You, me and next door’s cat know that a lot of the hardware and software designs coming from world phone manufacturers and mobile developers have been directly inspired by the Apple iPhone. All of a sudden full-screen interfaces are back in fashion, with even Windows Mobile getting finger-friendly additions bolted on wherever possible. From HTC’s TouchFLO to third party utilities, the finger-lovin’ starts off as reasonably impressive and then disappoints fairly soon afterwards. And there are a whole crop of proprietary OS devices with iPhone pretensions, such as the LG Viewty, about as close to the iPhone as you can get while still being able to say ‘hey, don’t send the lawyers round here, guv, this is totally different’.
To pick on a specific example that’s utterly typical of the try-to-copy-but-fall-flat syndrome, EasyPhone 2.0 has just been released – here’s a video of it in action – for Windows Mobile handsets. Watch and digest.
Now, regular readers might know that, despite writing for All About iPhone, I’m not a Mac or an iPhone zealot, I don’t even own either (though I borrow them when needed for articles!), so I’m not writing this piece as an Apple fanatic. But I, even I, can see that these copycat devices, utilities and interfaces haven’t one tenth the elegance, performance, grace or consistency of the software on the iPhone.
Something I’ve often said, in the context of creating a modern 3G, cutting edge OS, is that it’s hard – very hard. By the time you’ve taken into account HSDPA data, GPS, Wi-Fi, streaming H.264 video, etc, it’s clear that your software has to be very, very good in order not to fall over as soon as something unexpected or demanding happens. Which is partly why Apple has taken so long to get a 3G iPhone announced and ready.
I’d also like to pronounce now that creating a modern, consistent (from the highest UI level to the deepest dialog), attractive, speedy and efficient user interface is also “hard – very hard”. As everybody else, apart from Apple, who are (in this regard) well ahead of the game, is finding. Even Nokia is taking forever to come up with a touch-enabled version of S60 – given that they’re not actually changing the interface that much and that the UI and software isn’t going to be that different to current, mature S60 implementations (e.g. N95), the timescale involved shows just how hard it can be.
Devices like the Viewty impress with their hardware innovations (5mp camera with VGA video capture at 120fps? – gulp) but they fall down horribly in terms of usability day to day – there seems to be little rhyme nor reason why some screens are laid out as they are, web pages don’t drag properly, the touch-screen is often an exercise in frustration, etc. [look out for an iPhone vs Viewty head-to-head here very shortly…!]
In contrast, the iPhone, despite not being 3G, despite having a very lacklustre camera, is still managing to impress almost everyone who tries it. Pricing may have crippled sales in some parts of the world, but there’s no denying the iPhone’s status as a pinnacle of design and desirability.
Trying to copy something someone else has done (without directly cloning it and incurring the wrath of lawyers) is often harder than coming up with it in the first place. Apple had the idea, the vision, the purity of design and implementation – and it SHOWS.