The iPhone.

It looks like a fantastic smart phone. It’s certainly interesting to me, but I’ve never wanted a smart phone. Okay, it plays music, videos, has a decent camera and all. I dig the widgets too, but I have a laptop for that stuff, and this won’t replace my laptop. So for all the goodies in the iPhone, the majority of them I would prefer to use my computer instead. Improved call experience isn’t enough to justify a $499 or $599 purchase.

And how on earth does this thing run OS X and still have the battery life it does? That’s amazing. Lets assume for a second that it runs a fully functional, non-stripped-down version of OS X. Is the device open enough to run third party applications and widgets? I didn’t hear anything mentioned about that. My guess would be no… this device, like the iPod, is a closed device. One that syncs your data, but not applications. iPod games may sync as well— I didn’t see that mentioned either, but one would assume so. Perhaps a detail that will be ironed out by launch day.

And for all the iPhone can do, there are many things they didn’t show— things that may give an executive who can afford a $599 smart phone pause. Such as the ability to view and edit documents. Can the iPhone handle opening a MS Word or Excel attachment? How about PDFs?

It’s great to see they have a 2 megapixel camera— anything above the basic 640 by 480 resolution camera is super, but I wish there were a way to swivel the thing somehow. So you could do video iChat over WiFi or something along those lines. I suppose you could use a carefully placed mirror, but that seems less than ideal.

Speaking of which, will it be possible to do any kind of VOIP calling? Somehow, I doubt it. I’m sure Cingular made their deal contingent upon that limitation.

Lets say they reach their stated goal of 1% of the mobile smart phone marketshare for 2008. If they only sell their entry-level phones, that’s 5 billion in sales.