back to article Analysts slam iPhone security and battery life

Industry analysts have decreed that the new iPhone's lack of security and poor battery life make it unsuitable for all but the lightest enterprise use. The conclusions come in a nine-page research note from Gartner, as reported by Computerword. Entitled iPhone 2.0 Is Ready for the Enterprise, but Caveats Apply, it is based on …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse
    Flame

    No surprises there then...

    Apple products have always been preferred by the vacuous mass that prefers form over function.

    So when you've finished iW**nking over your iPhone, iMac, iPod & iRaq you can go shove it up yer i**********.

  2. Rory Wilson
    Alert

    New Firmware

    The new firmware was released yesterday - the iPhone is comsiderably more spritely, and synching takes MUCH less time. Will see what effect it has on battery life (but yes, the exchange Sync does drain the battery a shedload).

  3. Nic

    Not sure about the battery life issue

    "makes it impossible to maintain synchronisation with an Exchange server for a full day even if no calls are made"

    Hmm, well I use mine for exactly that, either through wifi, 3g or GPRS depending on location.

    I can go at least 1 day syncronising and performing other tasks, phone calls, photos etc without any problem.

    The battery life is far from ideal but it can perform better than stated here.

    The biggest issue from my business perspective is the lag when talking to exchange. Accessing contacts to email or sms can freeze the whole phone for 10 seconds or more, seamingly at random. I hear 2.1 should address this though.

  4. James Pickett
    Paris Hilton

    Apathy

    And what do Apple charge to replace the battery, I'd be interested to know? Well, I would, if I cared...

    PH, because it's just the sort of thing she'd have.

  5. Hans
    Coat

    Gartner says what?

    The last time those idiots proclaimed something that was true was in 2003, when they proclaimed Vista would be late, which was not really news. Can anybody make sure those brats shut up?

    Not that I am an iPhone user or wanter, but how exactly is the iPhone less secure than any other smart mobile, please? bs, as usual ...

    Mine's the one with "I do it my way!" on the back!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Um?

    Leaving aside any discussion of whether or not the iPhone is a good device for business or not, surely the title of the paper: "iPhone 2.0 Is Ready for the Enterprise, but Caveats Apply" implies a much more positive result than the article implies?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Important to note...

    That you have to pay Gartner to review a product and it's very expensive. Not what I'd call objective.

    Their Magic Quadrants should have a disclaimer "only suppliers who have paid us are included in this analysis".

    I thought the iPhone had a new Apple controlled messaging architecture - so only one application was running and the Apple infrastructure notified the iPhone about new events? Hence, this was more efficient than running several monitoring applications in the background (saving on memory, CPU and hence battery) ?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    iPhone battery life is crap on the 2G model as well

    It's not just the 3G iPhone that has crap battery life. Since I upgraded the O/S to 2.0 on my 2G ipHone the battery life has gone from very good to very crap indeed. Even with push services turned off and manual sycn enabled for Yahoo mail and Mobileme at hourly intervals, the battery life is significantly reduced over the previous version of the software.

    I'll skip on the upgrade to an iPhone 3G until apple bring out something with a bigger battery and a better network partner - o2's 3G coverage is dire in all but very built up urban areas where you can normally get wifi anyway.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    It doesn't support s/mime either...

    ... which buggers up our intended rollout of these things.

    Naturally the iphone corporate deployment 'guides' are as vague as possible, and Apple don't return our calls.

    Enterprise, my arse.

  10. Steve Kay

    Not my blog but...

    http://refraction.co.uk/blog/2008/07/31/first-impressions-of-an-iphone-newbie/

    A non fanboy who *wants* to like it ends up saying "the battery life so far is a killer problem".

  11. Duncan
    Flame

    oh dear

    this thread was only going to go one way given the headline, can i add that OSX is also crap and full of security holes or would that be adding fuel to the fire! hehe

    sorry it's a slow tuesday, i'll get me coat now

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Concurring reviews

    and now we just have to wait and see if the rest of the world agree's with the holy gartner or whether it's a bunch of tosh as usual :)

  13. Alexis Vallance

    Slinky

    It sure is nice to use though :-)

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Hans

    well, all my Symbian S60 v3 handsets & my S80 handsets have supported securing the memory card, and autolock feature. I think the S80 models also allowed you to lock them by SMS.

