We’re never going to let Crackberry Kevin, editor of our sibling site Crackberry.com live this down. Never EVER.
And if you think that’s bad, wait until Steve Jobs gets finished giving the WuShi finger to the advertising geniuses over at Vodafone and RIM. We’re talking the greatest mellow harshening “Skidoosh!” in the history of the tech industry, no doubt.
Whyzat? Said genii decided to advertise the iClonic Blackberry Storm as an actual iPhone, complete with Home screen and Mobile Safari browser.
Was this the last, desperate surrender to iPhone envy? Were the guilt-laden strings of Marimba playing over and over again in their psyche, forcing them to confess themselves to the world?
Sadly, once the images get yanked, the cronies blamed, and the incident swept under the blogs, we’ll never know for sure. But they’ll still be hearing endless Marimba in their dreams…
Meanwhile, Engadget and Gizmodo got their hands on the little whole-screen-is-a-button-and-has-cut-and-paste-but-no-WiFi monsters, and they seem pretty happy with the solid Blackberry foundation gaining a little iPhone inspired tech. Our view? Anything that forces Apple, and the industry, to stay competitive and keep on innovating is a boon for all of us.
sad news, US. we looked into it- by the time we could bring Touch HD to the states, it would be old news. we do have other cool stuff coming
Shenanigans, we call! They have like 37 other Touch sub-brands landing on earth (and who knows what other planets!), and this was the one device we hoped would really push Apple — in its biggest market — to ramp up the screen size and media playback abilities of the iPhone for rev 3.
Memo to HTC brain-trust: next time build a world phone from the get go, b’okay?
Now excuse us as we go talk Dieter out of burning his Diamond in protest…
Reader Reptile writes in with the tip, and the pithy title inspiration. Seems like our friends to the frozen north (no, not Canada, Nokia-land!) finally released their iClone… er… Tube… er… Xpress Music.
The device, which started life as a complete rip-off proof of concept roughly 3 minutes after Steve Jobs revealed the iPhone live on the Macworld 2007 stage has taken a long — looooooooong — time to come to market. Was it worth the wait?
Well, in targeting the iPhone, it’s already placed itself squarely in the “follower” camp, and not the “leader” position Nokia should not only enjoy, but command. Strike one. Also, if as Reptile suggests, no one (outside the gadget blogsphere and — maybe — Europe) noticed, can it even really be considered launched? Strike two.
As long as there’s the iPhone, every other “me too!” device will be an iClone, simple as that. Want a real iPhone Killer? Do what Apple did and drop a device no one sees coming, and revolutionize the industry in your own, innovative way. That’s how you’ll kill the iPhone.
Confession: My secret, innermost desire for the iPhone 3G was a 420p display. I knew Apple wouldn’t do it yet — there was nothing in their simultaneously released SDK to support any other resolutions — but still… I wants-ded it!
Imagine my fanboy chagrin, then, when HTC goes and not only makes a device in exactly the same dimensions as the iPhone 3G (obvious much?), but slaps a monstrous 800×480 display on the beast! (Not to mention a 5(!) megapixel camera)
The HTC Touch HD (which we’re pretty sure means “Hi Dieter!” — see the afore-linked WMExperts for why…) represents the next expansion of HTC’s Touch brand — something spread so thin Asus’ Eee marketeers are wincing. It may seem questionable to show the HD off this early (it’s not expected to land until 2009, and doesn’t even seem to support US 3G frequencies yet) since, frankly, who’s not gonna put off Osbourne-ing a Touch, Touch Duo, Touch Diamond, Touch Pro, etc. when this baby’s around the bend, but we’re guessing the announcement was aimed more at Apple’s gut than any potential customers’ wallet.
And in that regard — ouch!
Sure, it doesn’t have the Apple/iPod ecosystem behind it and it’s still using TouchFLo 3D to try to hide the UE (user exasperation) that is Windows Mobile 6.1, and multiple layers of OS are never a Good Thing, but this is the first iClone that’s actually got us worried.
Apple, you’ve got almost four months until Macworld 09, and we’ve got three newly urgent words for you: iPhone HD, b’okay?
The iPhone shook up a very complacent smartphone world, but if we think it exists in a vacuum, if we think the other big players won’t respond (no matter how embarrassingly long it might take them), and if we don’t hope that they do — hardcore style — to prevent Apple from one day getting just as complacent, then we’re not doing our jobs as bloggers or consumers.
