I’m a few days behind in my news reading after a week of lounging on the beach, so I just caught Engadget’s Samsung’s IP phone post. Supposedly it shows TV on its miniature screen, allows video conferencing, plays music and offers access to online shopping. Since I love the Verizon IP phone Dave and I saw demo’ed back in July, you’d think the Samsung version would tickle my fancy. Not so much.
Both with the video and the music, you’re not getting either great quality (big screen/nice speakers) or the convenience of portability. And shopping on this phone while my PC is nearby? I can’t imagine it.
The reason I like the Verizon Hub is because of its simplicity. While I’m happy to open up my laptop to do some online shopping, I’d rather not have to fire up the PC when all I want is a traffic and weather update. Plus the Verizon Hub is designed to act as a remote control for all the other media around my house. I consider that a much better task for such a small gadget than trying to be an everything-in-one device.
Granted, the debate is somewhat academic as neither of these IP phones is available to US consumers yet. (Check out the Google translation of Samsung’s Korean press release.) But hopefully that will change in ’08.