“….doesn’t it make you feel a bit odd that everyone else appeared to be using the iPhone?”
Not at all, the iPhone was released a good 2 years before the HTC Hero came out, and I wouldn’t even begin to deny just how successful the iPhone has been, still is and will continue to be. But, and maybe I didn’t stress this enough, it’s telling that:
a) the only people who asked me about my HTC Hero were iPhone owners, and not owners of feature phones or other smart phones. Read into that what you will, but Apple’s smartphone marketshare is small when compared to the other players, particularly Nokia.
b) they were impressed that my phone could support multitasking/widgets/etc., and they expressed frustation that their iPhones couldn’t do multitasking (save music playback)!
And that’s what struck me as odd, these people weren’t gadget geeks, just ordinary users, and yet they had grown to dislike the limitations of the iPhone. I’m not talking about a huge sample of people here, about 5 people, 4 of which were complete strangers. Whether you believe me or not is neither here nor there, most iPhone reviews have expressed the same sentiments on this issue, particularly on the 3gs. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple were to completely change their UI/OS to support widgets/multitasking. I do believe that the iPhone is a better phone, it’s also a better multimedia device (it supports TV-Out), it offers a better casual gaming experience and has faster performance, and it is the reason why I also own an iPhone (it’s my business phone).