The Blackberry iPhone... I mean Storm
We all know the iPhone revolutionized the Smartphone market, and that everyone else has been playing catch-up. But today we saw the best proof that everyone is simply copying the iPhone.
When Vodafone needed to create the new official marketing material for the much anticipated Blackberry Storm, they "accidentally" made this... Yes, it is a Blackberry Storm with a "photoshopped" iPhone interface. And yes, this is the official marketing material from Vodafone.
(Pictures via Engadget)
Come on, how low can you get...
And, in case you are wondering. The Blackberry Storm's real interface is not that bad, so why did they use the iPhone's interface?
Comments
Martin Jansson - Oct. 9, 2008
As the Storm interface, as well as the iPhone's, allow only one short line of text below the icons on the home screen, I think it's extremely important to think through your application names. On the iPhone, all of Apples own applications have short names that fit under the icon.
Looking at the above example of the Storm home screen, we have one application called "Vodafone..." and one "Vodafone I..." and I have no idea what either of those two are, although I'm guessing the first one is some kind of music player. We also have "Instant messag...", which is quite clear what it is, but it's not pretty.
As I have updated certain applications bought on my iPhone's App Store, I've noticed that some of them changed their name slightly when updating, just to avoid getting dots in the name on the home screen, I guess.
Jens Lund - Oct. 9, 2008
From the pictures above it also seems like there is at least 5 icons using a folder as symbol. This means you actually have to pay attention to the icon and the text under the icons. And why use a folder as an icon for games and im?
I do se why BlackBerry might prefer to keep a monochrome'ish color scheme instead of the iPhones colorfull use of icons, but that means the user have to distinguish between the icons in another way than remembering a color. Therefor the icons should be even more different from each other.
Thomas Baekdal - Oct. 9, 2008
Jens, that is another good point. I was actually thinking the same last night... the dark interface looks "stylish" but it is very hard to distinquish each icon from each other
Published: Oct. 8, 2008 in notes
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Thomas Baekdal - Oct. 8, 2008
BTW: Also read Blackberry News's commentary on this marketing failure:
http://www.blackberrynews.com/2008/10/08/vodafone-launches-storm-site-needs-new-marketing-department/#more-1122
Not only did they overlay the iPhone interface, but they also use an iPhone with a cingular network (a competitor to Vodafone)... and the strange "blackberry logo" on the map is actually the logo from the Blackberry News website.