Dieter Bohn and WMExperts have done an iPhone vs. Windows Mobile Email Smackdown – with a head-to-head comparison of the two platforms in a number of key emailing areas. Some of the categories they were judged on include: Look & Feel, Attachments, Handling Text, Ease of Use, Switching Accounts, and Deleting Emails.
My pal Ben Higginbotham of Technology Evangelist has called me out publicly on our debate about email on the iPhone. I say the iPhone sucks at email, he says it the bestest (yes, I’m oversimplifying. A lot.). I’ve been meaning to comment over at TE (you should consider doing it yourself, it’s an interesting post), but instead am just going to do a full WMExperts Smackdown here.
As you may have guessed from the title of this post, Windows Mobile wins the smackdown by a very large margin – and I’d have to say I agree with Dieter on most of his judgements. I love the iPhone, but having used WinMo devices for years (and still being an owner of an 8525 / TyTN) it’s clear to me the iPhone still has a lot to do to catch up in this area.
I expect this will change in the not-too-distant future though, with an SDK coming next year, and hopefully some Exchange support coming along soon as well. Some 3G data speeds on the next gen iPhone will obviously be a big help too. If we could just get an accessible file system, and copy / paste capability, many of the points Windows Mobile won on would also be nullified. I think Windows Mobile will be looking over its shoulder in this race fairly soon.
Check out Dieter’s full smackdown HERE – and let us know what you think about the results …
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Its the age old windows user vs mac user argument only this time over phones. Frankly the whole thing has gotten old. No doubt this was going to end with Windows Mobile winning. It was written by a Windows Mobile user who in the first line of the the comparison used the word “sucks”. Doesn’t take a frickin genious to figure out how this one ends.
To each their own. Some people get the iPhone some people don’t… I agree on a lot of the talking points (like how switching accounts absolutely blows) but I think it goes a little deeper than just counting the number of clicks required for email.
Sent from my iPhone
Wow – normally I would say ‘did you even read the smackdown post?’ – but I know you have done. Age old Windows vs Mac etc. = I have no axe to grind in that debate, couldn’t give a toss about that debate in fact – and really don’t see how it has any link to the email comparison article.
Goes a little deeper than counting the number of clicks required = right, that would be why he looked at so many different areas that are important in terms of using email, and gave a pretty thoughtful rundown of each. Counting clicks or taps was a very small part of the overall comparison.
As far as getting the iPhone or not, again not sure why that even comes up – he talked about ONE aspect of the iPhone and one only. I ‘get’ the iPhone, but would also readily admit that it does not match up to a WinMo device in this one area, yet …
Patrick – Yea, I definitely read the article front to back (twice).
I guess a lot of my thoughts didn’t just come from the article but the comments made after the article… and in the post at http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/10/iphone_observations.html
I guess what urked me the most is the “apologists” comment later on down. I know it wasn’t the article author who made the comment … but down deep I really think there is a lot of bickering about this device simple because of who makes it.
But again as I stated above – I agree with a lot of the points he made. I just don’t think you can boil it down to I had to click 4 times to do this on the iPhone and only 2 times do the same on my Treo. (Over half the article was click counting).
Well, glad you agree with a lot of the talking points anyway. I still feel like the counting clicks stuff was far from the biggest reasons. And I think you’d probably agree that the overall result is fair. I hope and expect the iPhone will catch up fairly quick, but for now things like lack of accessible file system, no copy & paste, no Exchange support etc. make this a no-contest at the moment …
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