Recent mobile developments

Over the past couple of weeks there have been some rather major announcements in the mobile phone space (something someone living in Finland tends to be interested in!), and rather than a this set of thoughts just turning into another "those guys said it better" type post in a couple of months, here it is (in all of it's <> glory)

iPhone 3G -
Not much from hardware point of view (3G & GPS). The benefit of this (as i see it) is that the first generation owners don't feel so left out in the cold, it also allows those people who need to upgrade a possibility to sell on their first generation phones (as there will be some sort of market for those).

Really it was all about the software (latest AllAboutSymbian podcast noticed this) - for instance the inbuilt calculator making use of rotation, finally something other than the gallery and movie viewer app
New development tools are supposed to be really easy to use (drag & drop development, just how realistic is this?)
Enterprise stuff - Cisco VPN client built in & working
Apple tends to release small improvements to it's hardware platforms (at least since i have been watching them recently over the past 3-5 years), but keep supporting previous platforms (within limits of the hardware), everyone else seems to forget the old devices.
This gives you a slight feeling of confidence when buying the hardware, as you know at least next couple of releases of software will run on it.
I have seen quotes floating around the web that the life span of Apple hardware is approximately 5 years (with some form of updated hardware being bought sooner than that and the old hardware being kept on for occasional or emergency use)

Nokia E71 -
Saw the announcement of this and, WOW, shame about the camera (crappy optics apparently) but VERY low cost for the hardware you are receiving.
Reviews:
My-Symbian.com review
AllAboutSymbian Review
AllAboutsymbian multimedia review (in this one there is a quote about QVGA video at 15 fps, which looks wrong according to the specs at Forum Nokia (the front "video call" (has anyone EVER used this functionality?) camera does low quality, while the rear "main" camera does similar to the E90 (full VGA 22 fps)) Update (2008.08.22): Seems that on the Forum Nokia page some one had forgot to edit it fully (probably after copying it from the E90 page), and the E71 only does QVGA (320*240) at 15fps. Not so good :(

Comparing the hardware specs on Forum Nokia:
E90 Vs E71,
you can see that they are almost identical (different processors, more bluetooth "things" in E71, etc).

This almost makes me regret spending approximately 900€ on an E90 last year when they came out, but not quite.
For me the giant internal screen, and the opportunity to use a top of the range device for a year was worth it (especially all the cool stuff i have learnt via Jaiku!).

Which would i buy today, I'm not sure.
These are the main "things" i would think about for each device;
iPhone = big screen, smooth user experience, but VERY walled garden,
E71 = probably excellent build quality, some interesting updates to the core S60 software, good size, but small screen
E90 = big screen, slightly better hardware specs, potential laptop replacement device but big for a phone

So for me, today (if I did not have the E90), i would probably buy the E71 and either an iTouch or an N810/N800 to do the browsing on.

Social Networks or Social Objects

I did have some thoughts on this (and in fact started to write up this post a few months back), but these guys have written about this subject much better than i can, so here are some links instead:
Jyri Engeström
Hugh Macleod
Whatleydude (his points about Social objects are further down, and have a number of good links around this.

Seth Godin also talking about "friends"