Apple just made another billion dollars by announcing that 3 + 1 = 4 and instructing everyone to love 4 (disregarding all previous instructions to love 3, G or even S). But for those who still haven't bought into the iPhone craze, you might be wondering, "Is it really that great?"
To find out, I decided to make my own phone instead.
Ladies and gentlemen: the "tPhone"
I'll be comparing my state-of-the-art "tPhone" to the iPhone in a set of standardized tests, then declaring a winner.
Availability
iPhone
The iPhone 4 is unavailable in Toronto, with every store completely sold out. Even if I wanted one, I wouldn't be able to get an iPhone for weeks.
tPhone
Plenty in stock!
A Luddite electronics department
I chose a few tPhone components from the canned goods aisle of my local supermarket, then brought them home.
Bonus: "Installation" involves a hammer
Easy-open cans are normally for people too lazy to deserve food, since struggling with a recalcitrant can opener is the closest Americans still come to killing real food with their bare hands, like they're meant to. But as the founding member of the Not Coring My Own Ear Out Of My Head With A Sharpened Can Society, I bought easy-open cans anyway.
Also, if iPhone released "Dynamite Hot" Chili-flavored phones, I would totally buy them.
SCORING:
tPhone: 1
iPhone: 0
Price
iPhone
Without a contract, the iPhone 4 costs seven hundred dollars. I started writing a list of everything else I want that I could buy for $700, and stopped when I realized I had written down all of it. Even the threesome.
Of course, you can get the phone for less if you enter a servitude contract with your phone company, but I've got these lunatic theories where:
a) They're meant to be serving me;
b) I travel and need a mobile phone which still works when you take it places (i.e., a "mobile" phone);
c) Call me Captain Crazy, but I prefer to own things I've already bought.
tPhone
Seven bucks, and I already had the hammer. Remember that before you complain.
SCORING:
tPhone: 2
iPhone: 0
Probability Of Attack By Non-Wild Animals
I'm not going to lie: the iPhone has an almost infinitely lower chance of being chewed in half by pets.
SCORING:
tPhone: 2
iPhone: 1
Style
iPhone
This is the iPhone's entire deal, with a unique look, slick interface, and PR which somehow makes an ordinary phone more exciting to most people than blowjobs. Or in the wrong part of town, seventy blowjobs.
tPhone
I'm obviously biased (and right), so I recruited Wallybob to help me test the tPhone. Since he also owns an iPhone 4, early test results were negative...
With bonus unimpressedness from random background strangers
... but I realized - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
SUCCESS! Make it white, stick an Apple on it, and you can shift anything!
BONUS: You can now install as many apps as you like on the first widescreen smartphone!
SCORING (DRAW):
tPhone: 2
iPhone: 1
Local Calls
iPhone
The iPhone 4 is famously not very good at making calls, to the point where they've apologized, given away free things, and started shouting "Maybe you are, but what am I?" so badly they were forced to stop.
Oh, and they fired the guy who built it. In case that means anything.
tPhone
As we hooked up our tPhone for its first calling tests, we encountered disasters! Fearing nuclear war, the Dynamite Hot Chili cans were apparently designed to withstand an atomic blast, making their base too thick for phone calls! The only person who could get our prototype tPhone to transmit sound would be Black Canary.
It would be perfect for her though, as she goes through a lot of phones.
But if there's one thing I've learned from Apple, it's that terminal design flaws aren't a problem: they're a chance to sell another phone! Ladies and gentlemen, we present the tPhone 3G!
They're also lighter than the previous model, and in stark defiance of capitalism they're cheaper too!
These worked much better.
BONUS: Never again will you be stuck shouting "WHERE ARE YOU!" in a crowded bar.
There he is!
SCORING:
tPhone: 3
iPhone: 1
But can the the tPhone truly compete with advanced smartphone features? I recruited the Kink Engineers to find out.
Please continue to Part 2: Video Chats and More!
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