Is the new T-Mobile myTouch an iPhone killer?
By Michael W. Jones
T-Mobile launches the myTouch 3G today, its second Android phone. What does this latest Google phone do, how is it fixed for apps, and where is it likely to fit in the smartphone hierarchy?
It seems that everyone and his brother-in-law is announcing yet another iPhone killer. Every new Blackberry carries that sobriquet somewhere in its promotional verbiage, and the Palm Pre may be the standard bearer. Now comes the T-Mobile myTouch 3G, with Google’s name behind it, and one must wonder if it is the handset that will knock the big grin of Steve Jobs face.
Almost certainly not.
By all accounts, it is a reasonable smartphone. It is attractive, it looks a little like an iPhone, and it has name-power. Yet, the myTouch seems to fall a little short of the mark, as have all of the seekers of the iPhone cachet, according to a Washington Post story. The myTouch is more attractive and less clunky than the older G1, but it is not in the iPhone league yet.
The collected wisdom from around the Web seems to agree. Phrases like “Surprised that the thing even works,” “It’s likable even with the drawbacks,” “There’s a few complaints remaining,” and “it will give other handsets (but maybe not the iPhone) a run for their money” seem to abound in the press. What everyone seems to be saying is that it is perhaps close, but not quite a cigar, or even a cigarillo.
Worse, there comes news that while the highly-vaunted open source nature of the Android operating system should theoretically spawn better and cheaper apps, as it turns out the average app at the Google store sells for just about exactly the same price as the average app in the Apple App Store. The biggest difference is that there are not nearly as many of them. Again, advantage Apple.
Even handicapped by AT&T, the iPhone remains the phone to beat for personal use, and would be the phone to beat for business if corporations subsidized it as much as they did Blackberries. Everyone may be aiming at the iPhone, but so far their aim has been less than accurate.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Friday, August 7th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
Stumble It!
August 8th, 2009
hmmm. really. okay. Do your homework on both. and askthat same question again. and figure out why other people (tech publishers on the web PUBLICALLY and regular average joes alike) have dropped the iPhone and att, in favor of tmobile and android. I’ve played with both… and I can say with all sincerity that the mytouch (and g1) give the iPhone a definitive run for it’s money….and in some cases… BEATING IT!