Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

I flew to Las Vegas, as did many of us, with the anticipation that this CES would showcase the collective response to the iPhone brought out at last year’s Macworld.  Apparently, that was naive.  I fully expected to be “wowed” or perhaps even “bowled over” by the big guns (LG, Samsung, Sanyo, Motorola, Sony Ericsson).  Instead, largely I was non plussed.  I showed up for all my booth tour appointments and waited to be shown their response.  After all they’ve had just about full year since getting a public glance at what was coming.

To me, CES was the perfect launching pad for return volley.  A response from the makers at this show, would have sent a message that they are paying attention to what consumers want.  Above all, making a splash at CES would have stolen thunder from Apples presentation at Macworld (a feat respectable in its own right).  Perhaps that is too out-of-the-box thinking. 

Let’s sidestep the debate on if an iPhone killer is possible, instead, lets focus on someone just trying to one-up it.  What did we get?

Motorola: Their new ROKR is truly special.  The haptic vibration under the touch screen really gives you a feeling of pressing a button.  The geek in me says it is exciting, the realists says, yeah but it is on a music phone with limited text entry (read: not for any business types like me).  My questions regarding the uber-secret Moto Q10’s inclusion of the haptic touch screen they plan to release at CeBit received only smirks and PR-answers.  Rubbish.

Samsung:  “He left the phone in his hotel room,” this from our PR rep on the first day of CES.  OK.  This was the F700, something we’ve seen before, not something new and special.  Today, it seems they’ve launched a $700 touch screen phone in Europe, not at CES.

Palm: The only thing they showed, was really shown by them.  It was shown during Gates Keynote address and appears to be an 800w.  It does look nice though, but Palm denies it exists.

LG No Viewty, KG80, or Prada phone.  What gives?

Sony-Ericsson showed off their fashion phones, basic gimmicky flip phones.  Nothing ground breaking though pretty.

Arguably the closest thing to a competitor was the iRiver clone that our Doug Berger got some hands on time with.  His comments were that it was a copy and not done as well.

Surely Apple isn’t the only one capable of out of the box thinking right?  I certainly hope so, but silence combined with phones that look more like copy-catting leave me very unimpressed.  I am led to believe two things: 1. Apple is the only one capable of out of the box thinking.  or 2. the iPhone had zero effect on its competitors.

A phone that gets people to stand in line, pay a premium for, use despite carrier loathing and lack of wide feature set (voice command, 3G, IM capabilities should all be standard at this point) you would think would ripple the industry.  But judging by the response one year later, I must be missing something.  Maybe the German stage for CeBit or the Vegas stage for CTIA will bring us the volley, that or perhaps it is business as usual and we’ll get no response.  Too bad.

Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed →