got my iphone - but as of this writing, I have no intention of selling it.

Tuesday night, we arrived in San Jose, and took a taxi to the hotel. I was ready to meet Tom Howe, who my dad said I would be friends with instantly, and get the iphone off of him. I had my Benjamins in hand, ready to go – anxious to get the phone and make the money (at the time, little did I know it would be my everyday phone). It was a rather unique hotel, with almost everything outdoors (except the rooms), including the pool, the hot tub, the lobby, the hallways – pretty much everything. We unpacked our things, and hailed another cab to Shiva’s Indian restaurant. I was instantly launched into the bloggers’ world. Meeting big timers like Andy Abramson, James Body, and Boaz Zilberman was a real thrill for me – the people whose names I have only seen on my dad’s computer screen from time to time have now been said by mouth with a handshake.

James Body and I had a rather interesting conversation about iphones, and how he had 3 of them with him, carrying around dozens of SIM cards, and belonging to multiple carriers. We also discussed the features of some phones in the Nokia E-series, particularly to do with the battery life. As a technical noob to cell phones, I really learned a thing or two about cell phones – including how WiFi usage only marginally affects battery life (the exact opposite case on computers - allowing me to assume the same thing about cell phones), and unless you set an APN for your wireless carrier, on a WiFi enabled phone, they can’t charge you for internet. This was a weight off my shoulders – I was always putting my N81 into offline mode so it couldn’t access the GSM network when I wanted to go online! There was no way for me to access the internet through my carrier by accident. Am I ever glad I met him!

So, around 1AM local time, me, my dad, and Tom headed off to the hotel (Tom didn’t have the iPhone – nobody had it in stock, and he said not to worry, we’d find an AT&T store to get one from. It wasn’t a big deal that he didn’t have it – and afterwards, I was glad that he didn’t have it, or I would have never been able to visit the “Mothership”. More on that in a moment…). I ended up getting 6 hours of sleep in, and couldn’t wait to get to the conference – anxious to see the presentations these companies had in store for us.

Tom drove us that morning to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View – it sure didn’t look like your everyday museum, that’s for sure. More like an art gallery, if anything. We bypassed the front desk, and went upstairs to the conference receptionists. We got our complimentary eComm 2008 tote bags with some “goodies” inside (including a free 1gb USB key), and our name tags. Found it useful to have one, because when I walked into the room, and my dad and I set up beside James, he looked at my name tag, and asked me “are you related to Jon?” – I thought that sitting with him at the restaurant the prior night would have made that an easy determination of blood relationship – apparently my height and full head of hair shows no kin! Just joking dad… lol.

In the morning, a particular company that stood out was Twitter. I’m aware that people (particularly of my generation) like to brag, or let people know what they’re doing. These are usually eased somehow, awkwardly into IM conversations, or put into a Facebook status bluntly, to tell their circle of friends what they’re doing. Twitter allows you to update as much as you see necessary, via SMS or via web. I see potential mashup opportunity here with a cellular carrier allowing unlimited updates for a certain amount per month (kind of like the plans that allow unlimited access to Facebook, offered by Rogers in Canada, unsure of US availability by carrier, but I’m sure it’s there!). I saw a lot of potential in it, and wanted to talk to Blaine about it, but I couldn’t find him at the conference. I signed up for the service, after the conference, and only find myself to be a minor user, but I can see the preps of the world wanting everybody to know about their latest endeavors – I’m thinking perhaps photo support, such as submitting an image along with your status, through MMS, or just as easily via web, to show the latest jacket you got, how happy you are with your new Kanye West CD, or the good looking girl you just picked up at the local Starbucks. The concept is original, and stood out significantly, as a possible new addition to the information age. “Facebook me”, “MSN me”, or even the old “Email me”, can soon move aside to the new “Twitter me” – they’re going places.

Tom also presented, using a very unique reference, saying that voice is like Paprika – it’s a spice – and it’s a commodity. Quote Jim Courtney, “He took the roundabout way of describing his point.” Shows that you want to be the Grocer, and not the Farmer (if you see the VOIP/Agricultural connection here).

