One undeniably positive thing that the iPhone has done for the smartphone industry, is to raise the bar in terms of feature integration, ease of use, and now price. As a result, we now have a choice of better, lower cost phones which are frequently compared to the iPhone. Since Apple has not produced a CDMA/EVDO version of the iPhone, many other phone makers are rushing to fill up the void. One of the most talked about “iPhone killer” for EVDO is the Samsung Instinct.

The Samsung Instinct (also known as also called Samsung SPH M800) packs a lot of features for just US$129:
- touch screen with haptics
- GPS
- voice dialling
- 2 megapixel camera
- EVDO
- microSD expansion slot

As expected, iPhone fans like Walt Mossberg of WSJ are just not that impressed with the Instinct. Gizmodo calls the Instinct “the best phone ever” to come out from Samsung or Sprint. So, while the Instinct stands on its own as a good (even great) phone, it still doesn’t hold up well against the iPhone. Nevertheless, since it is the closest thing to the iPhone on EVDO, it has sold well. Sprint has announced “record sales” during the Instinct’s first release, although there are currently no official figures.

Here’s a video comparison by The iPhone Blog:

I think the Instinct is a sign of better things to come. While Apple has nothing to fear right now, this will force them to continue to innovate — which means a win for customers.

[ via Treonauts ]

Palm is now officially offering an unlocked GSM Centro smartphone. The Centro has been selling very well at the subsidized price of US$99 or even lower.

The full price of the unlocked Centro is US$299. Here’s what you get for your 300 bucks:

- 320×320 pixel Transflective color touchscreen, supports 16-bit color (up to 65K colors)
- GSM/GPRS/EDGE class 10 radio, quad band world phone (850/900/1800/1900MHz)
- Palm OS by ACCESS 5.4.9
- Bluetooth Version 1.2
- 64MB available user storage
- 1.3 megapixels with 2x digital zoom and video capture
- Removable 1150mAh, lithium-ion Up to 4 hours talk time, or up to 300 hours standby time
- microSD card expansion (up to 4GB supported)

The unlocked Centro is also the first Palm OS based smartphone to use a new version of Google Mobile Maps (GMM) that includes My Location. My Location uses cell phone towers to approximate your location on the map. Andrew of Treonauts has a good review of the MyLocation feature for the Centro. While this feature is great (it works very well on my iPhone), I am sure a lot of Treo owners are miffed that they can’t get My Location as well.

Due to the limitations of the Palm OS, we will probably never see a 3G version of it (at least, non-EVDO 3G). For a $300 phone, the Centro does suffer when compared to its competition. The Centro looks to be the last ever Palm OS phone from Palm — I hope Palm can really wow us with the new Nova-based smartphones coming next year.

Palm has released their latest financial figures. Sifting through the financialspeak, it looks like Palm is doing quite well in terms of sales. Over the past quarter, they sold a total of 968,000 smartphones and made US$296.2 million in revenue. However, they are still not making a profit at this point.

Over the past year, Palm shipped 3.2 million smartphones. While this is a record high for Palm, it’s less units compared to Apple, which wasn’t even in the mobile phone business a year ago. At this rate Palm would never achieve the same cost efficiencies as Apple.

Palm is in danger of remaining a niche player in a very competitive market. With Android and Symbian making big announcements, even Microsoft’s Windows Mobile is looking pretty shaky. Palm is planning to introduce more Windows Mobile smartphones to fill in the gap before Nova (the next generation Palm OS) is ready to go.

Does Palm need to make some drastic decisions in order to survive the next 24 months? Should they abandon Nova and go for the open source Symbian and Android? Should they open source Nova? Should they focus on low end smartphones and just do a Windows Mobile Centro?

Things are really heating up now in the mobile OS wars. On July 11th, we will see the formal launch of version 2.0 of the iPhone OS. Yesterday, Google announced that their Android operating system, which was expected to arrive in the second half of this year, may be delayed further. And now, the other big player in the mobile OS space, Symbian, has been bought over by majority shareholder Nokia.

It’s pretty big news that the other Symbian shareholders (Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, and Siemens) agreed to sell of their stakes. The real big news is that Nokia won’t keep Symbian to itself, but rather hand it over to Symbian Foundation as an open source, royalty-free platform in conjunction with industry giants, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, AT&T, LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.

