It's got an ugly UI... Phone manufacturers never seem to get the UI right.

Damn, that's funny! But the real question is how long it takes the fruit to file suit?

OK I'm sorry but you really need "Steve Jobs" Halo/Horn icons, damn it!

The bald icon dude is Steve Jobs who did you think it was.

It will just plan vacuum. Not that Samsung can't produce nice things - but lets face it. Sprint has a cell phone network like:

1) The Chicago Cubs have a chance of winning the baseball pennant.

2) GW Bush can be reelected

3) The Brits will adopt the Euro

4) The French will adopt the Pound

Ed's right; that is one butt-ugly UI.

Still, if it pushes the envelope on superphones, more power to 'em.

I think I'll be interesting to see if emerging competition turns the independent OS/X developer community into a significant (and lasting) edge for Apple.

Don't be so hard on bws, looking at the "official" picture, you'd never believe it was supposed to be the same person:

http://www.apple.com/pr/photos/execs/jobsphotos.html

Loverly syrup innit?

And therefore are very pleased to see a phone doing all the things the Jesus phone advertisers said it would do. Only probably more reliably.

Let me guess, that handy 'FUN :-)' icon cannot be removed or reprogrammed, and goes to a Sprint walled garden where you can buy games and ringtones?

I suspect that rather than a syrup, it is instead an old photo - looks like it was from before his cancer episode a few years back... perhaps even dating back to when he regained control....

You really need some Ballmer icons, maybe an animated dancing Ballmer?

Cos it's black and wicked and the devil always has the best tunes.

INdiSTINCT

I just typed 'Jesus Phone' into Google and a Wikipedia article was NOT among the first three results!

The Reg had best investigate this!

Slightly OT but some else mentioned UI's first...

Isn't it about time the UI's of mobile phones were properly, truly skinnable? Something akin to WinAMPs v5 system would be fantastic! Don't like the menu looking as it is? Totally re-skin it. Don't like the provided icons? Throw your own in. Hate the Signal Strength and Battery indicators being where they are... move them... or banish them to their own 'page'... The possibilities would be endless...

Surely it must be possible?

Sure, now you can get an uglier jesus phone that's locked into Sprint's proprietary charge-you-for-everything network. Sure access and messaging are free now (for $100 a month, compared to Suncom's $79) but if you want a ringtone it's $4 each, and you don't even get an MP3 of the song to go with it. Cheap ass games are as much as $15 each, and some have monthly use charges on top of that... Sure, iPhone store will charge too, but there will also be free apps a pleanty. There are free apps for a lot of sprint devices, but there are NONE today for this new OS...

It looks somewhat sturdy from the pic, but I doubt it has the iPhones durability. The OS is clearly not Win mobile or Blackberry, so will it have Exchange IMAP support? It's not exactly coming soon, so y the time it;s out, so too will be a 3G iPhone, not long after I suspect a 700MHz iPhone too.

GPS is included? well, google maps is pretty damned close, but since bluetooth has GPS syncing, it won't be long until a software update enables that and then if the phone is near any GPS device, it will be able to use it, without draining your battery 24/7 pullung GPS when you're not interested. (and without making the device bigger) There's a few GPS bluetooth adapters out that simply plug into a cigarette lighter. That's it. That's all you need. walking around town? I don't need the GPS adapter. I'm not going that fast, i can read street signs, and the "current location" feature usually gets the map within 1 block of my location, if not closer... If I'm near wifi, I've gotten it to spot me inside the right storefront...

- Locked into Sprint vs locked into AT&T, I'll stay with AT&T.

- iPhone OS vs whatever the crap this new thing has? OS X all the way.

- Packed with applications? great, another Sprint device that has 50%v of it's application memory or more used up from day 1, and I likely won't be able to delete apps I don't want... I'll keep my iPhone.

- "is that an iPhone, can i see?" vs. "ah, an iPhone clone, whatever" Annoying either way, but being the center of attention is better than being the center of the joke.

Here's another thing to considder: the iPhone is based on a core OS more than 7 years old, is extremely stable, and has a developer network of over 100,000 people. 6 months from now the OS on the phone will be even better, and there will be hundreds of apps for it. It will be a mature 2.0 device. This new phone was likely smashed to gether by a pressured crew in less than a year, uses borrowed technology and duck taped together features on an all new UI. Can you predict how stable it will be? How secure it will be? That apps of any decent quality will actually be flowing out for a device with the tinyest fraction of the market on an OS noone knows anything about? At best it will be released as a slightly unstable beta device. A year after it's on the market, maybe it might have a chance at competing, but then, what's iPhone 3.0 going to look like?

The double standards faced by developers today...

If I as a developer put a "Buy it Now" button on my commerce web site I'd probably get the pants sued off me, but you can go out and completely duplicate someone else's product as much as possible right down to the silver bezel and absolutely nothing will happen.

What a crock of ....

Better proportions, IMO. Probably better everything else, too...

Hell, I thought it was balmer... My mistake.

Before i'm flamed for obvious reasons: MY MISTAKE! I f'd up! I need glasses as the icon was too small...

Apple fanboy alert!

iPhone durability? My cousin accidentally dropped his 18 inches of the sofa, onto a laminate floor and the entire top half of the screen shattered! Many moons ago my old 3310 survived being repeated thrown across a room and my latest PocketPC phone thing doesn't seem to mind being dropped from a normal 'held' position onto concrete/tarmac floors (Its been subjected to that several times on nights out). Yeah, its got a few dints and scratches now but still works (same goes for my old LG phone).

What use will ANY of the iPhones 100s of apps really be? Apple will ban all the really, really good stuff 3rd party developers could do with the phone and then Apple will nick all the best ideas and implement them themselves in their "Look what we did, we invented it! Well, it doesn't have all the functionality [of what the other developer wanted to do] but you won't notice that because look, look all you magpies... its nice and shiny..." way. So, by all means, have fun with your 20 variations of slick looking calculators, currency convertors and such forth! iPhone apps are going to be nothing more than the raft of java crap that is currently available for 'normal' phones.

As far as other phone manufacturers operating systems go I think the likes of Samsung, Nokia, LG and a few others have pretty much figured out what they are doing by now! You do realise that Apple didn't invent the mobile phone do you? Apple haven't even revolutionised the mobile phone! Apple just appealed to all the fanboys, hairdressers that drive convertibles, 'fashion concious' pretty boys (and girls) and the odd business who's desperatly trying to look cool and 'in' and got you all hook, line and sinker!

I don't know anyone who after initially being very smug about owning an iPhone hasn't eventually admitted "Yeah, its not that good really... Yeah it looks real nice and swishy but its still a little rubbish". Unfortunately they still continue to leave it in plain sight on tables at the first opportunity or insist on screaming into it (Dom Jolly style) "Hello? Yeah, I'm on my iPhone"

Christ, I'm bored of fanboys... I'm gonna find an XBox360 article and start bestowing the virtues of the PS3...

Looks the same doesnt mean copy. You could argue it looks like the HTC, or any other touch phone that existed before the iphone.

Im soooo patenting the clamshelll phone, oh wait....

"Phone durability? My cousin accidentally dropped his 18 inches of the sofa, onto a laminate floor and the entire top half of the screen shattered! "

And Mine has been dropped repeatedly from waist height and its still just fine.

Only broken screen I've seen was run over by a car.