That day at lunch – my dad and I were enjoying the heckuva spread the conference provided, talking with Shai and Jason about VOIP, and current projects my Dad's company has lined up with Shai and Jason's company Fonolo, when we see Tom running into the room, saying that he has a carful of 4 people headed to Cupertino, to the Apple store. With goal 3 in both my Dad's mind and mine (to get an iphone and resell it in Canada for a profit, like I said in the first paragraph), we exchange glances, and grinning, I say to Tom "let's go". Seeing only 5 people fit in a car, it was only me who could go, and my dad stayed behind. Running to the car, we're Cupertino bound. At 1 Infinite Loop, the Apple Campus, as they call it, we can't find a parking space. Taking a wrong turn, we end up where we were 10 minutes ago. Tom says "I guess that's why they call it 'Infinite loop!'"

We get dropped off, and go inside "The Mothership", with Tim's intention to get a laptop, mine to get an iPhone, and Tom's to get a shirt that says "I visited the mothership" - which I still regret not getting. But $25 for a t-shirt is outrageous. Meh. I'll just screen it on a blank shirt myself at home. Take that, corporate markups!

So, inside, the first thing I see is the "iphone table" with all the demo iphones - some in their docks, some out. I try it out, and realize it's a better device than I thought it to be. I'd tried out ipod touches at home, and the night before, had tried one of James' 3 iphones. It's a beautiful phone, and I realize that, while unlocking it, the temptation will be there to keep it for myself. I go to the cashier asking for an 8gb iphone. Handing her 4 Benjamins and a Ulysses, she hands me a receipt and an Apple store bag, and the change. I take great care of the receipt, because that's what keeps the warranty (which, ironically is voided by my unlocking it... and I can always relock it... shh.. lol.) and that maintains the resale value.

Tim is disgusted - he can't get a laptop here. I found that illogical too - the mothership doesn't sell their own products? I thought that if anything they'd have a mothership exclusive product, such as a black metal Macbook Pro, a product red macbook or imac, or anything like that. But the first step is to actually sell such devices before you can discuss exclusive variations. I tell Tim my negative experiences with Mac software. I couldn't even keep the stupid powerbook for more than 24 hours! The OS was slow, resource consuming, and a square peg in a round hole, in the sense that it wasn't compatible with any software, and little hardware that I tried to use on it. I won’t go on a rant here, but a 2 word summary of Mac OS X: It stinks. Ok, maybe its decent on the iphone, but when you add a mouse, hard keyboard, and an LCD display 12 inches or larger, it sucks as a main computer.

After I got the iphone, we messed around with one of the iMacs, playing with the Twitter software with google maps, which shows where people are located when they put in their status (popular already – and geographical pinpointing of statuses? My opinion – disable this feature – it may be one thing for someone to know what you’re doing, but where you’re doing it is a whole other dimension – a whole other dimension that you may not want some people seeing such as parents and spouses…) and statuses are popping up all over the state, submitted via SMS or web. Tom made us stay for nearly 5 minutes because he was determined to see his "Woman" pop up again. If you saw her profile pic you'd see why. She never came back up, so we all leave the store realizing it's not the end of the world, and I have either a $150 profit, or a kick-ass phone, sitting in my Apple store bag. What I make of it was up to me, and just an exacto knife away from its determination. I was still sitting on the fence about it.

Getting back a good 20 minutes late, my Dad tells me that James' presentation is on 101 things you never thought you could do with a mobile phone, and he could unlock the iphone for me on stage. Apparently, while we were gone, my Dad, and others were saying "I bet he keeps it". After saying I'm still deciding which I'll do, James comes down from his presentation (he couldn't fit the unlocking into the presentation - which I expected to happen, seeing that an unlock takes a few minutes, and he only has 15 of them to make his presentation with). So we sat down, I pull my knife on the box, and open it. It's still brand new. I plugged the iphone into his Macbook pro, every move I made was slow, and full of caution, to see that the phone remains absolutley, 100%, purely, MINT. About 2 minutes into the unlock, I see the infamously scary, sign of a bricked iphone/failed unlock "USB cord directed at the itunes logo" that you see in forums. James tells me it's fine. I see a command prompt, indicating what it's doing. I love how it uses real world language like "This file crapped out on me", "Chilling while I'm waiting for something", "Oops.. I can fix that..." - I wasn't conscious of whether it did that to throw me off or not. It really had me going.

