Two days ago, I was at the local business center. I was looking at the possibility of getting a new cell phone (NO, not an iPhone!), because here in Korea, you have several choices for phone plans and purchases. As a foreigner, you can’t get a contract where the phone is provided as part of the contract - that’s because most of the foreigners here are military types (who come here for a year, and then head off to their next duty station), or tourists - mainly from Europe.

Therefore, cell phone contracts here are for two or more years - and if you get one, the Korean government gives a “rebate” to the cell phone provider for each customer they have. With non-work visa foreigners, they don’t get that rebate.

So, because they can’t get that rebate, and because most foreigners are here for only a short period of time, cell phone deals are hard to come by.

Case in point…

I was looking at cell phones at the business center. Because I’m a foreigner here on a government contract, I don’t qualify for the deals that people get if they are citizens here or if they have a foreign work visa. The phone that caught my eye: An LG “Prada” KE850. Price: 750,000 Won (that’s about $798!). For a phone with a touch screen - and nothing else - oh, wait, you can watch TV, and you can listen to the radio, and you can play MP3s (it has an 8GB built in storage for that) and take pictures (using its 2.0 MP camera) and video (as much as 8 Gigs will hold) at 30 fps. It looks cool too… here - take a look:

As you can see, it’s a sleek looking piece of equipment. I really want one of these, but at almost $800 without the contract, it’s not worth it. I know - a lot of you would say that this is an iPhone knock off, but in actuality, it was out before the iPhone was (here in Korea and Europe anyway). Throw in 460 minutes of local talk time at $180/month, and owning this phone becomes something for the wealthy, or those with money to burn (which I don’t).

Anyway, my point is, not that the “Prada” is the next big thing in phones - but that touch screen phones will be the next big thing. No matter what.

I give it one year - 1-1/2 at most. You are going to see a flood of touch screen phones hit the market.

Samsung has one coming out sometime this fall. The F700 as it’s called - here’s a look at it:

As you can see, this one has a QWERTY keyboard, accessible by sliding the phone (similar to many of HTC’s offerings) faceplate. The screen rotates when you slide the faceplate, and the touch screen’s “buttons” can be felt by the user by using “VibeTonz” technology, which basically vibrates the phone when you touch a button. I think this is probably similar to what I noticed when playing with the “Prada” above: When ever I touched a button on the screen of the phone, the phone seemed to vibrate. The illusion it gave was that I was touching the button, and the button was vibrating - that and the tactile feel of the screen gave an even more realistic sense of touching a button. The cost of the Samsung is supposed to be even higher than that of the “Prada,” but as it hasn’t been released yet I couldn’t tell you whether that is true or not. I don’t have the full specs on this phone, but I do believe it has a 5.0 MP camera.

With the recent price drop of the iPhone, I don’t expect to see prices for these phones stay in the stratosphere for too long. Soon, everyone will be competing with everyone else to have the “coolest” touch phones. Apple’s share of that market will diminish quickly, and those of us who ride the wave and wait will be rewarded with cooler phones at a cost that’s less than what the early adopters paid.

You can already find the LG phone on eBay and craigslist for less than $500 U.S (it won’t work here in Korea). Soon they’ll be hitting the sub $300s.

BlackWolf
[tags]blackwolf, apple, iphone, LG, Samsung, Prada, cellular, cell, mobile phone, touch screen, F700, KE850[/tags]