Which Silicon Valley phone to buy this summer? The new Palm Pre with its scintillating operating system and clever design, or the old iPhone with an updated OS containing features it should have had in the first place?

That may be too simple a comparison. How about making it a choice between a phone with few exciting applications from third-party developers to one with more than 25,000 apps and games to choose from, many enabled with a new sophistication?

Personally, I would resist the allure of the Pre for the promise of more and better apps on the iPhone, and that seems to be the way Apple will be pitching its advantage, judging by its unveiling for developers of its 3.0 operating system.

Compare what its internal team is offering customers to how developers are being treated. Customers are getting 100 new features, but developers are being empowered with access to 1,000 application programming interfaces (APIs) to build or improve on their applications.

The new customer features, apart from a much improved search, are pretty ho-hum - copy and paste, the ability to see email and notes in landscape mode, MMS - multimedia messages, voice memos, shared calendars, stock prices with news, Wi-Fi autologin and stereo Bluetooth. These are all things that could have been in 1.0 or that third-party developers have already offered through their own apps.

I spoke afterwards to Greg Sullivan, senior product manager at Windows Mobile, who of course pointed out that Windows phones had had copy and paste, MMS and many other features for ages. They could also play Flash movies, something Apple has still not worked out with Adobe, and Windows camera phones can shoot video - no word on that coming to the iPhone.

Even my humble Blackberry can act as a modem and provide an internet connection for my laptop. Apple said this “tethering” would be enabled in 3.0 but it had yet to strike the deals needed with carriers.

In contrast, developers are being cosseted by Apple to produce better and brighter apps and hammer home the advantage of its App Store over other platforms. It has now recorded more than 800m downloads.

With access to its Maps API, they can now improve location-based applications - even turn-by-turn directions are possible, making the iPhone a strong contender as a personal navigation device.

The Push Notification Service also seems to get over the problem of only one application being visible at a time. Services such as instant messaging or news can now flash up messages, headlines, the latest sports scores over the top of the interface.

For games, Apple is enabling a multiplayer option so two people with iPhones or the iPod touch can play each other over Bluetooth.

Content services within services will also be possible for the first time - new levels can be downloaded within a game application, subscriptions can be renewed, a City Guide application could allow you to add new cities.

These and many other features will allow developers to keep on coming up with those app zingers that Apple loves to feature in its ads these days and is consequently boosting sales - 30m iPhone and touch units had been sold by the end of 2008.

It is a crucial software edge and one it will be leveraging to see it through the summer against stronger competition, until an expected hardware update of the iPhone this autumn.

Tags: apple, iphone, ipod, Palm, touch

March 18, 2009 6:03am in Mobile, Software | Comment