I am, mostly, reasonably calm.

I think I got to age 17 having spent a long time professionally worrying about things before I realised — perhaps in quite a male manner — that worrying about things is a ridiculous waste of time. Stop worrying about everything, I told myself, and start doing.

So I’m calm, generally.

That is, until you put a video of somebody demonstrating a touchscreen mobile phone that doesn’t actually work properly.

I simply CANNOT stand to see it.

I’ll give you an example.

Many a time I have been at a launch party or event when a manufacturer has had cause to show off a video of their touchscreen device(s) working. Usually the videos are pre-packaged — which winds me up even more.

The videos generally feature a spokesperson showing off the product and marvelling at how good the touchscreen is — what they’re usually doing is telling us (not directly) that they’ve managed to make something that’s as good as — or close to the iPhone.

(Which is another pet hate: Can’t we please have some innovation beyond Apple?)

As the spokesperson is demonstrating, there will come a time when they swipe their finger(s) over the screen and… nothing will happen.

Because the touchscreen is a piece of shit.

The spokesperson things they’ve flicked the screen on. So does the rest of the audience. But the screen hasn’t moved. The spokesperson will notice this a few seconds later and quickly flick his/her finger again. Deliberately. And the screen will move.

And everyone in the sodding room thinks, ‘Er, so, yeah, not quiet up to Apple standard yet.’

This isn’t flucking rocket science, it really isn’t.

I’m going to make an effort to actually call people out on this. I’m going to actually highlight every sodding device that doesn’t WORK properly.

I don’t give a toss about the underlying technology or excuses like that. Either it works like the iPhone or it’s broken.

There’s no arguing here. The flick-and-it-works iPhone model is fantastic. I don’t care who made it or programmed it though. Either the flick works… or it doesn’t.

I understand that if the spokesperson doesn’t TOUCH the screen properly, yes, the device can’t be expected to perform. But 99.999% of the time, it’s the technology being shit.

Would you like a case in point?

Good, I was hoping you’d say yes.

Here, then, is Michael Arrington bumping into another titan of the tech world also called Michael: Michael Dell.

Yup. Even Michael Dell’s technology is inferior to the iPhone. How depressing.

Have a watch:

Near the beginning you’ll see Dell swiping through the new Android handset he’s showing off… and you’ll see him flick-and-… yeah, it doesn’t work.

There is no middle ground. Either it’s a touchscreen (and it works). It can’t be an almost-touchscreen.

Rubbish.

Absolutely rubbish.

Won’t somebody please make touchscreens that work for all phones. Fix the hardware, the software, whatever the hell it is that continues to make fools out of spokespeople everywhere.

Oh it’s an interesting time in the industry, isn’t it? Just a week ago I couldn’t be bothered to even think about the marketplace (given the stagnant year that was 2009) but it’s all NexusNexusNexusOne this week. The hyperbole has been on overdrive for quite a few weeks already, ever since rumours started floating across the internet.

I’ve been eyeing up the various pictures and video with a degree of interest.

My first problem with the device is that it doesn’t have a physical keyboard. That’s not a deal-breaker for me per se, it just means I can’t use it as a primary device. I need a physical keyboard. But then I do have two iPhones so I’d welcome the opportunity to add the Nexus One (at least in theory) to my toolset.

I do like the fact that Google have clearly had their say with the device. It does boast some pretty interesting specs (all ‘rumour’ until actually confirmed today) and it does look a cut above the current marketplace.

What’s interesting is the fact Google are selling it. How many will they flog? I don’t know exactly, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? This is yet another example of operators being used simply as a finance house. Google are heavily educating the general American populace that you can buy a (decent) handset without a nasty contract. This can only be good news. European mobile users are far more aware of their ability to ‘bring their own’ device and acquire their GSM connection from whoever they wish — American normobs are sorely in need of this awareness to help balance the market away from direct mobile operator influence.

