Apparently the iPhone is dead and should rest in peace. That announcement was made by BlackBerry Chief Executive Thorsten Heins, who is bigging up his company's latest product, hoping for the salvation that may never come, unless it's in the form of China's Lenovo waving a big check and taking over the company.

The iPhone just isn't that smart any more, he reckons, because it doesn't allow the user to work on more than one tool at a time: "It's still the same. It is a sequential way to work and that's not what people want today anymore," he told the Associated Press agency. "They want multi-tasking."

Aside from the fact that Heins sounds a bit desperate at his remarkably shrinking brand (formerly called RIM), his pitch just seems out of step with the times. Since the BlackBerry was being waved around by CEOs and government types like a wand in the early noughties, a lot has happened.

When Steve Jobs put computers with call functions in our hands, he saw more clearly than anyone the world had changed. I didn't get it first. I wanted real buttons to press, but I'm over that and they seem kind of dirty now, with all that fluff they collect around the keyboard.

Some BlackBerry users at the time swore they would never go near a touch screen - and they're still out there. It may be typically noughty, but old habits die hard and some people reason that if a phone fits, stick with it. Hence, Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, which is behind the Android platform, is still reportedly a BlackBerry Man.

We all know a "character" or two who sticks with their battered Sony Ericsson or Nokia, 10 years old and still going strong, they say, even if the companies that make them have dissolved or are teetering toward insolvency.

I would characterize the users of these phones as Non-Phone Types. They can afford something better, but actually they only have a mobile because they're a necessity (for others to contact them), and find no joy in the endless applications that smartphone companies develop to keep us addicted and buying new models.

China is basically an Android country. While 26.8 percent of the nation's citizens can only afford your basic mobile phone and either live in the country or have just migrated to the city, the rest are on smartphones. About 86 percent of them are on Android because they are practical, provide value for money and the system is easily localized because it is open source. It's estimated there will be 300 million Android users by the end of the year.

So while Android is the people's platform, Apple appeals to the 12 percent who are rich, or aspire to prosperity, and media types. They want to look good and iPhone has cachet, like a foreign fashion brand.

I've changed with the times and consequently gone through more mobile phones than most. As a playboy in the 1990s I irradiated my brain with a clunky Motorola that was really only mobile because it was in the car. I could only make 20 minutes of calls before it needed to be recharged.

Nokia defined my yuppiedom, after which I was loyal to Sony Ericsson, when small was considered beautiful. One model was so tiny it only covered my ear and whoever I was calling would comment, "You seem a long way away," because the mic was so far from my mouth. Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, HTC - I've done them all and shed them all, like skins.

Now that 87 percent of the world's populace has a phone, or two, choosing a smartphone is increasingly like deciding on a brand of jeans. They are all pretty much the same (multi-tasking or not), so it's not about what they do, but what they say about you. I'm going to be like Eric and choose what fits, and my advice is for you to do the same.

Contact the writer at julesquartly@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 03/28/2013 page18)