    I'm hoping Gartner's story will have the iPhone lusers where I work (senior management and a choice few IT people) consider a comprehensive ban on the bloody things.

    Then again - if my beloved colleagues in IT won't follow their own rules, why should anyone else?

    iRate...

  15. Charles

    The True Reason

    I found an analysts remark that I can still quote from memory that explains the true reason for the iPhone's poor battery life:

    "Battery life sucks because YOU CAN'T PUT THE DAMN THING DOWN!"

    I thought that was particularly perceptive.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    @Hans

    "Not that I am an iPhone user or wanter, but how exactly is the iPhone less secure than any other smart mobile, please? bs, as usual ..."

    Hmm, how about you read the article you muppet. The main thing that corporations are worried about with mobile device security is what happens when someone loses their device. With a blackberry or a windows smartphone the entire local content of the device is encrypted, you can set the thing up so that if you fail to enter your password 10 times it wipes the device, and the device can also be wiped remotely by a sysadmin. As I understand it with the iPhone only the latter can be set up.

    Please, if you are going to be a clueless fanbois, at least get your facts straight before you working the iCon.

  17. Sam

    Re The management

    "where senior managers have overridden IT department objections"

    ..or "tossers", as it's pronounced in English...I hope they got the twats to sign a disclaimer so when there's a security breach through their silly toy, they are the ones escorted off the premises by security.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    It misses the point a bit

    Pocket PC & phone replaced by cool kit.

    Cool kit is desirable.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    re: Not sure about the battery life issue

    @Nic - but are you using Exchange's push feature over 3G?

  20. Macka

    Battery's not so bad. Cut & paste I's tho.

    I've recently upgraded to a 3G and have found that draining the battery fully a couple of times, then leaving it on charge over night, plus the upgrage to 2.01 is now giving me much better battery performance than when I first got it.

    I agree with the comment about cut and paste though. The lack is a real pain in the backside. For example browsing for a list of decorators to enter into OmniFocus, I have to write them down first before entering them into the iPhone. What's needed is a global cut & paste list buffer, so I can save multiple lines of text from an app (Safari) and then selectively paste the ones I want into another (OmniFocus). This would cut down on the number of times needed to jump back and forth between apps too.

    The 2.01 update seems to have improved stability enormously as well. I've gone from 30 app crashes a day to 0 so far.

  21. jai

    hmmm

    colleague of mine has an HTC phone running windows mobile (6 i think?)

    and he discovered what our exchange server settings were and so plugged them in and was most pleased with himself that the push tech was working

    until the end of the day when he'd drained his battery - he now just updates every hour

    so, i'm a little confused about how these so-called industry expert analysists can be so surprised that having your phone constantly polling for new data is such a drain on battery life when it's the same situation on other phones

    methinks that El Reg is typically forgetting to be non-biased in its reporting once again

  22. sleepy

    hey ho

    Gartner rattles Apple's cage because Apple doesn't hand them wodges of cash for "research".

    It's supposedly insecure because it doesn't encrypt data files. But it also doesn't have removable memory cards, or allow you to put your stuff in the file system, or to install your own applications; which are more powerful methods of keeping the data from industrial spies or whatever paranoia it is this time that keeps corporate IT types pretending they are better off living in the past.

    The battery life is the longest of any 3G phone tested:

    http://gizmodo.com/5024804/iphone-3g-battery-life-beats-the-competition-apples-own-tests

    Switch off 3G, WiFi and GPS when you're not using them, and it will do push email and last for days, just like your non-3G, non-WiFi Blackberry.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    our HTC phones

    only allow access if you know the pin you can't turn it on and just use it as soon as you power it on you need the pin it won't allow active sync to connect or show any files on the device with out the pin and the only way round it is hard reset so secured info is removed anyway.

    the one iphone i've seen secured can be got round with a simple pull the battery and turn it back on :( but anyway i mean who puts coporate data on they phone any way oh yeah my CIO whose lost 2 phones and now wants an iphone

    AC as he has ears everywhere and i like my job

  24. Nic
    Thumb Up

    re: re: Not sure about the battery life issue

    Yeah I am using push.

    I moved from the t-mobile WM6 MDA Vario II and I have to say the iphone kicks the nuts of the Vario or any other WM6 device I have come accross. Which by the way lasted as long on battery as the iPhone.