In America, though, there’s little or no discount to be had for bringing your own device. Right now you’ll typically pay the same amount of money per month for your Nexus One whether you bought it outright or whether you got it subsidised by the operator. That’s not entirely fair. In Europe, T-Mobile have been particularly adept at telling folk to bring their own handset and offering a substantial monthly discount in return. When you’ve got a marketplace accustomed to demanding ‘free’ £700 handsets every 18 months, anything operators can do to try and avoid having to splash out on subsidies is a good thing.

So educating the market will be useful. A lot of people will, I’m sure, thoroughly enjoy the experience of buying ‘from Google’. I suspect they’ll get a ton of orders from the Silicon Valley zipcodes. How many British folk will be stumping up the equivalent of £400 (or thereabouts) for a Nexus One? I really don’t know. A lot of the uber-loyal Android fans won’t be able to resist the ‘ohmigodGoogle’ lure.

MobileTechWorld picked up French newspaper Le Point’s story reporting that the Nexus One will retail via SFR in France (Q1) for €199 with contract or €450 without.

Standby for the full details — I don’t think we’ll be able to move for Nexus news from the mainstream press over the next few days. You can already get the Nexus One ‘official review’ from Engadget here.

Are you buying one?

Remember back when the iPod was the coolest thing around? The phrase “iPod Killer” is something seemingly every personal media player (PMP) that came out, was at some point, deemed to be.

It turns out, the only thing that ever ended up killing the iPod was the iPhone. One cool, lustful Apple device over another.

But back in the glory days of the PMP, every competitor tried to out-feature and out-spec the iPod as the lack of features was the perceived weakness of the device.

“Hey! The iPod doesn’t have a removable battery or space for a SD card. There’s also no FM radio! Let’s get the boys in engineering on that–stat!”

When it was first released, people figured the Zune was probably over-billed as an iPod killer, but that it would be a successful product in its own right. However, the reason why the Zune turned out nowhere near anything that even resembled an iPod killer is because it’s not about a feature-war. Rather than trying to beat the iPhone by going after its perceived weaknesses–a lack of features, they should have taken the disgusting, slimey, but effective advice of Karl Rove–”Don’t attack your enemy’s weaknesses, attack their strengths.” If you best your competitor’s strengths, all they are left with are the weaknesses.

The reason people loved the iPod (and now the iPhone) was the user experience, not the feature set.

Which brings us to the Droid. Now that the PMP is irrelevant, the Droid is going the Zune route against a different Apple product.

Every review I’ve read says that the two biggest pain points in the Droid are the unusable camera and the dreadful physical keyboard.  I have not had any significant time with the Droid myself, but I ran my thoughts by mobile hardware genius Noah Kravitz of PhoneDog.com who had extended time to play with his Droid review unit, and he agreed in this respect.

In the “Droid Does” campaign it’s a classic case of going after your enemy’s weakness. It seems that they tacked on a horrid physical keyboard  just so they could say that they have one. And the camera?

“Who cares about the actual quality of the camera, let’s make it five megapixels–two better than the iPhone 3GS!! Then let’s make a commercial about it!”

Everyone says that the Droid is the thinnest slider ever, but imagine how much thinner, more lightweight and sleeker a phone it could have been if it didn’t have a keyboard-in-name-only.

The media player also has been receiving poor marks in every review. This is one of the iPhone’s strengths and should have been one the things they were trying to attack. But this brings up a good point: who is “They?” Motorola? Google? Verizon?

This is the fundamental difference between Apple and  Android (and if we’re assuming Windows Mobile is still relevant, then them too). Apple controls the hardware and the OS it uses, and can tweak the hardware/software mix to (near) perfection. This is why it’s not fair to compare any other phone makers, save for RIM and Palm, to Apple.

This is why we have yet to see a phone that will “kill” the iPhone and why trying to create a killer is futile (unless you are Palm with the Pre or RIM with the *snicker* Storm). This still doesn’t mean that there can’t be great phones that don’t kill the iPhone. From all accounts, the Droid is a great phone–but it could have avoided its two biggest drawbacks if it hadn’t gone down the Zune path and stayed out of the attempted murder business.