DISQUS

Considering your phone is broken, waiting may not be an
option. But if you can manage on a cheap temporary phone for six to nine
months, I fully expect the Fall 2008 cell phone landscape will be much better than
today’s for prospective buyers.

What the future holds for prospective smartphone
buyers: Google’s Android--if devs can fix bugs
and Google can find a decent carrier

-Sprint Mobile WiMax expected in
Washington, DC and Chicago for April 2008, although who knows if Xohm is going anywhere given Sprint’s new
management and financial woes

-Windows Mobile 6.1 and 7.0: Microsoft is set to release two
new versions of its mobile OS, with many features touted as competitive with
the iPhone including a
browser claimed to rival Safari

Verizon’s “breadboard” pledge: if
VZW lives up to the hype, for all we know there could literally be dozens
of innovative phones from upstart East Asian manufacturers by July

The iPhone’s key deficiencies:

-No HSDPA/UMTS. EDGE is slow compared to HSDPA, and painfully
sluggish compared to EVDO Rev.A (which Sprint, and to
a lesser extent Verizon, is rolling out swiftly)
Steve Jobs says 3G drains
too much battery life, but nearly every other smartphone released in the past year has managed to work with 3G without battery life
concerns. Where available, Wi-Fi is a faster substitute
to 3G, but dealing with the hassles of hotspots, SSIDs,
encryption, security, etc is no match for a single unified wireless broadband data
plan.

-No removable memory. Now that MicroSDHC
cards with 4GB of capacity can be had for under
$50, there’s no excuse for a multimedia phone to lack expansion
capabilities.

-No keypad. While iPhone users
generally seem very happy with the touch-screen keyboard, having a real keypad as
an alternative is nice, even with the added weight and cost.

-No Interchangeable Battery. Lithium
Ion batteries can and do degrade noticeably in just one year of heavy use and
lots of recharge cycles, but Apple makes it difficult to change the battery
without risking voiding the warranty or ponying up extra cash to Apple. Plus, for users who are on the road a lot carrying a
backup battery is a nice option to have when plugging in a charger isn’t always
feasible.

-This isn’t really a deficiency, but Apple takes $18/month from AT&T; from your monthly bill, so that $400 iPhone
actually transfers
$832 from your wallet to Apple’s over the two-year contract.

The hardest thing to find in a phone, aside from a good
browser, is a high resolution screen. The iPhone
looks so great not just because of its large screen but because of its
unusually high resolution of 480x320. The LG Voyager’s 400x240 is decent, but
the screen size is 0.7” smaller and the UI/Browser is much worse while it’s equally
expensive. Sprint’s HTC Touch looks nice, but 320x240 is weak and the Browser
is not good enough. Also the UI isn’t nearly as refined as the iPhone’s. All those BlackBerry/Treo
corporate-style smartphones have small squarish screens that are poorly suited for users intent on browsing, or watching TV shows and movies. At
least 3 inches diagonal is crucial to make the portable vieweing
experience worthwhile (whenever I see somebody watching a TV show on a gen-1 iPod video, I can’t help but wonder how its
possible to enjoy watching videos on such a tiny 320x240 screen.)

I’d look into the HP iPaq. $500 or so with a 4” 640x480 touchscreen.
I’m not sure which versions support 3G, though.

Opera Mini 4 is a great Java Virtual Machine-based browser
for Windows Mobile or Palm OS. Future versions of Opera Mini are likely to
offer Safari-level usability.

So if you can’t wait to get a feature phone, just go with the
iPhone. Despite some big drawbacks, it is still a
solid value proposition—unlike Apple’s iPod line. There
can be no doubt the iPhone actually does offer many
more features to the tech-savvy user than its competitors, and it is likely to
remain at the forefront of innovation for at least a few more months, which is
actually pretty good given the breakneck pace of technological evolution.

enigma, I won't disagree with your first five paragraphs. I wouldn't classify Podhoretz as a terrorist but neocons like him have demonstrably hurt American interests by advocating disastrous policies.

But a War Crimes Tribunal charging U.S. citizens with violating international law? Preposterous. Why should we cede our sovereignty to international organizations dominated by collectivist, far-left nations which have no accountability to American voters? I fully support punishing administration officials and anyone else who violated U.S. laws in prosecuting the Iraq war. But we have no obligation to prove anything to the international community. Maybe angering people in countires with radical elements is undesirable, but appeasing Europeans who probably hate us anyway will not accomplish anything. They'll trade with us regardless of our commitment to international law, and nothing we can reasonably do will change the fact that most continentalists have contempt for American values and disapprove of our lifestyle. I also have serious doubts that if we demonstrate a commitment to international laws any European nation will pony up troops or cash to help resolve the Iraq debacle.