    But then I like toys and I am prepared to have a device that is not perfect.

    And yes I will probably upgrade when a new iPhone comes out.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    nobody has mentioned it yet ...

    "this thread was only going to go one way given the headline, can i add that OSX is also crap and full of security holes or would that be adding fuel to the fire! hehe"

    Not to mention that OSX is just Linux under the hood and Linux evolved from BSD :-D

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Chap with the HTC phones

    Pulling the battery on that iPhone easy was it? Did it go back together again afterwards?

    ... or were you making that part up?

  27. Gulfie
    Unhappy

    Yes, it is bad...

    ...on my iPhone but then my experience with any multi-functional device is the same. I have a Dell Axim which needs charging after a day of use with either wifi or bluetooth turned on sporadically, as did my iPod Touch. I just got into the habit of putting it in the docking cradle whenever I was at my desk and problem solved. Not sure I want to shell out £30 for a 3g dock though.

    Sorry Apple, not good enough for the really mobile amongst us, you need to address this.

  28. DJ

    Looks like Computerworld has been scooped by Computerword...

    ...or is there yet another IT rag out there?

  29. 1865
    Thumb Down

    People still listen to what Gartner have to say, huh?

    I don't have an iPhone and perhaps its security isn't great for the enterprise, but heck, when was the last time Gartner had anything to say that was remotely insightful or useful? They are specialists in statingthebleedingobvious who survive by getting paid from no-bollocks middle management who prefer to pay someone else to take the buck rather than commission their own research.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    C'mon...

    I'm not an iPhone owner, or user (my work certainly haven't handed them out), but I do notice a certain trend with the apple haters on here:

    Launch: "Ah! It's shit, and it's not selling! Stupid Apple! It'll never sell!"

    Then: "Ah... It's shit, but it's selling now. Stupid Fanboi's! Still, it'll never sell to the general public!"

    Next: "Ah, it's selling by the bucketload. Stupid Proles! Still, it'll never sell to businesses!"

    Later on: "Ah, enterprise are buying it now. Stupid Managers! It's not good enough for business use, it'll never succeed! "

    What next? "iPhone shit- because a fourth line techie cannot use it to ssl to a cisco switch across a satellite link?"

    Give a little credit- you may not like it, but that doesn't mean it's a bad product. It certainly doesn't make it a failure- who would have thought UK mobile customers would be falling over themselves to *pay* for a mobile phone?

  31. This post has been deleted by its author

  32. Henry Blackman

    For the love of God!

    @Anonymous Coward RE: clueless fanboi comment... I don't usually rise to the bait. You can lock the iPhone just like any other phone, and it's quite impossible to use without being unlocked. It's filesystem is completely encrypted, and generally inaccessible to a desktop machine so no worries there. Both just as effective as Windows Mobile/Blackberry - if not more so. Please don't comment if you haven't actually used one (which you clearly haven't).

    @Gulfie - the 3G dock is £19, quite a steal when you look at the cost of other handsets docks, e.g. HTC Touch Diamond where it's £29.99 at Expansys (although not yet available). You can get plenty of car chargers for those of you how are "really mobile"... just like any phone, e.g. an old O2 XDA of mine, it was quite impossible to get a day of full on use out of it.

    Of course full on use of the XDA was limited to very slow browsing on a crummy version of IE, on the other hand, with the iPhone, blimey I get stuff done! Imagine that.

  33. Alex McKenna

    Aristotle's donkey..

    "Apple products have always been preferred by the vacuous mass that prefers form over function" ??

    On the contrary - Apple machines are well-designed FROM THE INSIDE OUT.

    The outside is just a result of the entire thing being well thought out.

    Frankly, if the outside of my iMac looked like a soggy cardboard box, I would still love it, for its OSX functionality..

    Anyway, the idiotic mass are surely Windows sheep...

  34. Steve Evans
    Coat

    You have to wonder...

    ...what planet the Apple mob are from... Sure they have come out with some innovative products in the past, but surely when entering a packed market such as mobile phones, the sensible thing would be to know your enemy. "Acquire" a few of the models from the competition, play with them, pinch ideas, nothing wrong with that.

