Smartphone Platforms as Super Heroes
Lots of people ask me what I think of the various smartphone platforms. Rylan came up with a super hero for each smartphone. Here are his picks:
iPhone::Batman – is loved for his human limitations, gadgets, style and willingness to play by his own rules. The iPhone will continue to be loved by millions.
Blackberry::Wolverine – both are from Canada and are very old (80 years old I think). Neither are much to look at, but they are very scrappy. Both are notoriously difficult to work with.
Windows Mobile 6.5::Captain American – was once relevant during WWII, has no special powers and is generally irrelevant to most Americans today. Windows Mobile will continue to become less and less relevant.
Windows Phone 7::The Phoenix – rose from the ashes and is disturbingly powerful. Windows Phone has a real chance of being a hit.
Palm WebOS::Robin – forever in Batman’s shadow. At one point Robin died and was replaced. There is some hope for Robin as he did eventually become Nightwing. Perhaps with HP’s support WebOS has a chance.
Android::Apocalypse – has complete control over the atomic structure of his body, looks like a robot and has limitless potential. Android’s strength is also its weakness, it can be everything to anyone.
Symbian::Arm Fall Off Boy – was so lame he was rejected by all of the other superheroes. Enough said…
Captain America irrelevant? You are either crazy or just uninformed about comics. You should have used Hawkman. Your comic book cred is gone! The rest were pretty good though. I’m waiting for the Superman phone.
Captain America titles sell more than 150,000 units a month. In the top ten selling comics each month Captain America comics take two of those spots. Not bad.
What, no BlackBerry? How about ‘Thing’ from the Fantastic Four. Ugly, powerful, and not a lot of fun!
I forgot Blackberry – updated.
Arm Fall Off Boy. THAT is hilarious. I never expected an LSH reference on this list.
I think it sad that Symbian gets such a bad wrap. S60 has had the features for the past 5 years that all of the major player still don’t have. For example the way it handled Bluetooth. It could connect to up to 7 devices at once. It could also a split audio output to a headset and to a radio.
Some how the measure of a smartphone is now if it has a touch screen and if grandma can use it.
Android will follow the old Windows Mobile into oblivion Why, because they are following the old Microsoft model but in spades. People stopped developing for Windows Mobile because with different screen sizes, buttons, etc developers felt they were programming for a phone rather than a platform. With Android being open source the manufacture and cell provider can alter the OS. I have already seen programs for Android being marketed for the phone rather than the platform.
[...] post is inspired by the mobile superhero post from Big in Japan and by a conversation with @Jax989 about what 3 superpowers I’d want (in [...]
I actually agree with Larry. As a WinMo user (for YEARS now), I’ve seen this problem time and time again. While the “do what you want” approach for a mobile OS sounds great, Microsoft has already shown the problems with doing it in the long run (market segmentation and fragmentation), which is why Microsoft is taking greater control of the platform with Windows Phone 7. I’ve tried programming for Windows Mobile (old) and quickly became frustrated with the hardware differences that made it nearly impossible to make all but the most basic programs work on all phones. Android is going to have this problem really soon unless Google does something drastic.
I’m with Kalel.. up to a point.
Nokia’s software has always offered some great power-user features that other manufacturers just never seemed to care about. Even my old S40 “dumbphone” had user profiles that not only allowed me to switch between sets of customized preferences for alerts and display, but it even provided a timer functionality tied to them. So, if I needed to silence my phone for a movie or meeting or whatever, I could actually set the phone into Silent mode “until 6pm”, after which point it would automatically revert to the standard profile! Which was a lot nicer than missing calls for the rest of the day, because I forgot to turn the ringer back on. Yet, I’ve never seen that feature in any other “standard” phone software. There are plenty of similar examples.
That being said, unique and/or especially well-implemented features do not a smartphone make. What Symbian does, it generally does well. But I definitely concur with the article… Symbian just doesn’t hold its own when up against the OS’s listed above.