No iPhone killer... yet

Three have emerged from the dark to beat the one that holds the crown, they fought bravely, but alas no one has prevail to take the title away from the king...

Those three are: BlackBerry Storm, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia N97. While the king who still hold the crown is none other than the iPhone. But is it true? Are those three still not a worthy match to iPhone? Yup, that's from the hands-on and reviews I've read so far. Some of the reviewers have lay it down with harsh words, but not all of them are pointing out the bad so bluntly. Here's the quick recap list on the three warriors who are brave enough to challenge the iPhone:

BlackBerry Storm

• BGR (Boy Genius Report): "At the end of the day, if you’ve been eyeing the Storm, we suggest you either go play with a demo unit at a store, or go ahead and buy one. ... This isn’t a cookie-cutter device, and it’s not for everyone. That said, we’re sure these things are going to fly off the shelves at Verizon stores on Friday, we just have a feeling there will also be a lot of returns."
• Sascha Segan (PC Magazine): "If the phone worked as advertised, it would be one of the two best smartphones you can get in the U.S. (along with the Apple iPhone)—a true breakthrough and a potential 4.5-star product. But until RIM fixes the many scattered bugs, you should wait out the Storm."

For more complete verdicts on the BlackBerry Storm, read the roundup news by Harry McCracken from Technologizer. And don't forget to watch David Pogue interview on his negative comment on the Storm, posted by Sammy yesterday here at PalmAddict.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

• Sascha Segan (PC Magazine): "But, while it is an early model, the 5800 still feels like a panicked reaction to the iPhone. A year of free music may very well vault this handset to success, but the phone I saw still has a way to go."
• Jack Ewing (Business Week): "The top-of-the-line Nseries handsets are the ones that most appeal to the same tech connoisseurs who have made the iPhone such a phenomenon. Vanjoki might let you get away with calling that product an iPhone killer."

Nokia N97

• Paul Miller (Engadget): "We're not quite sure what to make of this phone, to be honest. ... -- it's a fanboy wishlist in so many ways. But the execution on the screen (resistive), keyboard (meh) and software (dated) are all considerable hurdles."


• Amber Bouman (InfoWorld): "I swear if I hear the words "iPhone killer" one more time... If you can, for a moment, pretend that you live in a world without the iPhone, then the release of the N97 certainly becomes something to anticipate."


• Seth Weintraub (Computerworld): "The N97 is just another face in the crowd mobile platform that won't get specialized webpages developed like the iPhone. ... All of the other iPhone and iPod killers before the N97 have failed. This isn't much different."

What is it that iPhone has, and the others don't? Has the secret of iPhone's success become so hard to unravel? With so many money poured in for designing the next "iPhone-killer" handsets by those rich mobile manufacturers, why can't they deliver?

It's a mystery alright, and we'll have to wait until CES 2009 next year to see if there's another challenger or not. Perhaps Palm's "new-ness" is the answer? ;-)