    Yet when the iPhone arrives it looks like all they've done is looked up "mobile phone" in the dictionary. It has a joke of a camera and pitiful sms support, the kind that any other mobile grabbed from the landfill could easily beat. Up until now I didn't know it lacked a clipboard, something I've enjoyed on Symbian handsets since the Nokia 6600 which dates back to when you could fill your car with fuel without extending the overdraft!

    Apple, stop pandering to the fanboiz, who'd buy a turd with a fruit stamped on it, and do a little market research. You have a nice looking phone, it has a nice interface, but how about backing that up with a little bit of technical ability and get it to do the basics that world+dog has been doing for years.

    Mines the flameproof one.

  35. Stuart
    Paris Hilton

    Physiological Problems

    Yes many of you are correct. Lack of cut & paste is abject madness and why the hell haven't they put file vault in the OS + better Cisco VPN backwards compatibility.

    But seriously have you tried one? I had the most advanced HP PDA and it seems like a joke next to the iPhone. If they can fix the above your IT staff better get used to them as their bread and butter.

    Paris, because she knows when the winds of change are blowing.

  36. vincent himpe

    duh

    business usage no 1 : exchange contact information via bluetooth.. oops sorry you got an iTurd ... guess you can;t even do that simple thing...

  37. Reg Sim
    Flame

    Garner.....

    ....you mean somebody pays attention to them?

    I do not believe a word they say, and I would rather read news of the world or the sun.

    I suspect they have better and less biased reporters.

    I am not saying that the iphone is good, or anything like that, I am just saying I find paying Gartner any attention about as much use as asking Microsoft/sun/ibm for a review of there own products.

    I am with 1865, and would go as far as to state they often 'find' the conclusions the person paying them for the research wanted.

    right, that's my rant over.....

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Camera phones

    I can see why camera phones might be a big hit with teenagers, but I fail to understand why grown adults feel the need for one.

  39. Mick F

    PSP with phone

    But the PSP has a better battery life.

  40. Nordrick Framelhammer

    Gee, who woiuld hasve thunk it

    Apple, turning oiut a product that has battery issues. How long will it be before we start hearing of stories about the battery dying just after the warrantee expires. And how many humdreds will they charge to replace it?

    Personally, I am bloody sick and tired of hearing about the IhavenopenisPhone.

  41. Daniel B.
    Boffin

    iPhone security? Yeah, right.

    "Apple is hopeful that third-party applications will come along to provide encryption services, and assured Gartner that an API exists to provide encryption."

    ... which I suppose will never be available as the official SDK disallows background applications. A true crypto app would be in the background, encrypting data before it's even stored! Blackberry's "Content Protection" is an example for this. Why Apple wouldn't have this integrated to the OS sounds like an oversight if they were intending to appeal to business people. Though the worst oversight is cut-and-paste ... come on, Apple practically *invented* the whole cut&paste thing! COMMAND-C, COMMAND-V, Clipboard are all Macintosh concepts, so much that Windows just copied the shortcuts (as Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V) and ditched the annoying shift-Insert, ctrl-Insert, shift-delete combos.

    @Hans: "how exactly is the iPhone less secure than any other smart mobile, please?"

    Have you ever used a Blackberry? It has crypto, "Content Protection" and there's even a PGP support pack for the thing! Plus, after 10 failed password attempts, the thing auto-destructs in a nice Mission Impossible fashion (ok, not as cool, but it does wipe all the data.)

  42. Doug Petrosky
    Happy

    What needs to be encrypted?

    Ok I get the need for encryption on phones with removable storage because you get the phone, pull the card and so much for your remote wipe! But what is it needed for on the iPhone exactly? What? Are they going to unsolder the chips and place them on a new card? I mean security is important but encryption was added to other phones because they allowed that memory to be pulled or the phone to be connected to as a file system.

    And on the battery life issue? Isn't the iPhone like number 1 or 2 for battery life on a 3G smartphone? I know that battery math is half voodoo but the indications are that the iPhone is at or near the top of the heap. So, if the iphone fails in this area, does any phone succeed?

    http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3353

    http://gizmodo.com/5024804/iphone-3g-battery-life-beats-the-competition-apples-own-tests

    Just wondering

  43. Robert Hill
    Alert

    @Vincent Himple

    After owning 3 different HTC Windows Mobile smartphones, and a Bluetooth-enabled Moto A780 linux smartphone before that, I have NEVER EVER had a business associate ask to exchange contact details over Bluetooth. It's always "send me an email or a text". Certainly that applies for most senior people in an organization - hell, most of them are lucky if they can get a Bluetooth headset to pair properly...

