Did you know that mobile phone competition is good for the iPhone? It’s true. It may be hard to realize though.

If your like me, it may be hard to believe that. Ever since the iPhone came out… shoot, even before the iPhone came out, there were companies and pundits who labeled all these phones as being “iPhone killers”. These companies and people have basically been lying to the public in order to try to fulfill their own self-serving agenda (and failed). So it’s really hard for people who realize this **** and have a strong opinion about it to view competing mobile phones as being good for the iPhone. But it is.

No competition

But let’s start by sayin’ this so far… the first and second generation iPhones, the iPhone 2G (like the Neocell 2G) and iPhone 3G were amazing based on their own awesomeness. They were light years ahead of the competition and Apple didn’t add or change anything based on competition, they did it because that’s what they wanted in a mobile phone. And it’s hard to even see it with the 3GS, but you can sorta’ start making the “beating the competition trend” with the 3GS.

Things Change

The iPhone 3G 8GB & 16GB was out and blowin’ all mobile phones outta’ the water. But pundits were goin’ nuts over the “true iPhone killer, the Palm Pre”. What was supposed to be so special about this phone? Well Palm hired on designers who originally designed the iPhone 2G, so unlike any other competitors phones, this phone was supposed to have a smooth interface and smooth design. It also was supposed to have multitasking in an initiative design, as well as a hardware keyboard, 8 GBs (no other phone had storage of this size besides the iPhone, a big deal, even by today’s standards), an “app store” like market place, speed as fast as the iPhone 2G & 3G and the huge loyalty and backing (hah) of Palm loyalists. Part of the problem for Palm is that it was known they were building this kind of phone months and months in advanced, during the time I’m sure Apple was in their “what should we do” phase for designing a new iPhone (3GS).

Of course Apple was going to release a third generation iPhone regardless of Palm or any other phone. But what they put into that phone, for the first time, is influenced based on competition. The speed of iPhone 2G and 3G’s are blazingly fast compared to all other phones out there at the time. Their closest rival was the Google G1. And please, that ***** is so slow and crappy compared to the iPhone 2G & 3G. Do you think Apple was saying to themselves “We gotta’ make an iPhone twice as fast as our current iPhone.”? No. Their iPhone was twice as fast as all it’s rivals. But of course, news trickles in that their going to have at least one competitor (Palm) and more in the future (Android makers) that will make phones as fast as the iPhone 2G & 3G, and what’s worst, they’ll have multitasking (and with it, laggy and buggy systems) and other things that will seem appealing (pundits don’t care about multitasking performance, they only care if a phone has it). One of the most appealing aspects will simply be having an “iPhone like” phone on another carrier, since so many people are angry with AT&T or wishing they could have an iPhone but on their own carrier.

I suspect the third generation iPhone (the 3GS) would have been a lot different without competition. Here’s what I suspect it would be if competitors were content to make Google G1 type phones for 2009, that Apple’s third (current) generation iPhone would be something like an “iPhone 3G+”.

Imaginary iPhone 3G+

Features

• Compass
• 3 Megapixel Camera
• Accessibility Features
• Tethering
• Oil-resistive glass coating

Missing Features

• No faster CPU
• No extra RAM
• No auto focus camera / advanced white balancing
• No video recording / editing
• No voice dialing
• No 32 GB option
• No larger battery (not needed without faster hardware)

Now think about that. An iPhone 3G with a higher resolution camera, compass, accessibility features and tethering would seems like a **** good upgrade compared to the junk that’s out there from the likes of mobile phones of 20o8, right? I mean, after all, all the iPhone 3G in 2008 added was a GPS, improved headphone jack,  3G connectivity and new design. All versions of iPhones would receive the OS 3.0 update, adding things like copy-and-paste, push notifications, etc. So as you can see, Apple had no reason to do anything more than an iPhone 3G+ type phone for 2009. They had no need for an iPhone 3GS.

An iPhone 3GS, not an iPhone 3G+

Here’s the reason why Apple created the iPhone 3GS. It was because of competition. One mistake for Palm I suspect was that it announced (or leaked) the hardware specs of it’s new phone early enough for Apple to counter it’s improved hardware with the iPhone 3GS. The imaginary iPhone 3G+ is still way more impressive than what the Palm Pre is. After all, an iPhone 3G+ can be 16GB compared to the Palm Pre’s 8GB, and the iPhone 3G+ has a compass where the Palm Pre has none. But the similarities, at least for these jack*** pundits, are way to similar. Close enough processor speed, same RAM, same hard drive storage (8GB iPhone models), close enough screen size, etc. But the Palm Pre does things that pundits claim “iPhones lack”, such as multitasking, having a real (crappy) keyboard, etc. In fact, the Palm Pre can load web pages faster (if I can remember) than the iPhone 2G & 3G (because it has a faster processor than the 2G & 3G’s I believe).

