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Comment by pietro | Hacker News Reader

Except for video recordings, a decent camera, and built-in TV. Those are standard features in high-end phones in Europe and Japan.

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I live in "Europe" and I've never seen anyone watch TV on their phone before, despite it being free with most contracts. Also, no phone has a decent camera; even the Sony C905 (which is probably the best camera phone available in Europe) is mediocre as a camera, providing very noisy 8MP JPGs with horrible colors.

In a few years, a company is going to release a CCD that can shoot high-quality 720p video and decent-quality images and is small enough to fit in a phone. When this happens, I guarantee you that the iPhone will have it just like all other cameraphones.

I saw a guy a few weeks ago on an evening train in Tokyo watching a ballgame split-screen with his email app, where he was writing a reply. He sent the mail, and then the TV app went back to full-screen. I don't watch TV, but that was just amazingly cool.

A year ago or so at a mid-scale sushi restaurant some guys sitting nearby were watching the ballgame on their phone, though thankfully they had the sound off.

I just got back from lunch, where the guy next to me was watching the Japan-Korea baseball game on his cell phone.

Built-in TV is a joke.

Why?

Have you ever seen an OTAHD antenna? That's why.

N95 has TV in some countries. The phones look like ordinary N95s. So do lots of Telstra phones in Australia (which have Foxtel content) and KDDI phones in Japan. They just look like ordinary phones.

The Telstra phones stream the Foxtel content digitally over NextG if I'm not mistaken?

Yup, and good point: there's no need for a giant antennae, anything capable of 3G can do it fine.

Yeah built-in TV will never happen on the iPhone because it competes directly with iTunes store purchases.

And the ability to use a phone outside the country your purchased it in. Hey Apple, early adopters travel! Stop raping your customers with stupid activation procedures!

(I purchased an AT&T iPhone, using it with an Apple agreed carrier in the UK, the phone won't activate anyway)

oh ffs. Do you people exhibit this constant bitchiness in real life too?

and Flash

which, to be fair, isn't supported on any other iPhone-caliber device either.

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