mtech

You call that an SDK?

So the big news of today was Apple's release of the iPhone. It's a sweet, well-designed device.

Pros

• It's just about the perfect size for an interactive handheld device. If it were much smaller, the screen would be too small to watch videos on comfortably. It's narrow and short enough that it fits comfortably in your pockets.
• Good integration with Google Maps. Remember that the first mobile application Google released was their mapping application not Gmail. Maps and driving directions are very important to mobile users.
• It's got a real web browser: Safari. Nokia has been using a port of WebKit, upon which Safari is based, on their Series60 platform for a couple years now, and there's a huge difference between browsing the web on a phone using WebKit and using one of the older WAP browsers.
• The seamless iPod experience we've come to know and love.

Cons

• No HSDPA / UMTS support. You might expect that since AT&T runs the only 3.5G data network in urban America (where all Apple's hipster customers live), the iPhone might support this.
• The multi-touch screen is nifty, but...it's still a pain in the ass to use the keyboard. I think there's a reason why so many devices have chosen to add a Blackberry-style fully thumb-ready keyboard: people feel more comfortable quickly typing on solid keys than trying to hit the magic (no tactile feedback) spot on a touch screen.
• No native SDK. As a mobile phone software developer, this one hurts me most. To me a phone is not a real platform until third parties can develop full-blown applications for it without any special business relationship with the handset manufacturer. What Jobs announced today as their pseudo-SDK for third parties comprises extensions to the iPhone web browser (based on Safari). There's specifically no access to the iPhone's address book, camera, audio devices, mp3 catalog, etc.
• An inconsistent application state-saving model. Some applications, if you edit a document or settings, then click the one-and-only "Home" button, preserve your edits. Other applications do not. Which is it? This is one place where the iPhone UI designers would do well to look back at the Newton UI design.
• Confusing WLAN / WiFi setup. Apple has done a much better job at tackling wifi setup than Nokia has done with its Series60 devices; however, there's still a lot of room for improving this experience.

Overall I think the iPhone will set a new standard for high-end smartphones. Now that consumers can get the best-of-class iPod experience integrated with a smartphone, I think the iPhone will drive much wider adoption of smartphones.