  44. Anthony

    It's not the encryption...

    It's the fact you've got to use iTunes (or the stripped-down derivative) to activate and sync the bloody things.

    It's the only phone we've ever seen that has such draconian activation requirements out of the box. Worse yet, you can't get them activated by the carrier and sent out to you, and I'm not about to go stand in a queue at a phone shop with a trolley of these things to get them done by the monkey behind the counter.

    If Apple are serious about supporting enterprise they have to be willing to accept that a lot of system owners aren't going to want to install iTunes on their corporate networks.

    As for encryption, you can only tether the devices to one machine at a time - if you try and plug in to another copy of iTunes it won't let you copy to or from the phone without wiping it first. Beyond that the thing is DRM'd to kingdom come.

    I own one for personal use and I'm in agreeance that it's a bloody brilliant piece of kit, and great fun to use. But it's no WinMo or Blackberry when it comes to rolling them out in enterprise. And Apple's support has been less than stellar on that mark (unless, seemingly, you're either a funky startup or worth some marketing mojo to Apple's spinmeisters)

  45. Mat Smith
    Flame

    File system encryption

    @Henry Blackman:

    "It's [sic] filesystem is completely encrypted, and generally inaccessible to a desktop machine so no worries there"

    Generally inaccessible isn't really good enough though is it? How many people who want to steal sensitive data from your company's iPhone are planning on firing up iTunes on their Mac or PC to steal that data?!

    Have you ever laid your hands on a device that can extract the unencypted data from an iPhone by iPod dock connection onto removable storage in 5 minutes flat, without even the need to have a laptop or desktop computer present? No? Well - and thanks for the quote here - "Please don't comment if you haven't actually used one (which you clearly haven't)".

    That's kind of like saying "I don't need to encrypt the files on my hard drive, because you'd need my password to access them in order to start up Windows!" - dumbarse.

    It also amuses me that you suggest the iPhone's pikey PIN lock and lack of browseable filestore (that's a SECURITY feature now is it?) is "just as good" as the enterprise level native encryption support in a Blackberry? Head-in-arse.

    As it happens I own an iPhone, and no I can't put it down, and that's probably why the battery doesn't last. My Nokia brick lasts 4 days without being charged. That's because I don't switch it on.

    But it's simply not suitable for enterprise environment, period.

    Gartner research or not, it's a beautiful toy with some minor flaws for consumers but some major ones when it comes to business.

  46. fajensen

    Of Course ...

    Staying connected with Exchange sucks the life out of the poor device - Exchange Servers perpetually blathers about nothing!! In former times, before ADSL, one would manually synchronise when working on a slow line because Exchange chatter would hog the line all the time.

    Anyone, who actually need mail at the same time as battery operation on a mobile device should just stick the plain old SNMP services: IMAP or POP3.

    PS:

    It's only managers who think that email cannot wait!

  47. dave hands
    Thumb Up

    raving and drooling

    Lack of Cut & Paste is simply staggering. There are few words to describe such an act of hard headed stupidity.

    That said, DAMN but these things are attractive. I for one will be buying one just as soon as the coffers are full enough to take the hit and I don't care if I can't use it on the Enterprise (some of you are taking this Star Trek thing way too far). It's already got, having used one before, everything on it that I'll ever want from a phone and a bit more besides. Sometimes things have to be purchased and used because they are so damned nice, regardless of whether they are perefect or not.

    And I can understand why so many people are negative about them.

    Jealousy is a terrible thing.

  48. Dr Patrick J R Harkin

    @Nic

    "I can go at least 1 day syncronising and performing other tasks, phone calls, photos etc without any problem."

    At least ONE day? I'm thinking of replacing my old M500 because battery life has dropped to three days. It used to do a week, or even more. Having to recharge daily takes us back to the early 90's!

    I really like the interface on the iPhone and was seriously thinking of gettingone to replace the M500 - but not at the expense of a daily recharge. I don't want to have to carry other cables or chargers when i go away overnight.

