[HD2 General] fmcastro:
If you are the kind of person who gets emotionally attached to the gadgets you buy, please stop reading this post.

I'm not trying to start an inflamed discussion about which is the best device or manufacturer.

I’m not an Apple fan, in fact, I hate being “Apple locked” and that’s one of the main reasons I’ve bought the Leo after owning an Eten x500, a Kaiser, a Blackstone and finally, an iPhone 3GS.

I could go over and over describing the differences and the pros and cons of each device but I won’t. I’ll just try to tell you guys a few things we don’t have to accept.

We don’t have to accept …

the endless steps (gold card, hardSPL, regEdit, dictionary hacks, you name it) needed to get the phone speaking your language. You just have to say: I want “THAT” system language and “THAT” input language and that’s it. That’s how it’s done on the iPhone. And I’m not talking 3 or 4 languages. I’m saying over 30 different languages and oh, you also have voice control on YOUR language. You don’t need to hack Voice Command…

an SMS conversation that gets all messages out of order (doesn’t HTC know how to do time calculations?)

a Gigahert processor which can’t smoothly scroll a web page. I know it’s probably due to bad Opera coding but… have you ever scrolled an iPhone Safari?

a whole bunch of bad designed apps which you can’t effectively control / interface with because Windows Mobile programmers really don’t seem to realize that “user friendlier” is better. Have you ever used a same App on both platforms? Take Trapster for example (It’s available at Micrsoft app store). The windows mobile version of it makes me feel sorry for the programmer while the iPhone version feels very nice. Of course this is not the only example…

a lot of small bugs on the first ROM. Apple got it right on the first and they had never (ever) built a phone before! How many phones will HTC have to make before they get a stock ROM right? The small things are often the most annoying...

I could go on but there is something I realized that made me feel really hopeless (yes, I would really like to like a Windows phone). While HTC (and other manufacturers) keeps on launching device after device in a short time frame and thus creating new bugs and issues to deal with, Apple keeps on improving its one and only iPhone OS, for its one iPhone device (ok, different versions but very similar) which keeps getting better and better.

While iPhone developers have to deal with interface and compatibility issues for 3 very similar devices, a Windows Mobile developer has to deal with hundreds of them, some very poorly designed and a few very good (like Leo) but in the end, there is no way to develop a very good app for so many devices without a huge effort (and cost). Also, developing an App exclusively for one Windows phone wouldn’t be cost effective as a single model doesn’t represent a large enough consumer market.

Apple, with the iPhone, didn’t create a device as we are used to. Instead, they created a product with a long roadmap, mature SDK, sufficient market share, providing the necessary ecosystem for developers all around the world to make it even better.

It won’t be possible for any manufacturer, using any OS, to compete with such a mature product if they don’t realize it’s not a device we need. It’s a product.

Sadly, I’m going back to my 3GS… (god I hate iTunes…)