Skype has 100 million users. Xbox Live has 6 million members as of March this year. iChat is growing rapidly. World of Warcraft uses Bittorrent to distribute game updates. These are very popular, residential-grade peer to peer uses. Don’t they constitute servers under your definition? They all accept unsolicited inbound connections using upstream bandwidth. Should Comcast hinder these applications as well? Surely you wouldn’t expect everyone who uses these services to sign up for business internet. Most people who use these servers don’t even rack up excessive bandwidth. These are commonplace residential internet uses and on an aggregate basis, peer to peer applications are used by a pretty sizable portion of broadband customers for legitimate reasons.

Back when residential broadband was a newcomer, the client/server distinction made sense and residential users had no real need to use their connection as a server. As a remnant from the past, nowadays many providers still include a clause in their TOS very similar to Comcast’s ban on servers. But it’s widely understood that using residential internet as a server is acceptable as long as there are no sustained, commercial-grade high-bandwidth activities like web hosting. So even though most people are technically prohibited from using a server, many do without repercussion or so much as a peep from their provider.

Comcast’s network can handle peer to peer traffic in moderation. Instead of simply banning these server-based protocols, Comcast would be wise to ensure residential users do not overutilize peer to peer applications. Simply educating people about the network congestion caused by peer to peer traffic and giving customers tips on “bandwidth conservation” would be steps in the right direction for Comcast.

I am a Comcast customer because it is my only choice. Even though I chose my home largely because it was only 5000 feet from my CO and there are no technical limitations on my loop, Verizon refuses me DSL service because their CO has been maxed out for almost two months now. But my phone number qualifies on their system, so the only way I can check the status of my CO is to place a DSL order, pay $95, and wait two weeks to hear back from Verizon engineers as to the eligibility of my line.

Comcast has given me zero incentive to shift my bandwidth-heavy tasks to off-peak hours. Nevertheless, I do my heavy downloading between midnight and 6AM, out of respect for their network. But most “hogs” are not so courteous. I download 720p movies from Xbox Live IPTV, and they are up to 10GB each. Just a dozen of these movies a month can generate some serious traffic. The only thing discouraging users from overutilizing their connection is the concern that Comcast will terminate their account for exceeding the secret cap. But it’s unlikely that Bittorrent uploading at 800 Kb/s will rack up the gigabytes fast enough to get an account blacklisted.

Seth, your statement that “no business can afford to sell server-level bandwidth at home-use-level cost” doesn’t reflect reality. Given the current discussion is about Bittorrent, I assume you define server-level bandwidth as what’s used by peer to peer applications. But I challenge you to find a legitimate report of a FiOS or DSL customer being terminated or asked to upgrade service due to heavy P2P use. DSL and FiOS are business ventures which use aggregate usage to develop a price model that can generate profit without restricting bandwidth consumption or peer to peer traffic. DSL and FTTH do prohibit web hosting and block inbound servers on a handful of ports, but there’s no blanket server ban or blocking of peer to peer file sharing protocols. Obviously Verizon and AT&T; use traffic shaping, but the impact of their throttling on peer to peer is far less noticeable than what Comcast uses.

Comcast business-class broadband is horrible for residential use. Comcast workplace account representatives are not available except during weekday work hours. While residential service has 24/7/365 support for billing and technical issues, for whatever reason Comcast workplace cannot discuss account issues except Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. Plus the $250 installation fee is completely unjustifiable for residential users, because unlike businesses there is no need for Comcast technicians to wire a building for cable internet especially when all that needs to be done is replacing a residential grade modem with a business class one. And one-year mandatory contracts for workplace broadband are fine for businesses which have stability, but forcing customers to sign contracts is problematic because many people rent and switch homes regularly. Comcast’s triple play gives discounts to those who commit to a year of service but still lets customers elect against a contract, while business cable outright refuses any customer who declines a contract. Unlike cell-phone service, in many parts of the U.S,. Comcast isn’t the service provider, so if someone moves but they are in a contract they can’t just transfer service.

If Comcast can’t make money because of peer to peer users, they would be smart to offer business-class service with residential power users in mind. Sure, it’ll cost $100 a month or more, but there is no doubt people are willing to pay, especially when Comcast is their only choice. No contracts or mandatory on-site installation should be necessary.