What?s MWC Without the iPhone?

Several industry heavyweights were charged with tackling the open mobile ecosystem in a Mobile World Congress (MWC) keynote Tuesday.

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What is WMC without the iPhone? How about a showcase for NEW and INNOVATIVE handsets.

The iPhone did three things:

1. Bring a level of intuitiveness to mobile devices never before achieved.
2. Change the benchmark for polish and cohesiveness for phones.
3. Prove that amazing individual components do not make a great device, a great device makes a great device.

It did bring digital distribution to the masses, the concept of mobile internet changed forever and it is still one of the most coherent and cohesive handsets on the market. It is also aging, agign well, but aging.

The app store wasn't revolutionary its was simply tied into the phone and convienient, something that before hadn't really been a key feature of a phone. Nice step, not a huge leap, it was inevitable and while Apple wasn't really the first they were the first to do it the best. Virtually every ascpect of the iPhone, every screen and menu and most of the apps SCREAM Apple! iPhone! Apple! iPhone!

Never before had an OS/UI been so pervasive.

And the big one: Easy to use. (Except for typing... [debatable, though.]) But easy to use is subjetcive and I know PLENTY of people that find the iPhone confusing, uninteresting and clunky.

Why can't I have flash? Why can't I forward an SMS? Why can't I recieve an MMS? What is the eMail client SO lame? Why does my battery last 6 hours with regular usage? Why it have to be sooo big?!

The rest of the industry was resting on its laurels, there hadn't been a truly new package in a while... the iPhone cam at a time when exciting things were happening in concept labs but the suits were too scared to disrupt stability. The best thing about the iPhone is that it served as a quick, swift plexus to the pubis. It invigorated the stale industry (at least in the US.)

When I hear De la Vega say things like; 'trying to copy everything Apple did with the iPhone' [paraphrased,] it irks my tater. EVERYTHING THE IPHONE DID? Everything the iPhone did existed before. Nothing the iPhone did came out of left field they just made it all part of a cohesive device (#3) virtually eveything was executed above average on the first iteration, they knew that they couldn't fail out of the gate or they would be doomed and so they kept it under wraps until it was raring to go...

The second iteration... Mobile Me... GPS... 3G...
Not quite as tight as the first. Everything that WAS good was carried over from the previous iPhone and most of the new stuff was bugged... things that were expected were absent... of course now it was subsidized, so...

The iPhone was never a revolution in and of itself, it was a revolutionary that kickstarted a sleeping giant. Since the iPhone we have seen TRULY revolutionary concepts, LEAPS in hardware and a realization that the three things Apple ACTUALLY DID are important.

Simplicity: Thanks to this we have seen one of the most potent OS' in the mobile game get dozens of UI revisions: PointUI, TouchFlo 2D/3D, Touch Wiz, Toshiba Stripes(?,) Neonode N2 and more.

Cohesiveness: Blackberry redesigned it's OS and UI to flow throughout its entirety more, dumphones have been integrating all of their services into a package much more than before: Vu, Memoir, Shine, 6650, 8900, etc...


The iPhone did serve as a jumping point but it has to bring more to the table to remain relevant. There are some AMAZING concepts at WMC from a device that can slot into different jackets, to an Operating system that can scale from low end dumb-phones to power MIDs finally being realized, incredible partnerships (Nokia + Adobe + Qualcomm + Symbian Foundation = JESUS?!)

That guy from Denmark has a point: the iPhone is far from ubiquitous and its far the best phone out there and I, for one, am sick of people talking about it as though it is capable of miracles. It's subpar in most categories that we judge cell phone:

Audio Quality
Battery Life
Reception
Data Speeds
Durability
Camera Quality
Messaging

What's WMC without the iPhone? What it was always meant to be:

A showcase for new technology in the wireless communications universe.