[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] DarkDvr:
Hokay, to (hopefully) end this endless iPhone VS Kaiser debate, let me post this (warning, lots of letters):

1. EDGE-only, and limited Wi-Fi: Cingular's rapidly rolling out HSDPA across the country, with other carriers (T-Mobile with UMTS, Sprint and Verizon with EV-DO Revision A, and Sprint with WiMAX, for example) making similar high-speed data services infrastructure investments. Yet the Apple iPhone only handles comparatively archaic and slow EDGE, which will hobble Apple's hype of it as a 'breakthrough Internet communications device'. Hold this particular thought until you read my later comments on the product's profit margin, keeping in mind estimates that bumping the iPhone from EDGE to HSDPA would have only cost Apple around $20 more. Yes, the unit also offers Wi-Fi (b/g), but you won't be able to access it via your Cingular plan; get ready to also pay Boingo or another provider if you want a pervasive 802.11 experience. And as much as Zune got clobbered for its incomplete to-date Wi-Fi implementation, the Apple iPhone's no better. No wireless iTunes sync with a computer? No direct downloads from the iTunes Store? C'mon

2. No removeable battery: Long-time readers know this is a frequent sore point of mine. Manufacturers claim that by going with a completely enclosed battery they can make their systems thinner, smaller, lighter and otherwise more aesthetically pleasing than they'd otherwise be. To date, this has pretty much been BS; at end-of-day, economy-of-scale factors still motivate companies to go with off-the-shelf batteries instead of custom units. And by burying a limited-life battery within its widget, Apple's built in a guaranteed replacement requirement....one that under normal usage will conveniently occur prior to the end of the required two-year service contract with Cingular.

3. High price, and high profit margin: $500-600 for the phone. Plus a roughly $100-month voice-plus-data service plan, with two-year minimum duration. 'Nuff said on price. Regarding margin, it's interesting to see Apple engaging in Microsoft-like pre-announcement hype of late. Last summer, the company unveiled the iTV, an under-development product re-unveiled two weeks ago as Apple TV and still not shipping for another month-plus. And the Apple iPhone won't be shipping until at least the end of June....plenty of time for dissenting voices such as mine to creep into the public consciousness, along with iSuppli's recent analysis that the Apple iPhone will cultivate a roughly 50% bill-of-materials profit margin for the company. Yes, other expenses (marketing, manufacturing, sales, etc) aren't included in the analysis, but they're insignificant when amortized over the number of iPhones that Apple aspires to sell. And most consumers won't comprehend that these other costs are not included; they'll just see 50% margin and think greed.

4. Carrier- and application-lock: Apple and Cingular must have missed the late November 2006 memo wherein the Library of Congress approved a copyright exemption (more from Ars Technica and MAKE) that allows DMCA circumvention for "cell phone firmware that ties a phone to a specific wireless network". I have mobile service through T-Mobile, so I'm not an iPhone candidate unless I'm a "bad guy" (in Cingular terminology) who figures out how to unlock the device by myself. And Jobs' explanation for the Apple-gated (thereby potentially excluding Office file viewers, for example, and VoIP) iPhone application allowance, that "Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up," is equally laughable, not to mention technically indefensible. In reality, it's nothing more than an unfriendly-to-consumer but lucrative-to-company extension of the FairPlay DRM lock-to-Apple strategy.

5. Large size: I think Pocket PC Phones are too bulky, both to stow in my pocket and to hold up to my face. I'm also not a fan of wired or wireless headsets, and I therefore prefer the Smartphone approach. But Maury, and plenty of other folks, find the larger iPhone-like form factor and headset approach palatable. So this is admittedly a personal-taste nit.

6. No tactile keypad: Time and time again, touchscreen-only user interfaces with 'floating keypads' have been panned by potential customers and have therefore been unsuccessful in the market aside from in narrow market niches. Will this time be different? I'm skeptical.

7. Low-res camera: An only-2 Mpixel camera? On a $500-$600 phone? C'mon

8.No expansion slot: The operating system (which may or may not be OS X as Jobs touted during his 'reality distortion field' keynote), gobbles up 500 MBytes' worth of the 4 or 8 GBytes of flash memory built into the phone. Installed applications consume even more, and let's not forget those all-important music tracks and video clips. Run out of memory? Too bad, buy a bigger-capacity phone. There's no memory card expansion capability for you.

9. Insufficient between-charge operating time: Apple's documentation claims up to 5 hours when talking on the phone, playing back videos or browsing the Internet. I believe 5 hours of talk time, which is in and of itself low compared to competitors products. And I 'may' believe 5 hours of video playback time, given that the unit is flash memory-based and given the track record of the company's firmware upgrade-based improvements here on the first- and second-generation video-capable iPods. But I don't buy it for a second with Internet-based functions, EDGE- and particularly Wi-Fi-based. Anyone else who regularly manages email, fires up a web browser, or does another Net-centric function on a device with a small battery will, I think, agree with my stance here. And, revisiting my earlier embedded-battery point, realize that Apple's operating life prognostications assume a brand new battery.

10. Unoriginality: Admittedly, this may be my most controversial argument. Go back and look at any of my past Pocket PC and Smartphone writeups. Look at any of the devices now available from carriers. Now realize that many of them are now selling for free-to-sub-$100, subsidized under the exact same contract terms as Apple's $500-600 iPhone. Windows Mobile-based devices, as well as products based on Palm, Symbian and alternative operating systems, have for years been doing what Apple's promising its iPhone will do in....around six months from now. Phone? Check. Audio playback? Check. Video playback? Check. Internet access? Check. Wi-Fi? Check. 3G data? Check-plus. Bluetooth? Check. Camera? Check. GPS? Check-plus. I could go on (but I won't). Some folks are even claiming that Apple blatantly stole from an LG phone design. Granted, Apple may have advanced the state of the art to some degree, in some areas, in an evolutionary manner, by virtue of its large touchscreen and other factors. But is the Apple iPhone revolutionary? That's quite a stretch.

Taken from http://www.edn.com/blog/400000040/post/1100006510.html

Take it or leave it, I did not write it, nor do I agree with everything there. It's just a good write-up that deserves to be read be people who choose between the two.

There's been LOTS of bashing Kaiser... and way too much iPhone lovin' - but that's just my observation.