Several conversations I had recently revolve around mobile phones. It is inevitable that some of it revolves around the iPhone iCrap.

I was never impressed with the iCrap and I despised the unethical way Apple does business. The iFreaks (aka Apple product evangelist) offends me to the very core of my being with their incessant preaching of how superior Apple products are compared to the rest. While I will not join Philip “Fail-lip” Yeo in bashing users who bought the apps, his politically incorrect comments had me chuckling. In my personal opinion, someone who had a good reason to buy an app need not be upset about those comments because he is not a dummy. To be even upset about it suggests that somewhere deep inside even he has his doubts about his own decision. An old friend and secondary school classmate even pointed out that the real dummy was the one who jumped out objecting to “Fail-lip” Yeo’s comments and in defense of Apple over his own purchase of an app.

I am not taken in by the hype about having “an app for everything”. Even if there is, I may not need it in the first place. Not to mention there will probably an alternative for Blackberry and / or Android because if an app only exists on the iCrap and is particularly useful one way or another, there is no question there will be calls by users of other phones to have it for their platform. Take for example Bloomberg’s mobile app which was originally available to traders on Windows Mobile and Blackberry. Otherwise, developers will make one anyway for a popular platform, such as Bak2U’s Phonebak application.

Also, I recalled there was once when DK showed me the app on his iPhone which will return the song name by simply holding it to the speakers, and I discovered that a comparable one came pre-installed on the Sony Ericsson W902. On further searching, I discovered that the app called Shazam exists on the Blackberry as well though it needs to be purchased. While it is quite nice to have this app, I discovered that I do not really use it very often either, and while testing Shazam it was not particularly useful with non-English songs.

Simply put, all this hype about the apps does nothing more than to create a whole new consumer market. Having many apps in not a new phenomenon as there used to be a time that there’s probably an app out there for everything for the PalmOS. Palm was certainly way ahead of its time but technology at that time did not provide it the opportunity to leverage on the Internet. Apple merely picked up where Palm left off and the only thing innovative is perhaps putting everything in an app store so it is easier for users to find them. (And I won’t start on why and how Apple stifles choice, nor start ranting about its anti-competition practices for now.)

Even so, I am not impressed by the iCrap App Store. Common apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, Youtube etc should already available free for any Android powered phone or the Blackberry, if not for smartphones of all other brands. There is also the question whether people will continue be interested in whatever app long enough to stay on the iPhone and / or buy enough of them to sustain the developers.

The next discussion was about this Business Times article which states: “Singapore was the only market in the Asia-Pacific region, outside Korea and Japan, where Nokia was not number one in smart phones.”

I am in the opinion that Nokia’s will inevitably lose its leadership in mobile phone manufacturing. That came to my mind not long after I sent the W902 to the service center and switched to a Navigator 6710. It was to my irritation to find that I had to go through the same steps again and again to randomly select a few SMS for deletion when it certainly took me less effort on the W902 to do the same. If this is the kind of interface that is on all other Nokia phones, it would suggest to me that Nokia appears oblivious to the improvements its competitors are making on the user interface.

Next, there’s probably more products from Nokia than what its competitors can put up, but I certainly can’t really tell one product from another without making a serious effort to compare. It’s a complaint I also made regarding Research In Motion’s range of Blackberry Smart Phones. It is my considered opinion that Nokia should just concentrate on a few products as the jumble of products really doesn’t help to convince a user to decide on a Nokia phone. Not to mention that having so many products would inevitably cause quality control to suffer.

That is not just some idle comment or personal speculation. It is an opinion formed as a result of feedback and personal experience. To start with, the Nokia Navigator I am now using has been sent to the service center twice because it does not power up. The fault first happened roughly two months after purchase. It was fixed by the service center after a week but the problem recurred a few months later. This time round, the entire circuit board in the phone was replaced. That is fine since it is almost as good as a one-to-one exchange (as the IMEI number is now different).

While my Nokia phone is still in the service center, my mei Xinyun told me about problems with her Nokia N6300, where wordings on the browser will go missing at times or the phone will just freeze up for no reasons. Unfortunately for her, this phone has been in use for almost one year and may no longer be under warranty. But that is not all, my other mei Nicole also had problems with her N97. It froze because of (what she mentioned was) an OS corruption and she has to google for a solution online. While the reset brought her phone back to life, all her personal information on the phone was wiped. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the very same phone failed her in the midst of one of Nokia’s own events in Bangkok, and if I remembered correctly, the PR firm who invited her did her the favor of sending it to service center when they were back in Singapore. Furthermore, I received feedback from fellow Plurker and famous math tutor Miss Loi that the main camera on her N86 has failed, a mere two months after purchase. While I am going through the people having problems with their Nokia phones, I recalled that Simply Jean also has problems with her Nokia 5800 less than one year after purchase. Her entire call history and sms messages will go missing if she shuts down the phone and start it up again.

One might say that the failures I have listed here is a really small fraction of phones that Nokia sold each year and it would be an ‘acceptable failure rate’. Unfortunately, this happened to be a rather high proportion of the handful of Plurkers whom I regularly meet up with. The fact they are all reporting failure of their Nokia phones is nothing short of remarkable. While we maybe a really small group of people, we will be able to influence our immediate circle of friends to avoid a Nokia phone until problems with some other brands catch our attention. Now compare that with just three Blackberry users complaining about batteries not holding charges and bad reception on their new Blackberry 9000 Bold, out of almost 100+ Blackberry users I support in just my employer’s Singapore office alone. The impression that Nokia’s standard of quality control has suffered is thus not hard to imagine.

The last conversation I had was on selecting a mobile / smart phone when re-contracting. While geeks may talk about features (and the technology), most often we are just influenced by our friends or the media. Many people rarely consider what their requirements (or needs) really are, and end up paying for a phone with features which served no function at all. Just how many people use the Bluetooth or Wifi on their phone frequently? Is there anyone who actually take a moment to think just how often Wifi-tethering – what I called Wifi Internet Connection Sharing [ICS] – would be used or even how useful it is going to be when friends tout such a feature to them? If one is impressed by the number of apps available to a particular ‘smart phone’, have they really decide on what apps are important and relevant and whether it is available for that phone before purchase? Generally most of us just buy it because we decide we may need it later.

Unfortunately, many people are oblivious that all electronic devices (mobile phones in particular) comes with ‘built-in obsolescence’ (All the more so with the iCrap with its non-replaceable battery!). There simply may not be enough ‘life’ left in the phone for later as the next upgrade model may already be in prototype stage and under evaluation when the ‘latest state of the art’ mobile phone hits the streets. Just consider how long ago the iCrap 3GS hit the market and then the recent furor surrounding one of Apple’s stolen 4G prototypes. With that in mind, spend no more than $1 a day to own a mobile phone for one year until the next replacement. In short, pay no more than $365 (preferably without contract).

Talking about upgrades, I will be thinking about how existing data or apps are going to be ported over. It is probably quite seamless between products of the same manufacturer, but it is going to be a real pain in the arse between different manufacturers. However, at times even porting data between phones of the same brand can be quite pain as I recalled data exported from one version of the manufacturer’s desktop program is only readable by that version and the new phone uses another version of desktop program that has no way to import the existing data sitting right there. With that in mind, I wonder whether any of those cheap ‘dummy’ apps can be ported without any the need to ‘jump through hoops of fire’ during upgrade… and I am not even talking about changing to another platform.

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