I Want an aPhone for My Birthday

It is my birthday today, and as it so happens I am on a "forced" vacation this whole week – couldn't have asked for a better gift – besides an a-Phone that is.

Two years ago, I sat at home alone on my birthday. I took a day off to find out that all of my family members were preoccupied. So I decided to pamper myself: I went to the internet to look for a present for myself. Soon enough I reached a conclusion: It should be a tablet or an ebook reader. The debate was between an iPad and a Kindle 3.

In the end, I voted for the Kindle with my money (you can find some of the reasons here) and have been very happy since.

One of the reasons the Kindle works so great for me is the fact that behind it there's a huge listing of books from a company that knows me and what I like reading. It seems too easy to find a new book that I have a high chance of linking.

Ewan MacLeod gave his news on the latest rumors (2 months old now) about the possibility of Amazon introducing their own smartphone:

Imagine a £59/month price plan from Amazon that includes Amazon Prime, unlimited minutes (both domestic and international) in 75 countries and then unlimited data (all driven and supplied through Amazon's own cloud-accelerated service). And the only way you get this is buy getting an aPhone? Yes. Sign me up

The moment I read about these rumors, I could only think of one thing: here's a present for me! The only problem is that these are still rumors and such a product wasn't yet announced.

Why would I want an aPhone? Because digitally I am married today to two entities: Google and Amazon. Most of my retail money goes to Amazon, while most of my data goes to Google.

If I were to switch from my current Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S2), it would be to one of two possible devices as far as I am concerned:

1. HTC One X. I consider HTC better in their software and hardware designs than Samsung, and now that they have a new flagship device, it's my preference over the Galaxy S3.
2. aPhone. But probably the second generation that will come out in 2013 and not the first one – need to give Amazon time to flesh out all of the bugs and inconveniences of their first version.

I am wondering what Amazon would do to give a different experience to their phone than the rest of their pack. The money angle is nice, but I need something more – something that will really rattle the market a bit. They can probably nail content discovery (content being apps, music, videos and books) better than anyone else, so if I were Amazon I'd made sure my app store experience is far superior than anything out there: mainly its personalization and discoverability.

For now, I can only dream and go read another science fiction book on my Kindle.

Happy birthday to all those who celebrate it in August – or any other month of the year.