I know this subject has been beaten to death, but I have a slightly unique perspective to add. Im a die hard Nokia fan till death, and I have always had mixed feelings towards apple products; generally some admiration for the simplicity and functionality mixed with a a heavy dose of distaste towards their marketing ploys and fan base.
Also I have an
N95 which I love, and recently have had a lot of iPhones in my possession as I have been reselling them after unlocking them.
I went into this thinking that I would hate the iPhone, and that the only good thing about it would be its innovative touchscreen interface. And initially this is exactly how I felt after playing around a bit with the 1st iPhone I got. The camera sucked, the telephone features were limited and there were essentially no good programs to use.
But once I started unlocking them my thoughts towards the iPhone changed rather dramatically. During the unlocking process I had to take the phone apart and fool around with some of the electronics inside, this was fairly dangerous work as it involved scratching away insulation on the pcb to create a testpoint, in addition to this I also had to work at the software end, and to do so I had to get into the OS of the iPhone. Not suprisingly the iphone is based on a unix type operating system, and this is what lets you interface with the phone to perform the unlock. The steps in the unlock process are many, and complicated, and involve dumping the firmware, editting it and then reflashing the iPhone with teh hacked firmware.
As you guys must know, flashing firmware is always a nailbiting experience, and many an
N95 has been bricked due to user error during the flashing process. With the iPhone this is not so, the system is incredibly durable and from what i have seen, it appears that this phone can be fixed, and made fully operational by the average joe end user with some simple programs and some basic knowledge. At this point I have tried many different combinations of unlocking, including pure software only methods, and have also reflashed the phones back to factory settings after each trial to try to cover all the bases. This phone simply cannot be bricked, unless you are maliciously attempting to screw it up.
Other comparisons
Camera,video,tv-out,phone functionality, file/multimedia management/use, readily available programs, are the fronts on which the
N95 wins hands down.
User interface, system stability & durability, web browsing, actual Youtube (not m.youtube.com), are where the iPhone wins, (and unfortunately also hands down in every case). In these cases the iPhone appears to win because of the one downside of the
N95 which is its ****ty ram. Thus just where the
N95 craps out, is where the iPhone excells.
I havent really tried the music player on the iPhone, but im sure its good, the
N95 also has a great music player, so I think they could be equal.
The other great thing about the iPhone is the hacking community whose lives are made easier due to the unix based system. These guys have already developed some excellent programs, all of which are free.
I think the future prospects for the iPhone are very promising, even in its current state with crappy hardware such as camera etc, the overall outlook is good just because of the potential for future usability/tweaks due to ease of development of programs for the unix based system.
I am very much looking forward to getting my hands on a 8GB
N95 to see how the new RAM helps it out.
IMO the perfect phone would be a marriage of the N95s superior hardware, with the iPhones touchscreen UI, and operating system. Symbian is good, but UNIX can be streamlined to perfection.
words. Thank you.
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