With that, splinter-like, in mind, witness RIM launching the Blackberry Thunder, their first touch screen device. If you ever wondered how brilliantly Apple handled the release of the iPhone, from Steve pulling it from his pocket to the first videos and commercials, wonder no more. RIM’s shows us by way of terrible — near Microsoft’ian — example, how badly that could have gone… (Though Mike Lanman certainly makes a convincing Doby to Lazaridis’ Gollum…). Couldn’t have hired them Virgin folks again?
We’re still not sure about the whole-screen’s-a-button approach. And the newly launched GDGT podcast is right on when they say RIM needs new software and they need it now (and tell a very funny story about how RIM’s co-CEO really doesn’t get that… scary…)
The. Whole. Screen. Is. A. Flipping. Tic. Tac. Tile. Button.
Seriously. We kid you not (though RIM could be kidding us all?). Sister-site Crackberry.com has all the deets, but…
Seriously? Who’s the usability wizard who came up with this one? Who came up with the single-click point of failure concept? The one mechanism to break it all?
We get that haptics are hard, but the iPhone pretty much showed the industry how to do Touch, and rather than just add the Blackberry messaging powerhouse to that buttery goodness, RIM went and grafted on an mechanic straight out of every 1980s playschool game?
Bravo for challenging Apple (they certainly need it). And kudos for being brave enough to push the metaphor, to take the next step, to propel technology forward. But — seriously? — we hope the feel is light-years beyond the look on this one, and not just for Crackberry Kevin’s sake… Otherwise most annoying gadget innovation of the decade awards beckon…
We guess a certain internet dead-pan funny man was right on the “button” when he said:
THERE’S a reason that R.I.M. is averse to the iPhone’s glass pad. “I couldn’t type on it and I still can’t type on it, and a lot of my friends can’t type on it,” says Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s co-chief executive and technological visionary. “It’s hard to type on a piece of glass.”
Presuming he was really talking about the ThunderStorm…
By now I’m sure you are all tired of seeing other companies try to follow in the footsteps of Apple’s success. Well Meizu has been working on the M8, eh… ok it’s a iClone, for some time now. The following video was posted by the founder of Meizu, J. Wong, showing it off running a highly customized version of Windows Embedded CE 6.0 (the underlying core beneath Windows Mobile 7.)
Still with no firm release date, it does sport a 3 megapixel camera along with 8 gigs of storage. I suppose it does not look too bad for a WinCE device. Does this peak anyone’s interest or are we all sick of these clones?
Sure, the iPhone 3G launch is tomorrow. Consider this an amuse bouche. Or the opposite of that, an annoy bouche. Whatever. Something salty to make Friday taste all the more sweet!
The subject of today’s battle royal? Nope, not iPhone vs. Blackberry. That’s old. This time it’s Blackberry vs. Blackberry, Blog vs. Blog, over the iClone to end all iClones: the touchscreen Blackberry Thunder!
Touchscreen BlackBerry Thunder Keyboard To Utilize Haptic Technology… AMAZING Implementation! [...] Leave it to RIM to CRACK the touchscreen keyboard nut.
The keyboard is incredibly annoying to type on, and the screen actually shows ripples even when pressed ever-so-lightly. [...] Most of the people who have handled it thinks it’s a joke.
We’ve already told you that the Instinct is a sad, pale, wannabe version of the iPhone. That’s not just because we’re fanboys (we are), even old Walt Mossberg agrees. Sprint apparently saw the writing on the wall too after Uncle Walt’s “review” of their device, so they’ve decided to drop the price down to $129. Actually, it might be cheaper overall, too, given that Sprint will give you that price after a contract of around $70 total per month for unlimited data and 450 minutes. Oh, yeah, and the Instinct will go on sale tomorrow, giving it a huge jump on the iPhone. Or Not.
Honestly – is anybody out there seriously considering an Instinct over an iPhone? We’ll grant that there are some people who prefer to pick their carrier first, phone second — but still, is it possible to even pick up the clean end of a piece of …Instinct?
Ouch. Seems Samsung and Sprint tried to bring an Instinct to an iPhone fight. At least that’s how venerable Wall Street Journal columnist and “D” All Things Digital tech yoda Walt Mossberg made it sound in his iClonic “review” (to be fair, the still unreleased iPhone 3G gets more attention — and love — than the unfortunately release-timedInstinct).
How does Mossberg sum up his feelings, some several paragraphs and umpteen iPhone mentions, references, and comparisons down?
If you’re a devoted Sprint customer, or want to avoid AT&T, the Instinct is an OK choice. But it’s no iPhone.
Watch the video accompanying video after the break!
