Spalpeen

Paul over at Online Journalism Blog wrote up a little points based rundown of the iPhone vs. N95’s capabilities as a tool for journalists. Here are my counter-points to Paul’s points:

The iPhone is my personal phone, although I’ve used the N95 pretty extensively (see: Mahalo Daily’s Qik Account and Jcal’s live stream of the Tesla).

1. Yes, I agree about the iPhone’s camera. It should be better. I don’t use it really. That said, although the N95’s camera is better, the ergonomics of the phone, and the kinda flaky software means the N95 is hardly a breeze to use.

2. Moot point. iPhone doesn’t have built-in video functionality, so you’re not going to buy one to use it for that purpose.

3. Qik and other live streaming services are massively overrated. The N95 BURNS through batteries while live streaming. If you’re doing a quick, staged video for 5 minutes you’re good. But if you want to cover anything longer than a short one-off shot, don’t bother. Signal drops out all the time. Qik drops out all the time (requiring a reboot of the software).

4. Why would you want to look at a web page on the N95?! Seriously, browsing is godawful on that thing.

5. Opera’s good, but it ain’t nothing on the iPhone’s web browser.

6. Battery power ain’t great on the iPhone, but neither is it great on the N95. If you’re shooting video consistently, you’re gonna need 2,3 or 4 batteries, which means turning off and on the camera 4, 6, or 8 times.

7. iPhone does record audio. http://www.iphone-recorder.com/ Plenty of apps on the iTunes Store do it.

8. Getting apps on the N95 is a pretty dreadful experience. Far more convenient on the iPhone, and you pretty much have a guarantee that they’ll work as they’re supposed to.

9. Subjective. I can type faster on the iPhone than I can on the N95.

10. Ewww. What’s the point of a mobile if you need to lug around a clunky, plasticy keyboard thing?

Bottom line: the iPhone cannot be used as a tool for journalists, although you can email, twitter, send photos, record audio, and keep track of things perfectly well on it. The N95 supposedly does work for covering live events using video, but in reality it’s a complete dog. It’s fiddly, it gets hot, the battery runs out quickly, the UI is dreadful. Doing thing like twitter, email, send photos, is much less efficient on the N95.

If I was a journalist covering an event, the combo I’d prefer is an iPhone, coupled with a decent HD cam (like the Xacti HD-1000), a decent camera light, a Seinheisser wireless lavalier microphone kit, and a Mac laptop with a good 3G card. Which is coincidentally the exact combo we used at Mahalo Daily to cover CES and Comic-Con 2008 at what I’d like to call “near live” speed (edited videos went up between 5-50 minutes after shooting). We shot over 50 videos of 50 products at CES (Alienware Curve Video, 900,000 views, Optimus Maximus video, 500,000 views) getting over 5 million views, and although it was crazy hard work for everyone, it would have been as impossible to pull off with an N95 as it would have been to shoot it on DV.