Don't misunderstand me- I like the iPhone a lot. I was pretty happy with my previous multimedia phone, a Samsung, but the iPhone is altogether different. It's the computer you will use the most. BTW- nothing I say in this post will be original, I am just trying to consolidate a few observations, since people are very curious about it when they see it. The most curious are the folks who really want to buy one but are waiting for it to "improve". To be frank, it's good enough now. However, if you want a few benchmarks for improvement, here are a few:
1- Flash, Flash, Flash. SteveJobs should be ashamed. Safari mobile browser does not support Flash. I still can't believe it. This means a rather large percentage of the web is represented by a "missing plug-in" icon. Restaurants, for example, seem particularly fond of Flash, and many many sites have their menus embedded in a Flash document. I'm thinking that there are more than a few folks who would want to use their mobile device to check out restaurants. The excellent Google maps application, which performs just as advertised, partly makes up for this glaring omission, but not completely.
2- Cut and paste. Yep. Can't do it. Wanna copy something out of an email and paste it in your calendar? You'll need a pen and paper, or maybe just another mobile device.
3- Voice-memo. MIA. Sure, there is an application for cracked phones, but if you don't want to mess around with jail-breaking, you are going to have to wait. I suspect this will be one of the early dominoes to fall with the release of the SDK. June '08?
4- No stereo bluetooth. I own a really geeky set of bluetooth headphones with a big blinking LED on the side and an antenna that sticks up. I do have a more slick looking pair, but it's much more fun to wear the geeky ones in public. Too bad I can't listen to my music with them.
5-Video recorder. Anyone who knows what I do will understand why I miss this.
6-Real GPS. Triangulation works adequately in most cases, but GPS is far superior for turn-by-turn navigation and finding precise coordinates. I could never have created my stroller-friendly Central Park East/West Crossing map with the iPhone.
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Ok, so it's six things. Actually, seven, now that i think of it. A lot of folks complain about AT&Ts EDGE network, which is the data network that iPhone runs on. Yes it's pretty sluggish, and worthless at times in Manhattan. I find that the overall impact of this is mitigated to a high degree by the WIFI functionality. Most of my data-intensive browsing and YouTube watching tends to happen over a wireless 802.11 connection. Nonetheless, AT&T apparently has an entirely separate 3G data network. I'll admit I haven't done my research on this, but I think if you buy one of their laptop mobile networking cards you'll be running on something much speedier than the iPhone does. If this is true, it seems kind of stupid.
Enough complaining, i still love it. Email and web-browsing. Synced contacts and calendar. IPod functionality-- with lots of storage. An elegant operating system and a bright screen with sufficient real estate to enjoy a movie. It's a great piece of technology. It could maybe use 25% more battery capacity....
