Several bloggers act as if the Neo1973 was a fair contender to the Apple iPhone. To be fair, it does have two things going for it: it’s screen resolution allows for twice the area (that really is a nice improvement, but at the same time, the screen is also 20% smaller), and anyone gets to write their own apps on it – though as for the iPhone, the jury is still out on the latter one; there still isn’t a completely clear, official announcement on Apple regarding a third-party SDK.

But aside from that, the thing is a completely different device; the stark price tag difference alone ($350 without a contract vs. $499 with one) should be enough of a clue that the “Neo” is, in comparison, a low-end device. It’s a smart phone alright, and it has few buttons, but that’s where the differences end.

Does it have multi-touch, which makes up virtually all of the iPhone’s interface benefits? No; they’re merely considering it for a successor.
Does it have any of the sensors? No. It does have GPS, but then again, it has no camera.
Does it have WiFi? No! USB 2.0? No, 1.1, without power. EDGE? No, only GPRS!
4 GBs of storage? No, 64 MBs.
Play videos? “Maybe”.
Show photos? Doesn’t say.
Sync your music, photos, videos, contacts, calendars? Doesn’t say.
Does it double as a hard drive? Oh, right, the lack of storage.
Does it look like everyone had their brains off while working on it? Yes.

Remind me, again, how, aside from being smartphones, the two devices are even remotely similar?

Instead of addressing one of the greatest iPhone limitations, lack of 3G, they made their “alternative” even worse by not even providing EDGE, let alone WiFi. Instead of thinking about what else can be accomplished with a multi-touch screen, they deferred that feature to “maybe later”, completely missing the point. Being able to juggle with microSD cards is a nice geeky option, but it’s not something the average user will like to do, and it drives the true price up quite a bit.