The Kyocera Zio Will Be The Phone That Buries The iPhone

I like prepaid wireless.  I like Google Android.  I’m bearish on Apple and its future prospects.  Android vs. Apple is Windows vs. Apple and it’s going to end the same way.  The Kyocera Zio could be the last nail in the coffin.

photo credit: Mads Boedker

Face it — Android has all the good buzz.  It used to be the OS defined by what it lacked — multi-touch.  Now it’s the OS with Flash, it’s “open,” and every major manufacturer has a badass phone in the works.  But it won’t be the super phones like the HTC Evo and Droid Incredible that bury Apple — it’ll be the simpler ones, the phones that are good enough.  It will be the Kyocera Zio.

This thing is supposed to be $200 unsubsidized.  That’s insane — 1/2 to 1/3 the price of other smartphones (Google’s Nexus One is $530).  And if it gets on Boost Mobile, watch out.  $50-60 a month is pretty damn attractive — $1,400-1,640 total cost over 2 years compared to $2,500-3,800 for a higher-end phone.  Seriously, cue the iPhone exodus.

And yeah, you can whine about the specs — it IS a cheaper phone.  But it has the same processor speed as the formerly top-of-the-line iPhone 3Gs — 600MHz — and it has a higher resolution screen.  Yes, you will need to buy a big micro SD card to hold all your songs, but, unlike the iPhone, you can replace its battery.  And yeah, you can complain about running Android 1.6, but the user of this phone is either too novice to care about OS fragmentation or savvy enough to upgrade it on his own.  It’s truly good enough, and it will be revolutionary.

Apple is going to hate this phone.