Should it all matter? I see the Apple logo appear, and the iphone turns on, with my sim card in it. It's loaded fully, and we confirm its functionality by my dad doing a test call to my number. Surely enough - it worked. I had mixed thoughts at the time, including "$150 profit! That’s a good 35% margin!" and "Are you crazy? Keep the phone! What's $430 to a big man like you?" – it ain’t much if it gets me a phone like this in return.

So, trying out some of the functions, installing applications, taking pictures, I came closer and closer to succumbing to the temptation and deciding to keep it. It was one peel of the screen protector away from a decision. Realizing that I wanted an ipod touch to begin with, the fact that there's a built-in youtube application, and there's safari on it as well, plus the ipod to it - not to mention the maps application, and 8 gigs of storage, plus the fact that I’d be stuck with my rubbish Blackberry 7105t, and getting an ipod touch would only take up another pocket of space, and why not keep them all in one device and not be embarrassed when I take my phone out - I made the $431.92 decision - "I'll keep it!"

James Body and I, after unlocking my new iphone

Heck, if worse comes to worst, I’ll just sell it used, and turn a few bucks on it anyway. Man, do I love international arbitrage!

I instantly took out my blackberry and cell phone to transfer my calendar, and my contacts to the new iphone. I particularly liked the calendar program's ability to remind you to do something every x amount of time, which is a huge benefit to me, because on my blackberry, I had to recreate my contact lens reminders constantly – so I wouldn't forget when to put new ones in. I liked how when you select an image to put to a contact, you have the option of taking the image on the spot. My dad couldn't believe that I could do that - so I took his picture, and had him call my number - sure enough, the ringtone starts ringing, and the word "Dad" shows up, with the image of him taking up the whole screen. We were both astonished. I'm keeping this for sure.

After the conference was dismissed for the day, and we were having drinks downstairs, as I explored how much easier it was to navigate in safari, as opposed to Symbian's browser on Nokia phones, as well as the Youtube feature - which I found much easier to navigate in as opposed to using any other internet browser - no ads - no nonsense - it just shows the bare bones things you need to see and know to watch a video. In Safari, it was a simple double tap, or sliding finger motion to zoom in and out - took some intense menu navigation to go just one level of zooming in Symbian.

Speaking of Youtube and video, around 5, Luca had a lightning talk. He was saying the night before how he had to put 32 slides into 5 minutes. I thought, “are you insane?” – but believe it or not, he got through it with time to spare, and didn’t get terminated by Lee’s legendary gong sound. What he said was that video has a great impact on our communications world. Companies like Sightspeed specialize in it, most carriers worldwide are offering video calling now, instant messaging services such as Yahoo, AOL, and Windows Live Messenger are offering it, and youtube has millions of users. Video is clearly the next big wave. Whether it’s to prove where you are to your mom on Friday night, or to ask your spouse which brand of Kleenex to get, or just to see someone over a long distance, it’s a breakthrough, because we’ve been using voice since the days of Alexander Graham Bell – so isn’t it about time we made a change?

At the end of the conference, during the drinks downstairs, I got some nice shots of the vintage computing artifacts. Exploring new features of my iphone, such as Youtube and its simplicity – being able to scan through photos with ease, and tracking stocks, I fell deeper and deeper in love with it. Walking to the parking lot with Jim and my dad, I realized I now belonged here in California. Among the highflyers who use iphones - and not Nokias. They're for peasants now. Soon enough to be a highflyer – I’ve got the equipment down pat, now I just need the industry experience. This is where I start it. When we got into the car, I committed myself to ownership by peeling off the protective cover. This was it. I felt like I had just become a whole new person by then.

When we got to the hotel, I was yet to even try the ipod feature - flipping through albums, and touching an album so it turns over and displays the songs was as advertised. I never knew how slow the conversion of MP3s to MPEG4s was. It took me most of the night to get all my music on - but it worked just fine. I went to sleep a highflyer, with the iphone in the dock, ready to whip out of the dock in the morning, no holding the phone firmly, and pulling of cell phone chargers necessary - one nice, clean, smoooooth motion (hear that, Nokia users? Lol. And don’t think I’m shutting up at Motorola, Samsung, and RIM either!)

