Pop Quiz: You’re the brain trust up at RIM and Samsung. You know that Apple might just be dropping something hawt today, and last time they did that they set your profitable if complacent industry on its ear, and your execs scrambling to clone catch up. So, your on the precipice of the WWDC 2008 Steve Jobs Keynote — the only thing anyone has been talking about of late — what do you do?
If you answered stay quiet and wait for the hype to pass, you’re now officially smarter than either RIM or Samsung. Absent something innovative and decidedly non-Apple of their own to announce, better not to announce anything at all.
Which, of course, is why the RIM all Touch-screen, all the time Blackberry Thunder iClone “leaked” via Boy Genius and and the Samsung’s i900 iClone is all over Engadget.
Nice try, but buying a cheap knock-off of the prom queen’s dress and showing up before her at the dance won’t hide the fact that you’re hairy dudes with three-piece clone-suits on underneath.
Overly harsh? Maybe, but it’s an iPhone blog on Jobsnote day. They shoulda know betta. In fact, they shoulda saved their energy for their soon-to-be-launched iClone 2.0 initiatives…
(Though they did get some press, eh?)
Confession: The real reason I can’t wait for the iPhone 3G to drop? So that at long last the rest of the smartphone industry will have something new to copy!
Today’s offender is the Samsung SGH-i900, and boy does it run the iClone checklist: rounded rectangular slab? Check. Glossy black facade? Check. Silvered trim? Check. Job dropping interface or any sense of pride in innovation? D’oh! Not even close.
Sister site WMExperts.com offers up the usual suspects specs:
[O]ne of the upcoming batch of über-Windows Mobile phones – 6.1 Pro, 240×400 (weird) screen, 1500mAh battery, FM Radio, TV out.
Way to stand out from the crowd!
Ladies and gentlemen, we give you the first ever live demo of Google’s new Android platform… and it’s on the iPhone!
[Er... That's the HTC Dream.]
What? Sigh. Okay.
Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s a proof of concept. Maybe it’s because of the Diamond. Maybe it’s just a hormone thing. But does all the innovation have to lead back to Cupertino these days? Does it?
So, another week, another iClone, and more specifically another HTC iClone. (At least they’re giving RIM a run for their Bold, Thunder, Storm money for the official iClone volume title…)
Still, it’s nice to see Android. As I mentioned in the Top 5 Things the iPhone Could Learn From the Competition, the cloud looks to be the future, and Google currently owns the cloud. Never mind their CEO is on Apple’s board of directors (he reportedly recuses himself from iPhone discussions to avoid a conflict of interest), the industry needs the drive Google can provide, even if they wrap it up in a horribly derivative package for now.
Check out the video after after the break!
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Another day, another iClone! This one comes courtesy of the fine folks at Philips, and Gizmodo shares the duplicative details:
PC World China is saying that the upcoming Xenium x800 will have an “e2e” screen— that’s an edge-to-edge touchscreen, apparently. From the photos it looks like it’s got an orientation sensor, Wi-Fi, a browser, a curved design and a bevelled metal edge. Sounds a little familiar?
It sure does. It sounds just like the Samsung Instinct, Nokia Tube, RIM (and RIM), and HTC Touch Diamond, and every other device trying to be the iPhone in imitative form rather than revolutionary spirit.
How about iCloning that?
Either Gizmodo is pulling a CES-TV-Blackout caliber gag, or Sprint has done lost their iCloning minds:
Starting May 9th, Sprint will begin a massive, $100 million marketing campaign aimed straight at the iPhone’s nether regions. Stacking its 3G Instinct against the iPhone, Sprint hopes to show that EVDO and GPS make their product way better than anything coming out of Cupertino.
Wha-wha-wha-what?!
What will $100 million buy the Samsung Instinct? Ads. Ads that compare them spec-for-spec with last year’s iPhone…
Daring Fireball’s John Gruber sums it up well:
[I]t boggles the mind that Sprint is hanging a $100 million dollar advertising campaign on two features — GPS and EVDO networking — that the iPhone is widely-rumored to be picking up in its next-generation hardware. Worse, side-by-side, even in commercials commissioned by Sprint, the Instinct looks like crap next to an iPhone — the screen is way smaller and way less bright.
What’s clear is that Sprint is run by MBA-trained executives who see everything as a general “business” problem. In their minds, the same things apply to selling phones as toothpaste. How about this idea: Take $100 million and use it to design a better phone?
What do you think?
Let’s see, another day, another trade show, another shameless iPhone knockoff…
We’ve covered (and recovered) the disappointing iPhone-esque stylings of the new Blackberry, and the interwebs have pretty much beaten the Meizu into a sparking, frying pulp, yet it seems the mobile design world just can’t get enough of Poppa Jobs’ little industry revolutionizer.
It’s been over a year since Macworld 2007, and what has Samsung been cooking up? Something totally unique, original, and game changing all their own? Something to keep pushing the industry forward? Er… not so much. Gizmodo brings us a quick look at the “new” Instinct, set to rock the Sprint network, in all its iPhone “homage” glory:
Samsung’s Instinct may be the best stab at the coveted title of iPhone killah this CTIA.
Oh, really? Stalwart Apple pundit site Daring Fireball retorts:
I enjoy how in this initial report, based on a press release and press screenshots, Gizmodo dubs it a “decent iPhone competitor”, but then when they actually got to see one firsthand it ends up — surprise surprise — that it’s buggy as hell. Plus the web browser, despite the magic bullet of 3G networking, is “painfully slow”.
And provides a Twitter post from Macworld editorial director Jason Snell, both pithy and profound, to sum things up:
Dear writers, announcing an iPhone knockoff is not “upping the ante.” It’s not even calling. It’s putting your watch into the pot.
So, is imitation the sincerest form of flattery or just a sign that no one else in the industry has any of their own Big Ideas anymore? Are you sticking with your iPhone, or just dying to rush out and snap up an iClone? What do you think?
