The weight thing and the 7135? Alright, I'll give you that one when comparing it to the i500; that one's pretty cut and dry. The exploding batteries? I've had a 7135 for well over a year now and have yet to see it or hear of someone first hand. I know it must have happened, don't get me wrong. But how many total 7135 owners had batteries "explode"? We'll probably never know, but I CAN tell you one thing: How many i500's are without an expansion slot? Yep, you guessed it, all of them. Anyway, how can anyone call the i500 a "converged device". What devices has it converged? How many mp3's can you load on it? Oh yeah, about 3 if you have any extra programs on it. And I absolutely love it when people say "well, I don't care about mp3's anyway, so that doesn't matter to me..." Uh huh, that's why i5 users carry an iPod with them at the same time. How many pictures can you load on an i5? Well, if you loaded the rocking 12 minutes of mp3's on it, maybe 2; that should leave you with just about enought room to play the 1 extra game that can be loaded on it. Wait, I forgot, i5 users don't care about playing games either. I mean, if REALLY want to play games, I can buy a small Gameboy or something, right? And backing up your data so you don't have to be near your laptop or desktop all the time in case something happens? Yeah, you're right, that's overrated too. So, let's recap here on what a "converged" device really is:
Without expansion, the musical part of the "converged device" is severely limited. Without expansion, the virtual wallet of kids, vacations, etc. is even more severely limited. Without expansion, the number of extra 3rd party applications is pretty limited (not severely though, I admit)...we all know how award-winning the programs preloaded on our devices are, so we shouldn't NEED 3rd party apps, right?
Bottom line on the i5 is that it IS a smaller device that runs the same OS as the bulkier 7135, but it is EXTREMELY crippled for any real "convergent"-type of use due to no expansion. Add an expansion, and you've got yourself a 7135 killer maybe, I'll admit. But the fact of the matter is that the i5 is nothing more than a pretty, neutered, "I desparately wanna be a convergent device" piece of...Sprint PCS hype.
Who's next? (ha ha)
I'm not really too sure how much I've got left in me here; I've been pretty busy trash-talkin'!