Star Trek Phone and now the ST-NG Computer Terminal

[photopress:353707831_e0bcb4efd2_d.jpg,thumb,left] Brace yourselves for the future is coming on thick and fast these days! With CES and Macworld over we can welcome two new innovations to our daily life’s. The Apple iPhone iMobile and HP’s touch screen multimedia computer. Both featuring improved touch screen support, for easy usage without keyboards or styli.

The iPhone iMobile brings nothing new hardware-wise but finally presents us with an easy to use, intuitive user interface. Also it running OS X will certainly help getting new, cool 3rd party apps and tighter desktop integration out. I wonder where the terminal app is?
Apart from it being just plain gorgeous, there are a few things I don’t like and that I reckon will cause problems. At least over here in Europe/UK they might. Firstly, there’s not nearly enough memory on the device to replace my not-yet existing video iPod (which I was intend on buying some time this year)! It comes in 4GB and 8GB flavors with no visible means of extending it
Also 3G/UMTS support would be a boon, since it’s much faster and cheaper than GPRS with T-Mobile and Voda giving away flatrates for next to nothing these days. I understand 3G/UMTS isn’t widely available in the US but over in the “old world” network operators paid enough in license fees and infrastructure to _really_ want to see a return on their investment… and soon. With leads me to the last negative point about the iPhone iMobile: its cost!

[photopress:352735384_a7d3fca0ec_d.jpg,full,left] US$ 499 for the 4GB model and being locked into an exclusive contract for 2 years is way too dear IMHO. If it merged a full size iPod with a fully featured phone, than yes, I’d be more than happy to part with that much cash. But it just doesn’t make sense. In Europe and the UK Apple might just have to do another exclusive deal but that’ll be tough because networks are after devices that enable users to use their premium features (like MMS and 3G/UMTS), which Apple’s breed doesn’t support. So subsidies will be low and I expect to get locked into a lengthy, expensive contract with a network I probably won’t like and still be asked to pay through the nose for the phone.

So much to Apple’s Star Trek Communicator as I would like to call it. On a side note, Apple is currently trying to convince Cisco that it can use the iPhone™ although the latter has been marketing IT products under that name for years. So perhaps they should hook up with Paramount and just call it a ST-NG Communicator instead
The HP computer terminal looks quite good, even though it touts the new Windows Vista OS. Check out the Reg’s Hardware video preview and you will agree with me when I call it a Star Trek’esque computer. Well, it at least comes close in my view…

Links:
- Apple iPhone

- HP Media Center Review CES07 (YouTube Link)

Images:
- Angry Bill by bryanchang
- iPhone Desktop Wallpaper by Apple Inc., through Sigalakos