The LG Incite and post-iPhone phone porn
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There it was, this morning, creeping up in the Google Hot Trends ranking: the LG Incite. AT&T announced that the smart phone, which runs on its 3G networks and is equipped with Windows Mobile 6.1, is available in stores and online. And so the masses began to prognosticate.
They wondered on Gizmodo whether the phone could be an iPhone killer. On Engadget, they compared it with other smart phones and debated how it would stack up. And on one phone site, they just posted photos of LG phones, presumably for the purpose of inspiring drooling.
How did we get to the point at which every launch of a new smart phone inspires rabid interest among the Googling public? People slept in line outside stores to buy the iPhone. They chattered incessantly about T-Mobile’s G-1. And they debated endlessly about the Blackberry Storm. Is this a new type of ogling technology, a kind of phone porn that’s a guilty pleasure in tough times?
I put the question to Jason Chen, editor of the tech gadget site Gizmodo. His theory: the iPhone made people interested in smart phones who otherwise weren’t obsessed with new gadgets. Now, smart phones are cool, and even non-geeks want to know: ‘Is this the iPhone killer? Is it the iPhone plus whatever I want?’
People change phones more often than they do other gadgets, such as the helicopter thermal imaging system, which is another gadget featured on Gizmodo. And now that phones are fashion statements, people want to keep abreast of the latest trends and know what’s cool.
As of noon, the LG Incite had 138,000 search results on Google, and was No. 10 in Google’s hot trends, which tracks terms that are being searched for ferociously. The phrase ‘cell phone website’ returns about 60 million hits on Google. And Chen said that since the iPhone came out, phone posts have been increasingly popular on his site.
Not that the interest necessarily will lead to increased phone sales. As the economy tanks, handset manufacturers such as Nokia are predicting that sales will slow as consumers stick with what they’ve got. That doesn’t mean the interest in phone porn will die down, though. For some of us, checking out sleek new phones online is a guilty pleasure akin to watching ‘Gossip Girl’ and drooling over lifestyles we can’t afford.
Said Chen: ‘If people were going to buy everything we wrote about, they’d be broke.’
-- Alana Semuels