  49. Georges

    those of us ...

    those of use who use serious forms (factor over form as the first poster put it) knew from the start it is all a hype. Apple, rushed the phone to try to corner the competition.

    My one year older phone (older thean the original iphone), an HTC touch cruise beats it in all departments hands down. I can have a full day, bluetooth on (for car), wireless (office and home), calls, and polling email every 30 minutes. I can still go home with the more than half the batter life still full.

    Yes a large creen, yes a pretty interface, but it stops there. it is like comaring Windows and Linux, yes Windows support all hardware (you are paying for that) and yes it is prettier, but its functionality stops there.

  50. RIch
    Coat

    @anyone whos listening...

    irrespective of iphone issues, can I propose that anyone who uses wank-speak like fanboi in the context of technology is immediatly castrated with a rusty shovel.

    mines the one with the rust stains

  51. NHS IT guy
    Heart

    So, like everything else then...

    So it shares the same flaws as most smartphones then?

    Data not encrypted? Same as 99% of other smartphones as PDAs

    Battery life not great? Same again, especially if you stay connected to exchange all day long.

    I'm using my iPhone 3G as my NHS smartphone via exchange and it's working a dream. I'm not a mac user, but I do love the form factor - and the fact I can take my personal and work life around in one handsome unit.

    The web-browsing on the iPhone is a leap ahead compared to the majority of smart phones I've used, this also applies to the multimedia capabilities which are obviously the iPhone's forte.

  52. Gulfie

    Power Update

    Yes I find my iPhone hard to put down so... last night I did a full charge and cycled the power to reset the usage figures.

    Right now the phone has been in standby for 16 hours, used actively for 70 minutes, and everything (3g, wifi, bluetooth) is turned on, email is checked every 30 minutes (not Exchange). Battery is about 30% discharged. The only thing I'm not doing is using the mp3 player on it, I'm back on my iPod.

    So, for a normal user I think battery life will be acceptable, and my experience is that if I listen to MP3s through the working day then a daily charge is recommended.

    It's a multi-functional device, folks, with multiple radio transmitters and receivers. Show me another PDA phone of a similar size/weight that can do all this and not need charging... like somebody else said - you just can't stop using it...

  53. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Stop

    FFS, who rattled the fanbois cages?

    Please, can all the paranoid fanbois get off defcon1 and realise that Gartner are not calling their holyphone a piece of junk, they are just pointing out that it is not quite ready for enterprise big time. Blackberry was designed as an enterprise solution and has evolved over time into a very secure system, those are just basic facts. Win Mobile devices like the HTCs or iPAQs have long targeted the Blackberry and have also evolved over time from joke to reasonable enterprise solution. The iBone is still largely at the stage of bling toy, I'm sure given time and attention Apple will close the gap, but does it matter? If you are not using it in an enterprise setting then it will probably do what you want very well, just don't expect any professional setting to be overjoyed if you ask to use it at work.

    For a start, the main hostility in many workplaces to iBones comes from the iPlod, where many moronic users would try and install iTunes on their work desktops and trying to download all day, using up company bandwidth and company resources for purposes definately not intended by the owners. I have seen workers genuinely confused as to why they were being fired after having been warned three times that doing so was against their contract terms. They just don't seem to understand that the company is not interested in underwriting their non-work activities which takes them away from the tasks the company is paying them to do.

    We have decided not to add the iBone to our list of company-approved phones, and are looking at ways of detecting the Apple MAC address range and rejecting them for our comapny WiFi access points. If Apple make a more secure version which meets out criteria we'd allow it, though we'll probably keep on blocking iTunes. This is not because we hate Apple, it's a business decision. No need for fanboi rage, thanks.

  54. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    an alternative

    give me my nokia 6310 any day, 2 weeks on standby , and I can talk to people on it.

    also since it doesn't attempt to browse the web (ok it attempts wap) , my 40 year old eyes are less strained

    and since it's display is monochrome you can even see it in direct sunlight.

    I might retrofit my nokia 6310 into one of those motorola brick cases from the eighties , fill it up with lithium polymer batteries and have a phone with a battery that lasts for months.

    not that I want to talk to anyone , I am thinking of becoming a trapist monk, then I will not need a phone to talk to anyone either !

