The Case for an IPhone 3GS 'B'

The new iPhone 3GS is a conservative, yet intelligent addition to the iPhone family. Its faster processor and greater operating memory are exactly what the doctor ordered. However, the lack of a keyboard, UMA and better battery features allows the competition an edge with business users.

By Michael Scalisi
Tue, June 23, 2009

PC World — The new iPhone 3GS is a conservative, yet intelligent addition to the iPhone family. Its faster processor and greater operating memory are exactly what the doctor ordered. However, the lack of a keyboard, UMA and better battery features allows the competition an edge with business users.

Slideshow: Forget iPhone 3G S: Eight Great New iPhone Alternatives

If Apple could tolerate one more SKU, the iPhone 3GS-B, it would sharply cut into RIM's remaining share of the smartphone pie. The "B" would stand for business, of course, and Apple stands to benefit considerably from more aggressively pursuing business users. Apple's profits could improve, not only from greater market share, but also because business users are less concerned with initial purchase price.

The styling of Apple products has consistently been trending towards thinner and with fewer buttons (the new iPod Shuffle for example). Business users, however, are willing to trade a little of that sexy slimness for more usability.

A slider-style QWERTY keyboard similar to one in the T-Mobile G1 would please a great many number of verbose e-mail users.

Data entry, I concede, is pretty good on the iPhone. In fact, it's probably just about as good as you can get with a non-tactile 3.5-inch touchscreen.

An intently focused person can be fairly proficient typing on an iPhone. Business users, however, are notorious multi-taskers. They are constantly shooting off a quick e-mail in the middle of a meeting, in line at the store, and, with tenuous legality, at stoplights while driving. On the road, they will write lengthy e-mails from the comfort of their hotel rooms. Because the iPhone lacks tactile feedback, it requires its user's full attention and can never be as easy to type on as the somewhat bulky BlackBerry Bold with its big QWERTY keyboard.

UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) provides carrier service over unlicensed technologies like Wi-Fi. While the iPhone works well with data over Wi-Fi, It fails to support voice. Smartphones like the Blackberry Bold and Tour allow their users to use Wi-Fi for phone use. This is immensely beneficial when in internet-connected areas that lack proper network coverage.

While we are at it, how about a little bit bigger battery? A business user who takes an early morning flight, and ends up in meetings all day would appreciate a phone that could last until he winds down in his hotel that evening. Sure he could carry an external battery powered charger, but that's anything but convenient.

1 2 next page »

You are here: Technology Topics » Advice & Opinion

Most Recent Technology Topics Stories

White Papers »

Has Your Server Infrastructure Kept Pace with End User Demands?

Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Business Centric DLP

This report, by Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group, examines the need for a new business-centric approach to DLP in order to align business and security requirements.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Deliver Private Cloud Database as a Service with VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.

Reliable Disaster Protection with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.

Introduction to VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter