clue free

Saw my first Google G1 early adopter this morning on the subway. Unfortunately, he was doing nothing to dissipate its for-geeks-only image.

• CRT tan
• Skullet
• Giant backpack
• Apple-shaped physique (oh the irony)
• Grease spots on various parts of clothing
• Untied shoes

Long story short, the G1 was obviously the cleanest thing this guy owned. In the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads, he could play the Linux box. So now, with character development out of the way, I can proceed to the point–or rather, observation–which is not that only iPhone users can be cool.

Keeping a safe distance from Our Hero, I watched as he panned up and down web pages and played around with a few of the built-in apps and the Android Market.  He was having a groovy time being a groovy person.  As we started to descend into the tunnel that leads to Manhattan, I noticed that his expression was cooling.  He started to fidget.  His face looked like he was wondering if he left hair in the shower drain, without actually caring one way or the other.  He put the phone away, briefly… then took it back out, used it for 5 seconds, and then just cradled it, stealing glances at the other passengers, not quite half embarrassed.

He seemed to have run out of things to do, and didn’t know how to reconcile this with the fact that he now had this shiny new toy.

I think this was his first smartphone.

Anecdotally, I’ve known plenty of geeks and gearheads who resisted smartphones for one reason or another.  Some sniffed at the quality of each converged component, preferring instead to lug around dedicated devices (including a full-size SLR, in one case. Giant Backpack Dorks of the world, unite!)  Others simply wished for the more straightforward interface and reliable performance of “a phone that is just a phone.”

When someone like this purchases one device that rolls telephony, web, email, calendar/to-do, media playback, video and still photography, GPS, and metric dozens of other yet-to-be-discovered functions into one box that fits in your pocket, there’s a natural expectation that you will never, ever, be bored, ever again.  A steal at only $179.99 with two-year commitment!

Well, yes, except that we always find a way to get bored.  People go broke filling their house with blinking distraction gear and still complain that there’s nothing to do.  Everyone gets to that quasi-zen moment when, surrounded by all your ass-kicking LED-sporting gear, you just can’t bring yourself to use any of it. Ironically, depending on how determined you are to vanquish boredom forever, you will experience the Moment more often than others.

The difference here is–rather than the rainy Sunday afternoon when this usually happens–smartphones have the potential to put this moment out in public.  This morning, one guy got there, on his way to work.

The new Treo looks sweet!  What a relief.  While they were rarely on the bleeding edge of technology, Palm has been the only handheld maker I’m aware of that consistently delivered a great experience.  This was the case until Apple got into the game, although Apple itself has had a bunch of stink centered on its recent release.

Luckily for the rest of us, Apple has raised the game to the point where the old guard finally have to bring a real game to the game.  We’re finally getting past the point where you have to choose between 3G or WiFi or touchscreen or GPS or looking like an industrial air conditioner. Sure, these were not trivial technical problems to solve (that’s a whole bunch of radios in a tight little space), but hardly insurmountable to a determined group of engineers.  It’s shameful that Apple was able to take so much market share so quickly from the hegemony of Nokia, Motorola, Sony, RIM, and yeah, Palm, but it’s not without precedent that they enter and dominate a market years late. The fat cats at the top get lazy, dole out token upgrades every once in a while, knuckle under to the carriers… and maybe people start to suspect that their hardware can actually do more. So one day, someone shows the unwashed masses that yeah, they’re right. (And some of us ask how T-Mobile dares use “Get More” as a slogan, considering how often carriers nerf promising handsets.)

People one day (next week-ish) will point to the iPhone as the inflection point where the general populace realized that it could do so much more with its phone than just call people. People still think of a car in the same way they did 100 years ago; their cellphones, not so much. Now you can map, surf the web, read books, watch full-length movies, play quality games, etc., etc., etc..  But people still, by and large, seem to think this is the purview of the iPhone, even though my HTC TyTN II–a year ago–could do everything the iPhone 3G can today. And a Treo 5 years ago could, too, just a little slower.

So thanks, old guard, for holding us back all this time. You have no one to blame but yourselves for the pickle you find yourselves in, and maybe some of you will be wiser on the next round.