Essentially he's saying he likes the Pre because its imagined features are better than the iPhone ones that he hasn't tried. The article is about pitting an ideal vs. a bias. Who will win?
Are they imagined features when you can watch a video of them? Why would you think I've never tried an iPhone? I actually wanted to buy one before I did.
Seems like kind of a silly comment to have 25 points. I wonder if it were about Microsoft instead...
That's the feeling I got too. Criticising something as different as the iPhone keyboard (which I'm using to type this) when you haven't tried it is very unconvincing and possibly slightly dishonest both with yourself a d with your readers.
People made that assumption because your opinions do not match their experiences as iPhone users. I assumed the same thing. With regard to your first three points:
1. My call quality is excellent in NYC. I get a dropped call maybe once a week. It's not even something I think about much. I see Verizon customers around me dealing with more dropped calls.
2. Email and SMS are fantastic. Better than my work-issued Blackberry.
3. Network. I have 3G almost everywhere I go, but I understand that this varies widely by geographical area. People without coverage obviously won't benefit much from an iPhone.
With regard to the Blackberry comparison, I'll flat out say this: I prefer the iPhone keyboard to the Blackberry keyboard. Plain and simple. Maybe I figured out the right places to touch the screen, but I type faster and more efficiently on the iPhone. I didn't make any scientific comparisons, but every time I'm forced to compose something on the Blackberry, I inwardly groan. My fingers and hands are not particularly small.
If you heavily use Exchange, I imagine iPhone's integration leaves something to be desired. I haven't tried it. However, IMO, Blackberry's Exchange integration through the Blackberry server leaves something to be desired, too. For example, I have rules set up in Exchange so that my sent mail goes into the same folder as the folder which contains the message I have replied to. Doesn't work on on the Blackberry.
1) Call quality issues have been highly-publicized, and refer to more than dropped calls. Voice quality, volume control, reception (different phones on the same network often get better or worse in the same location), etc.
2) You can find a litany of blog posts from people who switched from Blackberry to iPhone and then went back because they couldn't live without the keypad. You can also find people who share your sentiment too. Neither sentiment is uncommon or would lead me to believe that the person expressing it hasn't tried one.
3) Also tons of complaints about spotty reception even in big cities.
None of those three may match your experience, but they all match highly-publicized experiences of others.
This sort of information should be included in your article, too. It's an obvious hole in your article and you should probably have thought of it when you were writing it.
Long enough to discover that I have sausage fingers. Long enough to realize that they did a great job with the automatic corrections, but that when that fails, the process of correcting a word is brutal, and that it happens enough to make the whole experience grating when you're used to a keypad. Long enough to discover that there's no way I could shoot off a text one-handed without looking like I can on a device with a dedicated keypad. Long enough to know Blackberry-esque models are for me.
I don't know how many minutes if that's what you're asking. I don't think it's a hole in what is clearly an opinion piece that I didn't describe the exact length of time I spent typing on one.
