Let me get this straight. Meizu came out with a complete knockoff mockup of the iPhone right after Apple announced it over a year ago. Since then, they've been claiming that it'll be shortly and anti-Apple fanboys have been stating how tis vaporware is going to "pwn" the iPhone.
Meixu is making the software and hardware, yet over a year later they still can't show any aspect of a working model from a device that they are copying—not designing—from the ground up. They know all the hardware Apple is using and have had a year to simulate all the features of the OS and, yet, nothing.
So does that mean Meizu does a really poor job an engineering in general or that perhaps (just perhaps) Apple may have really created a revolutionary product that can't be easily copied?
Hate to say it but there is nothing revolutionary in the iPhone that cannot be found in other phones so who knows what the problem is. Except maybe the multi touch.
Multi-touch, capacitance touch-screen, full internet browser*, 620Mhz CPU, 8GB Flash as standard, Human user interfaces (things move like in the physical world), Apple's implementation of Google Maps, size/density for the included hardware, glass screen, robust yet simple sync features.
It's not a perfect device, and it will never be, but it has a great deal of things that no other phone had before that time and their racing to catch up now. Unfortunately, their solution isn't to make a more user friendly device but one with more features so they are bound to fail until you are one to only count specs.
* I believe there was one smartphone with a full internet browse already, but without the use of pinching, spreading and the intuitive double tapping to auto-zoom to a selected area of text/image it's not a very useful browser.
@ Carbonize: your problem is you think spec-sheets is all there is to a device.
People like you may never understand that to normal people, it's a lot more about how a device works, feels, and look, than it is about a 126 page long "feature" list.
Just because a product is similarly spec'd, doesn't mean it's anywhere within the same league, and just having similar specs doesn't it a similar solution.
@Bender Bending Rodriguez - But unless I am mistaken you do not get full internet browsing. Does the iPhone support full flash sites? does it support Ajax? Shockwave? SVG? It may do but I don't know either way.
@Jeff - So you'd sooner pay for a pretty looking phone with a fancy/gimmicky gui than buy one that maybe ugly to you but has a far better feature set and specifications?
The iPhone only has one selling point, it's internet browsing. Other than that it offers nothing that other phones don't offer, usually better. And even Engadget has said they think the Symbian browser is better than the iPhone browser.
Carbonize wrote, "But unless I am mistaken you do not get full internet browsing. Does the iPhone support full flash sites? does it support Ajax? Shockwave? SVG? It may do but I don't know either way." • It has no Flash. I only use Flash for Scrabuolus. Regardless, Flash is a plugin, it's like saying that the lack of QT plugin means yo aren't running the real internet. The point of using full HTML, CSS, JS is what renders page correctly. Plugins can be nice, but that they are internet standards.
Carbonize wrote, "So you'd sooner pay for a pretty looking phone with a fancy/gimmicky gui than buy one that maybe ugly to you but has a far better feature set and specifications? • It is pretty, but it's not gimmicky. The features are useful. That is what he is getting at. There is a reason why slim total of iPhones far exceed all other phones with internet browsers on the net in just s few months of going on sale. It reall ythat much easier. This also goes for the email client and iPod and various other apps.If you have an Apple computer then it's even more simple.
Carbonize wrote, "The iPhone only has one selling point, it's internet browsing. Other than that it offers nothing that other phones don't offer, usually better. And even Engadget has said they think the Symbian browser is better than the iPhone browser." • Symbian S60 isn't as nice or refined IMO, but it does offer a full internet browser. It using the same WebKit engine that Apple uses in the iPhone and Safari browsers and Android uses. While FF has a benefit with it's plugins, WebKit is a far more efficient engine and better suited for scaling to MIDs. I'm glad that Symbian and Google chose this at it will help bring about better standards and give WebKit more credence when developers design for the web.
In the end, the device has to suit your needs. As someone who spend his days working on machines the last thing I want to do is tinker with my own machines. Macs, iPods and iPhones offer me that ability. If you really want OGG and AVI containers to play on your MID or phone then Apple products aren't for you. Luckily, we live in a time and place where we have the ability to choose from a plethora of gadgets.
