I was quite impressed with the iPhone, as were many others as evidenced by the run-up of Apple's stock in the hours after its announcement. After a few days, however, sobriety set in and I had a few iPhone-related concerns that I included in a blog post. One of those issues questioned how successful Apple would be in preventing similar phones from stealing some of the iPhone's thunder.Well, perhaps "stealing its thunder" is the wrong term to use, because the iPhone could be part of a UI trend that has culminated this year and created phones of which Apple's offering is a notable example. That, at least, is what one could conclude from pictures of a new phone from Samsung (the development of which clearly had to parallel that of the iPhone).Not only does the phone have a touchscreen, but as the photos show, it also has a keyboard hidden underneath. The entire UI is created in Flash, implying a level of UI customizability which doesn't currently exist for the iPhone. Plus, it enables viewing of HTML pages the way god intended them to be viewed. Last, it's 3G, vs. the iPhone's much slower EDGE (or in some cases, GPRS) data connection.I don't know how it sizes up in other areas that matter to business people, such as Exchange integration, but it seems to fill a lot of the gaps in the iPhone, even if it doesn't have Apple's carefully cultivated invidious distinction (I know you don't agree with my use of that term, Anton).As noted by others, Apple isn't walking into a market where there are no serious competitors. This is a market with lots of players, lots of competition, and lots of good design ideas from companies around the world. I have nothing but respect for Apple's hardware design skills. The phone market, however, is different than the market for iPods.It will be a hard slog. That doesn't mean, however, that I'm not happy Apple is going to try it.
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