Notwithstanding the US$100 million fund for Android developers, Symbian already has a headstart with a huge base of devices and developers. Symbian doesn’t need to kickstart third party application development the way Google’s Android does. By making the Symbian operating system free, Nokia is going head-to-head with Google. Nokia’s recent acquisition spree now makes more sense — they would now be able to deliver Symbian as an operating system together with a location-based platform as well as social networking services.

Your move, Google?

What do you know about iPhone users? What makes them different from other people? A number of companies and research firms have been doing studies on iPhone user behaviour in the past one year since the device was released. I was looking back through some research findings, and discovered some interesting facts.

1. iPhone users search a lot

Safari on the iPhone is a fantastic web browser. Both Google and Apple gained from their partnership to integrate Google Search in Safari. A report released by Google in February revealed that iPhone users sent 50 times more requests to search engine compared to any other mobile phone.

2. iPhone users love the Web

A study by M-Metrics in March tells us that iPhone is the most popular device for accessing news and information on the mobile web. 85% of iPhone users browsed news on their devices, and almost 50% visited social networking sites. It helps that the most popular social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have iPhone-specific versions.

3. iPhone users snap (and share) a lot of photos

A quick look on my iPhone shows that I have taken almost 700 photos in the past 4 months. I send a lot of photos to both Facebook and Flickr via email. Apparently, I am not alone. A recent analysis done by Computerworld shows that the iPhone is the most popular camera phone on Flickr. The iPhone has even higher usage compared to the Nokia N95.

4. iPhone users view a LOT of video

A report from Nielsen Mobile shows that 37% of iPhone users watch video on their devices. This doesn’t seem like a lot, however this is 10 times more than other mobile phone users. This is probably a no-brainer, given the iPhone’s large screen and great integration with iTunes.

5. iPhone users are largely satisfied with their device.

I am pretty happy with my iPhone, and I guess others feel the same. Research Company Changewave Alliance put iPhone at the top of the user satisfaction list a month after the device’s release. They reported that the iPhone received a 92% Satisfaction Rating among early adopters (with 77% “Very Satisfied” and 15% “Somewhat Satisfied”).

Changewave did another survey among corporate users in February. The results are similar, with the iPhone taking the top spot again –59% of those polled responded with “Very Satisfied” with the iPhones.

So overall, the results point out the fact that an iPhone user is happy with her devices — and uses the iPhone a lot every single day.

Palm’s Centro smartphone has been a great success for the company, with over one million units sold. If you are a Verizon subscriber, great news — the Centro is now available for you. Running on Verizon’s high speed EVDO network, the Centro will maintain its low price of US$100 (after rebates) with a 2 year contract.

Granted, the Centro is built on technology that’s already a few years old, however the low price combined with the smaller form factor and fast data access should make this a winner. Verizon has a US$30 all-you-can-eat Email and Web data package which is quite attractive.

If you don’t have 2 hours to go through the entire 2-hour WWDC (worldwide developer conference) keynote, Mahalo has done it again with a quick summary. The video above will take a minute and will tell you everything you want to know about the new 3G iPhone.

Well, no surprises today — Steve Jobs announced the long awaited second generation iPhone today at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC). Here’s what we get with the new iPhone :
- Tri-band 3G, UMTS/HSDPA (850, 1900, 2100 MHz)
- Quad band 2G, GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
- Wi-Fi (802.11b/g)
- Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR (Enhance Data Rate)
- Built-in GPS!
- 8GB (in Black) or 16GB storage (in Black or White)
- iPhone 2.0 firmware and software

Other notable factors : a slightly different form factor with plastic back, an even smaller power adaptor, even better battery life (5 hours talktime for 3G, 10 hours for 2G). Oh, and did I mention it’s now even cheaper? With a 2-year contract, the new iPhone sells for US$200.

Expect more details soon.

Whether the iPhone will have two cameras (for iChat / video calls), or a change in form factor (smaller/slimmer or larger/fatter), or support Flash, etc, we still don’t know.

I wonder if we will see two iPhones : one larger/fatter one with all the 3G goodness, and a smaller/slimmer one which will be essentially the current iPhone with 2.0 firmware.