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Let me get this straight. Meizu came out with a complete knockoff mockup of the iPhone right after Apple announced it over a year ago. Since then, they've been claiming that it'll be shortly and anti-Apple fanboys have been stating how tis vaporware is going to "pwn" the iPhone.
Meixu is making the software and hardware, yet over a year later they still can't show any aspect of a working model from a device that they are copying—not designing—from the ground up. They know all the hardware Apple is using and have had a year to simulate all the features of the OS and, yet, nothing.
So does that mean Meizu does a really poor job an engineering in general or that perhaps (just perhaps) Apple may have really created a revolutionary product that can't be easily copied?
Hate to say it but there is nothing revolutionary in the iPhone that cannot be found in other phones so who knows what the problem is. Except maybe the multi touch.
Multi-touch, capacitance touch-screen, full internet browser*, 620Mhz CPU, 8GB Flash as standard, Human user interfaces (things move like in the physical world), Apple's implementation of Google Maps, size/density for the included hardware, glass screen, robust yet simple sync features.
It's not a perfect device, and it will never be, but it has a great deal of things that no other phone had before that time and their racing to catch up now. Unfortunately, their solution isn't to make a more user friendly device but one with more features so they are bound to fail until you are one to only count specs.
* I believe there was one smartphone with a full internet browse already, but without the use of pinching, spreading and the intuitive double tapping to auto-zoom to a selected area of text/image it's not a very useful browser.
@ Carbonize:
@ Carbonize: your problem is you think spec-sheets is all there is to a device.
People like you may never understand that to normal people, it's a lot more about how a device works, feels, and look, than it is about a 126 page long "feature" list.
Just because a product is similarly spec'd, doesn't mean it's anywhere within the same league, and just having similar specs doesn't it a similar solution.
@Bender Bending Rodriguez - But unless I am mistaken you do not get full internet browsing. Does the iPhone support full flash sites? does it support Ajax? Shockwave? SVG? It may do but I don't know either way.
@Jeff - So you'd sooner pay for a pretty looking phone with a fancy/gimmicky gui than buy one that maybe ugly to you but has a far better feature set and specifications?
The iPhone only has one selling point, it's internet browsing. Other than that it offers nothing that other phones don't offer, usually better. And even Engadget has said they think the Symbian browser is better than the iPhone browser.
Carbonize wrote, "But unless I am mistaken you do not get full internet browsing. Does the iPhone support full flash sites? does it support Ajax? Shockwave? SVG? It may do but I don't know either way."
• It has no Flash. I only use Flash for Scrabuolus. Regardless, Flash is a plugin, it's like saying that the lack of QT plugin means yo aren't running the real internet. The point of using full HTML, CSS, JS is what renders page correctly. Plugins can be nice, but that they are internet standards.
Carbonize wrote, "So you'd sooner pay for a pretty looking phone with a fancy/gimmicky gui than buy one that maybe ugly to you but has a far better feature set and specifications?
• It is pretty, but it's not gimmicky. The features are useful. That is what he is getting at. There is a reason why slim total of iPhones far exceed all other phones with internet browsers on the net in just s few months of going on sale. It reall ythat much easier. This also goes for the email client and iPod and various other apps.If you have an Apple computer then it's even more simple.
Carbonize wrote, "The iPhone only has one selling point, it's internet browsing. Other than that it offers nothing that other phones don't offer, usually better. And even Engadget has said they think the Symbian browser is better than the iPhone browser."
• Symbian S60 isn't as nice or refined IMO, but it does offer a full internet browser. It using the same WebKit engine that Apple uses in the iPhone and Safari browsers and Android uses. While FF has a benefit with it's plugins, WebKit is a far more efficient engine and better suited for scaling to MIDs. I'm glad that Symbian and Google chose this at it will help bring about better standards and give WebKit more credence when developers design for the web.
In the end, the device has to suit your needs. As someone who spend his days working on machines the last thing I want to do is tinker with my own machines. Macs, iPods and iPhones offer me that ability. If you really want OGG and AVI containers to play on your MID or phone then Apple products aren't for you. Luckily, we live in a time and place where we have the ability to choose from a plethora of gadgets.