I waited few weeks since the launch of iPhone 3GS to make this post to make sure the hype has died down and people will be more rational.
Contrary to what some of the visitors think of this blog, I do not hate the iPhone and I do not think the iPhones are piece of junk. In fact, I do admire what Apple has done with the iPhone and how they revolutionized the way new phones are being designed these days.

The original Apple iPhone launched in 2007 was truly a game changer, even if it wasn’t the very first all touchscreen phone (that honor belongs to LG Prada). Since that launch, there were many all touchscreen phones trying to be the next iPhone Killer. I would say many fell very short while some of them find ways to exploit the short comings of the original iPhone, such as faster data speed, GPS, video recording, higher resolution digital camera, bigger screen, voice recognition, haptic feedback, and was only available in AT&T, etc. It wasn’t hard for many of the new phones to include all these features not found on the iPhone.

Apple then launched iPhone 3G in 2008 that supported 3G data service and GPS, with more memory. And that raised the bar for many of the iPhone Killers to come up with something more and different. It’s one thing to have just the touchscreen and better hardware spec, it’s totally another thing to have the kind of easy interface of the iPhones. Companies like HTC, Samsung, and LG started to come up with their own unique user interfaces that were just as easy as iPhones, if not better.

And recently, Apple raised the bar again with iPhone 3GS that supported even faster data service (HSDPA), the digital compass, more memory, video recording, better camera, faster processor, and voice recognition feature. Now, these are not unique features. In fact, majority of them are supported on many of the existing iPhone Killers. However, it certainly put the pressure on the other phone manufacturers to go back and come up with even more compelling feature to compete with the latest iPhone 3GS.

We already discussed the user interface but the other big factor from software point of view is the available applications. The apple apps store certainly has more available applications than any others, even though majority of them might be total useless applications there are some really good ones not available elsewhere.

On the hardware side, we still think there are few items that Apple will eventually roll out to keep up with the other iPhone Killers. What are some of them? Higher resolution (480×800), better camera (12M+), better display (AMOLED), faster processor (1GHz+), etc. (See our Killer Feature List for more)

All in all, I’m excited for what other iPhone Killers will come up with and how Apple will counter them next year. The cycle will continue and the consumers are the ones who’ll benefit from this fierce competition.

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