Going into the conference was pretty much routine at this point – put on your conference badge, walk in the door, nod your head once at the museum receptionist, go upstairs, and walk past the conference receptionists coolly, and chill outside of the conference room until we’re called in by Lee and his cronies. There were 2 sessions in a row that stood out that morning – the first one from Peter Sisson of Toktumi, which allows users to use a soft keypad to dial numbers, and call from a name index (kind of like a cell phone address book on a screen), or use a landline phone, adapted through USB, so you can dial, as well as make and receive calls using the landline phone’s hardware, the computer’s software, and the network’s communications. I felt this idea had substantial potential. When you read about what my lighting talk topic was about on Friday, further down, you’ll see what I mean, as far as what market niche this technology relates to, in terms of being able to use the same phone you use for landline on VOIP.

The second one that stood out was from Dawn Nafus of Intel, where she talked about GPS devices inside cell phones, and how that can be initiated by the user to find directions to a phone number (I had an idea before this for a landline phone to have caller ID where it shows where the call is coming from, and on top of the arrow, or whatever is pointing at the location, shows the caller’s name and number… looks like they’re applying it to cell phones now - but a parallel concept, don't you think? We'd need landline phones or attachments that show locations in colour, and more than 50 pixels per square inch - not the classic 2 line monochrome text-only screen), but this technology can be used against its users, in the sense that people can find out your location by a phone number as well (because every number has a location, and you have to be somewhere, right?). Might be telltale as to where you really are - which can be a good and bad thing. Some things were meant to be kept a secret. The Google maps on the iphone has this feature as well, to pinpoint your exact location at the push of a button. Can be done through wifi, or EDGE. So a dedicated GPS network should be even easier. Somewhat like a feature Disney Mobile had years ago for parents to track where their kids were, and alert them if they went out of a certain zone. Am I glad I grew up in a less tech-savvy world – I’d have had no freedom or privacy had this been in place a few years ago. Who am I kidding? I’ll probably have just as protective a spouse as I did parents, and she’ll have a GPS monitor of where I am on her cell phone, ipod, alarm clock, and big screen TV to make sure I’m not out where I’m not supposed to be...

My dad also did a panel at 2 today, about mobile voice mashups. Got a few good shots in on the Sony DSC of those (the iphone doesn’t have zoom!). He did a great job moderating the panel, and he got some good insights from James, Tom, and Boaz to name a few of the people on the panel.

Dad moderating his panel.

Dad and everybody on his panel - Sorry for cutting you off in the first picture there, Boaz

Today, I used the iphone the full day, and at night, got some ipod usage in. I particularly like how the microphone is right at mouth level, to make handsfree talking extremely easy. The sound quality on the iphone headphones was substantially better than the quality on the older generation ipod headphones. I still prefer my expensive Sony around-ear headphones, but they won't fit in the receded headphone port, designed to fit only Apple ones. I could pay $5 for the adapter that's an extension cord that fits in the port, and makes a new port at casing level, so you can use any headphones. But that's not the point. When I got home, after posting for a solution in forums, I asked around for how to change songs without taking out your iphone (on my downtown Toronto iphone case hunt, I got some very threatening looks as I took the phone out to change the song – the iphone would be a very likely steal here in Canada, so out of pocket use while on the streets should be minimal). I was told that double pinching the microphone (apparently it’s a button too) changes the song, and single pinching toggles play/pause, and if a call comes in, answers the call. And I thought eComm was full of innovators! Apple by far has the very best, and that feature confirmed it. At the end of the conference Thursday, I was told by Lee that he likes the ideas I was discussing with Susan about the impact of senior citizens on the demand of VOIP in the telecom world, and could possibly fit me in for a 2 minute lightning talk the next day. I was pumped.

On Friday, I slept in. Jet lag was killing me as it was, so I scheduled the 10:30AM shuttle coming from the Domain hotel. When I got out, on my way to the Domain, I was living the ballin' lifestyle. Walking down the streets of San Jose, wearing dark shades, iphone in pocket, and Ozzy blasting away on the innovatively designed earbuds (still yet to know the song skip feature). I wasn't even close to done my presentation for that day - but I'd make due during breaks.

