HTC's Jeff Gordon: the iPhone is "boring". Could he be right?
/Despite Apple's record quarter, HTC's Jeff Gordon has deemed that the iphone is "terribly boring". From his Twitter:
“iPhone is a boring, easy choice. I want a phone that’s more unique, more personal, more stunning when I take it out of my pocket.”
Regardless of whether or not he is right, Isn't it amazing how far we've come in just 8 years? When it was first released in 2007, the iPhone was a total revolution of the cell phone industry. Almost overnight, we went from hardware keyboards and crappy stylus based touch devices to a solution so perfectly realized that the second you laid your hand on it, it almost seemed obvious.
I remember feeling that the Blackberry Pearl I owned prior to my first iPhone was probably the singular best device I may ever use. Perfectly pocketable, a nearly perfect miniature hardware keyboard, and a small trackball for navigation. Not to mention its absurdly long battery life, its surprisingly functional (for the time) web browser, and the insane usefulness of BBM.
Cut to January 9th, 2007, and the original iPhone keynote, and you can imagine how incredibly blown away I was. Sure it didn't yet run apps like RSS readers and games like my blackberry did, nor did it have BBM, but it was immediately obvious to me that the writing was on the wall. Hell, my iPhone 6 today still doesn't have the battery life of my Pearl, but I wouldn't trade it for almost anything.
On some level though, Mr. Gordon is right. It is starting to feel almost like we're in a holding pattern waiting for that next great revolution to come along. Like the hardware keyboards and flip phones of 10 years ago, there are only so many ways you can arrange a glass rectangle to create a different product. Only so many ways to skin an OS, to modify the concept of tapping an icon on a screen. It feels like we are nearly at the verge of something revolutionary on the horizon. Unfortunately for Mr. Gordon, I highly doubt it will be one of his arrangements of a glass rectangle with icons on it.
The future is out there, and I can't wait to see it.