Hi Ram,

Depends what you are going to use it for. If it's a toy, and you don't mind the high cost of the toy, or it is worth it for you to seem rich, then the toy is probably the way to go. Its high cost does not seem to deter people who want to seem rich/chic as it is extremely popular with people who otherwise would not spend much, but for the oh so important image. But this is not so true. No they simply want it as both a very pretty object, but also they want to belong, to belong to the group of people who have it, to the cool kids. If you don't have that toy (and&ipod &...) you are simply not cool. Buy one, even if it is extremely expensive and flaunt it. Not to flaunt yourself as a rich person, but as someone with a fashion sense, as cool. For this the tool is out of the question. Try taking out a Nokia e71 amongs iphone people, I mean you might as well be wearing a star trek shirt. But I'm assuming you're not too worried about that or you wouldn't even be deliberating but standing in lthe long line of cool people trying to be the first to get the new cool thing. (Nothing says cool more than that.)
There are other reasons to buy the toy cell as it is cute, but I won't go into all the other reasons here.

And then there is the tool. It does a lot more, but mostly it gives you freedom, it is not the fascistic place of the mac/ipod/iphone users. If you are a serious user, and need the phone for more than simply calling, and perhaps browsing the net, as for example you might want to use it as an internet phone when you're abroad with wifi connection instead of paying the huge roaming fees that the iphone demands of you, then you will obviously want to but the tool.

But then, the tool, the Nokia e71, being as nice as it is, does seem to be a tool from the last century. I mean the iphone interface did change the game. There is simply no comparison. (I know neither of the operating systems very well, but played around with the Nokia e61 , the iphone, and some HTC's).

Now at last the tools have caught up and there is no reason to get the toy. You have HTC diamond, and soon the HTC Touch HD that Dupin talked about in this post . These would seem much better than the iphone. Especially the Touch HD seems great. Then of course you have the new nokia's which are starting to come with a new operating system also. (there is also samsung, xperia  etc.) Now that they caught on, there is no more reason for the toy, which is by now technologically quite behind them, (especially as ít has a very short battery which you can't replace which pretty much make it a no show for the pro) except that it's interface is perhaps a tiny bit still ahead of them. By now though it is not enough to warrant a consideration among the many new tools for any reason besides your image. 

Hey,
Funny discussion. Perhaps I'll add to what Roy said regarding the iphone/ipod and the image.

Apple apparently spends about half a billion dollars, yes 500 million, on advertising each year. This is quite a number, and you can buy a lot of hearts and minds with that kind of dough.
This is not to say the iphone isn't cute. It's cute alright, but the reliogious place it took where there are followers and havens, and the fanatisicim with which they hate the nonbelievers and go everywhere to spread the gossip and speak of how theirs is the right religion, is scary.


This is not the discussion for it but apple and its iphone/ipod/mac, is just one more example of the rise of a certain religious fanatisicism in the world that we see everywhere. It takes many different shapes, and there have been some discussion on it here already.
It is not that any single one is precisely bad in its own right. Obama could be a great president. Lebron James is definietely a great basketball player and there are many good things about apple. But the furver, the followers, the believers, the group mentality, is not unlike what we see with Islam.

Hi Ram,
In case you're still thinking about this (and I'm sure others are), here are a couple of thoughts.

- As John points out, Apple spends a lot (he quotes $500M annually) on advertising.  I don't have a firm number for Nokia, but I've seen its annual advertising listed at $250M to $400M or more annually.  And I guess the Apple figure is for all advertising, not just the iPhone.  There doesn't seem to be much of a distinction here in the effort to secure "hearts and minds."  (Nor on the design front, even if Apple is a step ahead in creating technology-fetish objects.)

- An iPhone is considerably less expensive than the Nokia e71, and prices well in comparison to most smartphones.

But your original question was about how to decide whether to get a toy or a tool.  I think the distinction may not be extremely helpful, even if the iPhone's design makes it look more like a toy.  I hadn't planned to buy an iPhone but wound up with a first-generation model because of some work I was doing.  I haven't ever had a Symbian device like the Nokia, but my experience with the iPhone suggests it may be a better tool than the other respondents assume.  It has a few things that may appear (and may be, for some people) limitations:

- No keyboard.  Obviously if you're used to typing business emails on a Blackberry, you may find the iPhone onscreen keyboard clumsy.  I'm more comfortable with it than with tiny keyboards.

- Lack of first-party business applications.  Apple chose not to include a mobile office suite in the iPhone, whereas many other platforms (like Windows Mobile) include this.  The omission was probably well-calculated, though as Apple tries to target the corporate market this could change.  As for me, I like to be able to read spreadsheets and Word documents but not necessarily edit them on the phone, and there are several third-party applications for this.

- No support yet for email encryption.  This could be important for some business users.

- Shorter battery life than, say, my old phone.  A lot of smartphones have this problem, though some people report longer life with the Nokia e71.

On the other hand, there's more third-party software (of varying quality) for the iPhone than for other platforms that I'm aware of.  Those who say the business-oriented phones do a lot more may be jumping to conclusions.  The iPhone SDK, even with its restrictions, gives more freedom to developers than the older platforms; and already I think there are a lot more useful programs for it than for Symbian.  Google's Android platform could challenge the iPhone on this ground, but it has to do a lot of catching-up.

Finally, one person seemed to say that the iPhone doesn't work with WiFi, so that you would be stuck with expensive roaming costs if you travel abroad and use it for internet access; this is incorrect.

I would also say that the iPhone's hardware and operating system is still quite a lot more advanced than most of the others, including the Windows-based HTC Touch.  (You can easily find side-by-side hardware comparisons on the web.)

I don't mean this to be exactly an argument for buying the iPhone, but it seemed like some talk about feature comparison might help.

P.S. I noticed this little article about business software for the iPhone: http://www.insidecrm.com/features/iphone-tips-111908/