Rich Miner and Christopher Allen really stood out today as well. Christopher talked about iphone application development, and Apple’s new SDK, and his community of iphone software developers. These hackers expand the iphone to its full potential, and give it new features - as opposed to the limited stock features that come with it. Rich talked about the Google Android, a competitor of the iphone, with double the processing speed and RAM, and up to 64gb of solid state mass storage. The device itself looks like an e61i, has a colour scheme like the Skypephone, and the operating system, with the dock at the bottom, and information bar at the top, looks just like Mac OS X. I believe this will end up being similar to an Archos/Ipod touch relationship; the Archos is a better device, but the touch is much sexier, and that’s what consumers go for. I think that the Android should be focused towards the corporate and professional world, and not worry about consumers. The consumers are already hooked on the iphone, so no need to try and compete.

Surely enough, my presentation came along beautifully. We were rushed at the afternoon break to get it to the AV people so it could go up properly. Once I got onto the stage, I was so nervous. With wireless presentation remote (very easy to use - too easy to figure out, and very pro to be moving slides along without any obvious movements), wireless microphone in hand (that my voice sounds excellent over - they've really got it going on at the computer history museum if they can afford a sound system like that) I was ready to speak. Within my sight was the huge plasma screen TV at the back of the room that told the speakers how much time they had left. It read 2:00, and counting down to 1:59. This was it. I started by introducing myself, and people seeing the 15 year old on the stage, would think that I would be talking about teenagers' needs in telecom, such as texting, video calling, facebooking, etc. But when they saw the presentation's topic: The impact senior citizens have on the future of telecom, as a result of population explosion, and the retirement of the baby boom generation. The presentation is available for viewing at my Dad's blog here (click on the link within the post - you'll need to have Quicktime).

I have to say - at first, it wasn't taken seriously. When I put up the second slide saying the topic of the presentation, it caused some commotion in the audience, and a significant, sharp "WHAT?!" from somewhere in the left of the audience. I ignored it and continued on the presentation, heartbeat was raging at this point, seeing that there was at least one person in the audience who obviously disapproved, and he could influence others. This was all in a matter of seconds - no need to worry about it - his opinion is one of over 100 - you've really done well if you can get everybody's positive opinion - but if you can get all but one - that's still pretty darn good.

I like to end my presentations like that with a bang. Here's how the final slide read:

Seniors don't want to change their habits

It's a growing market

VOIP needs to be easy to use

For the 89,400,000 people who need it - we need to keep it that way

IT'S OUR JOB AS INNOVATORS TO DO SO

That earned an average applause amount. I received several compliments afterwards - particularly about my bravery to go on stage at a conference like this with no prior experience.

So, an hour later, the conference was over. And for the most part, so was my trip to California. It's by far the best state I've ever visited. End of story.

My dad and I holding up the eComm sign - this one was actually taken with the iphone, as it required no zooming.

And here's my formal review of the iphone:

So far, what I like about the iphone is the simple, touch interface. The slide to unlock, scanning through photos, looking through music, browsing the internet - it's beautiful. Particularly on photos, where to zoom, all you have to do is double tap the screen, and it zooms in, and you're still able to scan through photos while it's zoomed in! The only thing I dislike about the touchscreen is the fact that it's next to impossible to type. One feature I'd like to see is a traditional cell phone alphanumeric keypad, as that is the way in which I, among many cell phone users worldwide are accustomed to use to enter text, where a keyboard is spread across 12 buttons as opposed to 26 and change (one for every letter of the alphabet, plus the shifts, caps locks, spaces, etc.)

The 8gb drive comes in handy for photos and music - but I was disappointed to see that the formatted capacity is really 7.3gb - nearly a 10% loss. Not that I have that much content to put on - but that's not the point. I paid $431.92 US for 8 gigs - I should be able to expect pretty darn close to it.

Unlocking it was a snap. I used ziphone, which in exactly 4 minutes unlocked it to work on any GSM carrier and put on the installer application, so I can download more applications to use on the phone and expand its default functions (feature-wise, the iphone is a pretty boring phone on the stock software). Props to James Body for doing that for me, and showing me how.

Locking it on the other hand (touchscreen lock - not carrier lock. lol) I found to be helpful to prevent any possible pocket operation, and it doesn't involve holding down any keys, flipping a switch, or going into the menu - just hit the power button once, and the screen goes blank, and you're good. To unlock, hit the home button, and slide the bar to unlock it, and boom, you're back in business.

The camera I found to be an excellent lens, but 2 major league problems - no video, and no zoom! WTF?! You can zoom on the actual photos after they're taken (and it’s much clearer than your average photo viewing program's zoom function - but that’s not the point)

Music operation I also found to be very good, and situation-sensitive. For example, if you pull out the earbuds, the music automatically pauses (not like the n81 and n95 where a simple pull of the cord that was slightly too hard would send the music flying out for everybody to hear) not to mention that it goes into different volume modes for whether the headset is plugged in or not. The microphone doubles as a button, as well as a microphone (of course). While music is playing, pinching it once plays/pauses, and pinching it twice forwards the song. When a call comes in, your music will fade, and your ringtone will play. Pinch the button once, and you can talk away (ipod headphones are so pedestrian now that seeing someone talk with them in will make them think you’re crazy)

A disadvantage of the use of Mac software includes not being able to use EDGE with Rogers. It won’t sync up with the Safari software from what the guy told me, but what can I do about it? It’s a grey market product here anyway, so I can’t go protesting it.

I also found some very useful programs on the installer application that comes with a jailbreak – including TTR (Tap tap revolution – somewhat like Guitar Hero for the iphone), billiards, solitaire, and sketches, which is where you can sketch something out with your fingers, whether it be on a blank background, an existing image, or an image that you take within the program. I find that the stock Apple software is rather boring and limited. It’s developers and innovators that make the difference and make it a more exciting device.

The ringtone feature was a little annoying. I have less than 2 dozen ringtones to choose from – and the only way to get a greater selection is to pay for them and download them. So I can’t use any songs I currently have as ringtones (which sucks, because I was really counting on hearing some Ozzy, not the generic, nondescript ringtones Apple gives you). I also like how you can change it from silent to ring with the flick of a switch – no going into menus/series of button presses necessary.

So, the actual phone feature, believe it or not, it takes 2 button presses to get to the stupid dialpad. I like how when you put the phone up to your face, it feels your heat, and turns the screen off, so any constant contact during the call allows no operation to occur by locking the screen, so I can’t hit “Add contact” and then “Dad work” by accident, while on the phone with one of my friends… which would be rather embarrassing - and in some cases of what I'm saying - let's just say... incriminating. I love the caller ID how when someone in your phone book that you have a picture assigned to, shows up as the caller ID. It’s great, for those visual people out there.

The iphone can be described in one word. Awesome. What you see on TV is 100% true, and as advertised. However, they don’t tell you something that’s very important. It gets better. You can’t know an iphone until you’ve tried it, and you really don’t know how useful, versatile, and awesome it is until you’ve owned it.

Wired: Everything. OMG is the 3 word description for this phone. 100% excellence.

Tired: Bluetooth capabilities limited with unlocked software. If you’re listening to music and typing sideways (with the phone on its side), your hands end up covering the speakers, which aren’t that good to begin with. No flash on the camera, no zoom, no video. Controlled ringtone selection. No 3G. Limited storage space compared to this generation’s 160gb ipod classic. Typing just sucks. No ability to rotate photos, or do any other basic editing on the phone.

Next steps: Things will certainly improve and be much easier once Rogers supports it. Better positioned speakers, easier typing (Wouldn’t advise a hard keyboard, though. Takes away from the sexiness of the phone), give a better camera with more features, including a front facing one, for video calling (you’ll need 3g for that first!), and photo booth (major selling point for the Intel generation Macs… having it on the go will make it amazing) But for a front facing camera solution, the little mirror mechanism they had at Macworld to get your image in the range of the camera doesn’t cut it. Add more storage, let us use our own ringtones, and add photo editing (just the basics of rotation, cropping, red eye fix, etc.) Would sell better coming in different colours, especially a product red one. Should also be thinner, just like the ipod touch.

Bottom line: It’s the best phone you’ll ever have. For now. Google Android won’t compete for those non-pros out there, but by “for now”, I mean when apple comes out with an improvement (somewhat like the nano over the mini back in the day, adding colour screen, album artwork, being much thinner, etc.), we’re going to have a very, very nice device on our hands. Either way, I would highly recommend having it.

Rating: On account of many features missing, 4.5/5 (90%)

So, 5932 words, 439 lines, and 26,018 characters without spaces later...

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