So an imaginary iPhone 3G+ would have a hard time not seeming pretty equal to a Palm Pre. I didn’t say it would be, they wouldn’t, but it would SEEM equal. So that’s why Apple designed the iPhone 3GS. This was going to be their third generation iPhone, so they decided to put in the radically expensive-to-produce hardware upgrades into their third generation iPhone to rocket them ahead of the competition, just like they did at the time of the first generation iPhone. And you know what? It worked.

An iPhone 3G+ would now seem inadequate

Not only did making the 3GS work to crush any potential “iPhone killers”, but Apple was **** lucky to do the upgrades it did.  Of course competitors always try to beat out the iPhone, so ironically, without the iPhone 3GS, the mobile phone top dogs of Android wouldn’t be as fast as they are today. But, the fact of the matter is, there are phones out now (well, one, the Google Nexus One) that have the same hardware speed as the iPhone 3GS. Just picture if their third generation iPhone was the imaginary iPhone 3G+. The top dog competitors wouldn’t be as fast as the 3GS I’m sure, but they’d surely be much faster than the speed of the imaginary 3G+.

How this affects you

So what’s the point of this? The point is that this affects you and me, the users. Because of this competition, the latest generation iPhone can be considered a “super iPhone” in terms of what it can do, and best of all… it’s being sold at the same price as when the iPhone 3G was out. Without competition, the price of the 3GS would be much higher. The fact they’re selling an 8 GB iPhone 3G for $99 is response directly to Palm’s Pre 8 GB (which sells for $199(.

I was still rockin’ the Neocell 2G when the Palm Pre came out, and let me tell ya, I could do so much more than the Palm Pre could. So if Apple fall behind the hardware curve, people would still choose iPhones because of the way they’re designed, both hardware and software. There is nothing like an iPhone. But that competition is forcing Apple to keep giving us better and better iPhones. don’t believe me?

iPhones wouldn’t have multitasking without competition

It’s true. Do you think we’d have multitasking in OS 4.0 if it weren’t for competition? No way. Apple knows how crappy and unreliable multitasking is for mobile devices. Multitasking for every mobile phone out there on the market today is crappy and unreliable. Multitasking would be the same exact way on the iPhone. The last thing you want to happen is to have your MOBILE PHONE freeze during a call to 911 because an app in the background stopped working. So Apple, without competitive pressure, wouldn’t do multitasking. I mean even the Google Nexus One, with it’s over-powered 1 GHz CPU, suffers the same problem.

But what’s been happening since Apple introduced the app store? People, both critics and iPhone users, have been complaining about the lack of multitasking. Think Apple is doing multitasking because of user demand? Hah… that means nothing to them. Do you think iPhone sales have declined from the first generation iPhone to now? Nope, they’ve sky rocketed, all without multitasking. Even if people tried boycotting Apple to release multitasking, it’d do nothing. Look at AT&T. Have they given us tethering yet? Nope, even though thousands of blogs, pundits and critics have been calling for AT&T’s head over it. Why hasn’t AT&T given into our reasonable demands for tethering? Well, why should they? They keep getting more and more subscribers, all without tethering. If the iPhone ever went to T-mobile, Sprint or Verizon (don’t hold your breath), AT&T would, in an instant, release tethering… even if the other providers didn’t do it. Why? Because of competition. Why do you think AT&T’s prices are so high? Because no one else has the iPhone. In other words, they have no competition.

Multitasking is a direct result of competition

So now you understand why we have multitasking finally. I mean, let’s be honest, iPhones do more than any other mobile device in history. (“I can use this device as a level to hang a bookcase? Awesome!”) They don’t need multitasking. So we can’t play free mobile internet radio while at the same time using our phone as a complete GPS navigation system? Why are we complaining?? For real. People want nothing more than to have an iPhone. Like 50% of people who are on Verizon say they’re interested or would consider getting an iPhone for Verizon. Crazy. With all that iPhones do, they don’t NEED multitasking at all.

But, because of competition and the fact that competing mobile makers keep bashing the iPhone as not being able to multitask, they’ve caved in and designed multitasking. But they didn’t just throw it in there as a buggy and unreliable system like all other devices have. They went through and designed something completely revolutionary for the way multitasking is designed. For a company that doesn’t care about multitasking, why would they go through such great lengths in designing such a complex system? Because competition forced them to. The last thing they wanted was to lose part of their edge of being so rock solid, reliable and smooth by adding ordinary multitasking. That would give critics an excuse as to why their operating system (Android, Blackberry) were buggy, because they could simply point to iPhones and say “They’re just as buggy too, now that they have multitasking.”.

Steve Jobs said something about waiting to do multitasking until it was done right. No. They waited until they were forced to by too much competitive pressure. Then they decided to do it right.

iPhone killers? Bring it!

One of the best ways to get the absolute best and most advanced future iPhones is by the competition nipping at Apple’s heals. So you should be saying “Competition? Bring it!”.

Peace, JbB