Perhaps a late awakening, but my recent purchase of the excellent Nokia Lumia (yes, that’s Windows) hit home the truth that the iPhone is now outdated.
If I make a list of what were and have continued to be the points of fascination withthe iPhone, I now find most points to either be no longer applicable or no longer exclusive to Apple.
Well, what’s changed?
Our lives. When I got my iPhone 3GS 2 years ago, twitter didn’t dominate my life. I had fewer feeds from numerous accounts to keep on top of. My FB friend list was around 350 and I probably only used one calendar, if even that.
Today, the amount of information from numerous sources has made the same Apple IOS framework obsolete. The concept of finding an app to do specifically one function and load it on a phone to make it your own is not optimal for my use. I end up juggling between apps or downloading a new app like Tweetdeck to try and replicate FB, linked in, etc but do I really stop using the FB app entirely? No, I still need that for events, messages etc. The apps just multiply and I get lost juggling between them. Also in case you haven’t noticed, closing them down is critical to maintain an iPhone that functions smoothly.
Instead what I want from my phone now is for it to be smarter than that. I don’t want a blank canvas that I can pile up with gzillion apps to focus on individual functions. That leads to overlap and inefficiency. Now I have tweetdeck, and the FB app, the FB messenger app, the linked in app, and then the texts I receive from people in my contact book, emails…the communication channels have multiplied and the IOS can only offer app over app to address one, or some of these but at least until now, it has not really addressed it holistically.
Ah. But Windows 7 on my Lumia has.
The People function is the answer to avoid having 11 apps all with the same purpose o ffunneling communication of different formats from your contacts that come through different channels. They have clearly gone back to basics and mapped how information flows and how we access this information. So built into this phone is the basic concept that no matter what channel John Smith in my address book chooses to send out information (text, FB, tweet, linked in, email, phone call etc) – all those feeds should be brought together under his name and my phone should be smart enough to recognize that John Smith on facebook is the same john.smith@email.com in my email contacts hence pool the information and cross reference. The Lumia automatically cross references all these profiles on your phone and on all the accounts you disclose to it.
Apply this to pictures – all your facebook albums are automatically pulled into the phones links so when you access your phone albums you can immediately get to all your facebook pictures without jumping screens and waiting ages for it to load up. The smoothness of this operation is remarkable.
The appearance itself it pretty remarkable. I have found no touch screen to be as responsive as that on the Lumia, not even the iphone now. Visually the “tile” approach looks refreshing and the neat thing about it is that the tiles are “alive” – If I pin John Smith to my home screen I end up with a tile that says his name and a picture of him that has automatically been pulled from one of his accounts (FB, uinekd in etc). But the pictures are not static, they keep flipping slowly in a way that seems as though the phone is winking at you! Also any change in info will reflect in his tile – a new text, a new email etc.
For someone with an uncluttered phone that is intended to be kept so, there is no comparison that the Lumia is the alternative to the iphone. If however you spend more money on apps than groceries, you probably should stick to the IPhone. The windows platform is nowhere near to competing with the appstore.
If there are flaws, those would be limited to:
If I make a list of what were and have continued to be the points of fascination withthe iPhone, I now find most points to either be no longer applicable or no longer exclusive to Apple.
- Functionality – ease of use and interaction, responsive
- A novel framework that my life has adapted to – calendar entries, FB events, email feeds, twitter, google maps, music, etc
- Simplicity – the organization of information and user interface seemed almost intuitive and logical to the point where I at times felt there could be no other way
Well, what’s changed?
Our lives. When I got my iPhone 3GS 2 years ago, twitter didn’t dominate my life. I had fewer feeds from numerous accounts to keep on top of. My FB friend list was around 350 and I probably only used one calendar, if even that.
Today, the amount of information from numerous sources has made the same Apple IOS framework obsolete. The concept of finding an app to do specifically one function and load it on a phone to make it your own is not optimal for my use. I end up juggling between apps or downloading a new app like Tweetdeck to try and replicate FB, linked in, etc but do I really stop using the FB app entirely? No, I still need that for events, messages etc. The apps just multiply and I get lost juggling between them. Also in case you haven’t noticed, closing them down is critical to maintain an iPhone that functions smoothly.
Instead what I want from my phone now is for it to be smarter than that. I don’t want a blank canvas that I can pile up with gzillion apps to focus on individual functions. That leads to overlap and inefficiency. Now I have tweetdeck, and the FB app, the FB messenger app, the linked in app, and then the texts I receive from people in my contact book, emails…the communication channels have multiplied and the IOS can only offer app over app to address one, or some of these but at least until now, it has not really addressed it holistically.
Ah. But Windows 7 on my Lumia has.
The People function is the answer to avoid having 11 apps all with the same purpose o ffunneling communication of different formats from your contacts that come through different channels. They have clearly gone back to basics and mapped how information flows and how we access this information. So built into this phone is the basic concept that no matter what channel John Smith in my address book chooses to send out information (text, FB, tweet, linked in, email, phone call etc) – all those feeds should be brought together under his name and my phone should be smart enough to recognize that John Smith on facebook is the same john.smith@email.com in my email contacts hence pool the information and cross reference. The Lumia automatically cross references all these profiles on your phone and on all the accounts you disclose to it.
Apply this to pictures – all your facebook albums are automatically pulled into the phones links so when you access your phone albums you can immediately get to all your facebook pictures without jumping screens and waiting ages for it to load up. The smoothness of this operation is remarkable.
The appearance itself it pretty remarkable. I have found no touch screen to be as responsive as that on the Lumia, not even the iphone now. Visually the “tile” approach looks refreshing and the neat thing about it is that the tiles are “alive” – If I pin John Smith to my home screen I end up with a tile that says his name and a picture of him that has automatically been pulled from one of his accounts (FB, uinekd in etc). But the pictures are not static, they keep flipping slowly in a way that seems as though the phone is winking at you! Also any change in info will reflect in his tile – a new text, a new email etc.
For someone with an uncluttered phone that is intended to be kept so, there is no comparison that the Lumia is the alternative to the iphone. If however you spend more money on apps than groceries, you probably should stick to the IPhone. The windows platform is nowhere near to competing with the appstore.
If there are flaws, those would be limited to:
- Not being able to create a playlist on the phone
- Creating your own ringtones is just as cumbersome as on the iphone (I haven’t figured this out yet)
- The calendar is less sophisticated than Iphone’s so one can’t categorise events such as personal, work, etc, only as busy or available. Although the sync with my google calendar is seamless (while iPhone was not) so that makes life a lot easier.
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