Stephen Fry: ‘Device and Desires’

Actor and writer Stephen Fry is a gadget hound, and proves it in this extensive survey of the current state-of-the-art in the smartphone market. E.g., regarding the Sony-Ericsson P1i:

The P1i is what happens when “oh, that’ll do” becomes the corporate motto. UIQ promised something, the actual GUI is reasonable, in fact quite delightful, but it needed refinement, it needed acceleration and it needed flair. Instead we’ve got a very, very slow device that eats power, is difficult to use in varying environments and frequently hangs and crashes. In a word unusable. And I can just hear them hiding behind the excuse of “price” and “sectors of the market” and other bullshit. What, Apple’s a bigger company than Sony? Got more muscle? What muscle it has got, it got from daring to be better. That was once true of Sony too.

★ Wednesday, 19 September 2007