  55. This post has been deleted by its author

  56. blackworx

    @Camera phones

    "I can see why camera phones might be a big hit with teenagers, but I fail to understand why grown adults feel the need for one."

    1. Home made porn

    2. Ridiculous misspelt schoolboy graffiti

    3. The occasional cool stencil

    4. Home made porn

    (2 and 3 only apply to people who don't spend their lives outside of work and sleep driving around in a car)

  57. vdb

    power is no issue

    I've owned the whole scale of qtek's htc's and other smart-phones;

    they all had smaller screens, they had slower processors, most applications run at a fraction of the speed compared to iphone. Their battery life sucked big time.

    iPhone, 3G, wifi, bluetooth (use it all the time in car), check mail contacts calendar every 30 minutes, daily use varies between 1 - 2 hours, 2 days on a full charge ... none of the current phones beat this, period (did I mention I owned the bloody competition and used it;-). And as already mentioned the screens are pity-full, the applications on the iphone already trump the competition after a few weeks ...

  58. Trix
    Boffin

    Regarding the battery life issue

    I love all this "if I set to poll once an hour, I get a whole DAY of use". I get 5-7 days' use out of my Blackberry, with push functionality.

    It's not enterprise-ready until it has built-in device encryption (although we don't encrypt our laptops, so it's wildly amusing that my email infrastructure is more secure than our pcs), it does a self-wipe if the password is entered incorrectly (we have ours set to wipe after 5 attempts), and it has software management/lockdown functionality (you might want to support devices where anyone can install any PoS software they find on teh Intarwebs, but I don't). I'm not even going to mention cut-and-paste.

    Blackberrys are not sexay phones, but they send and receive email and meetings securely and well. And you can type on them. Windows Mobile is crap (just as bad as the iPhone with the battery life), but at least there is enterprise policy management, there are third-party (can't they build it in?) encryption tools, and you can cut and paste. Of course, when the iPhone catches up (and it will), Windows Mobile will be going down the gurgler at a rate of knots.

  59. Andy Dent
    Alert

    @Camera Phones

    Why? White boards.

    I would estimate about 80% of the meetings I've been where anything useful has been worked out on the whiteboard have resulted in someone taking a photo with a camera, even when printing is available.

    It's a lot easier to email a photo around or put it up on a wiki than to do something with crap thermal-printed paper which is probably only black and white.

  60. vdb

    Re trix

    Sure, using 3G ;-) my 8800 has a poor 4 hour talk time and hardly gets through the day on a single charge ...

    oh no the 8800 has no 3g oops, 4 hours on edge you must be kidding ...

    (my iphone has 9.5 hours talk time on edge and does push for 4-5 days on single charge ...)

    and before you tell me that my battery is bad on the 8800 forget it, already tried 3 different ones, and I've read several test reports that 4.5 is the max you can get out of it, know I understand the crackberry users want a replaceable battery

  61. Mat Smith

    @Camera Phones

    To add to the chap who posted previously, I can also testify that camera phones are extremely useful in work scenarios. I'm a serious photo-head and I shoot with a full-frame DSLR, but nobody is comparing this to using a cameraphone. A cameraphone is a piece of useful *functional* kit nothing to do with real photography, which alows me to take quick snaps for site surveys, work inspection photos, switch rooms and fuseboards, and even sometimes for personal use and to capture memories. Means I don't have to bring a mini digital camera around wherever I go.

    As for the use of the word fanboi, I concur with Rich who recommends castration. A large proportion of the readership of this website is over 20, let alone over 40, people who use or run IT at work, how old are we?!

  62. Jonas Nagel
    Boffin

    RE: nobody has mentioned it yet ...

    "Not to mention that OSX is just Linux under the hood and Linux evolved from BSD :-D"

    Of course this is a flame-bait, but you could at least get the facts straight:

    OS X underneath is not Linux, but Darwin. Darwin is derived from NetBSD while NetBSD is derived from System V/AT&T UNIX (simply put). Linux has not much in common with UNIX except a few commands and left-overs, hence the GNU "standard" which acronym implies "GNU is Not UNIX".

    While NetBSD and OSS Darwin (mostly) do not exhibit the same security issues like Mac OS X, what do we learn? All the GUI bollocks and apps which are screwed on top, hastily, are what lack security review.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like