irgeek.net

For the record, I love Apple. I have been waiting with patience for a while for the ‘iPhone’, all the rumors aside, it was an obvious move for them and it was bound to happen. On Tuesday I watched the keynote, and was in utter joy with everything the iPhone could do. After a good 24 hours of giddy-ness I was able to calm down, realize that no one touched on what the phone couldn’t do, so I looked into it and found out some things I really don’t like.

• No third party apps

Now this is a real show stopper here. What good is having a phone that runs OS X if I can’t run Adium or Newsfire. Now, I don’t expect these app’s to work out fo the box, that is asking to much. But they should be able to scale down and port these applications for the iPhone. I see a huge market for third party developers on this platform, and can’t think of a reason Apple wouldn’t want that around. It brings more people to the platform, especially current Mac owners. Confirmed by Apple VP

• EDGE Data Transfer

Now this is something I can live with, but would prefer not to. For those not-in-the-know about all the different wireless data transfer acronyms. EDGE is basically the DSL of wireless data where EVDO and 3G are the cable internet(GPRS is the dial-up). EDGE gets a realistic 70kbps download speed on average. Even this site would take a while to download on that kind of speed. Now, my opinion has always been that if I am doing the web surfing on my phone, it’s because I need to look up something specific and waiting for it is not an issue, but if you are going to make a state of the art phone and tout the greatest technology including “200+ new patents” … you should use the highest wireless data transfer technology available! I am surprised Cingular signed on to the deal without any 3G data. Cingular has been pushing 3G majorly and wants to get all their customers onto 3G phones within the next couple of years.

• GPS

Where is the GPS? Jobs touted Google Maps as one of the killer apps of the phone, why can it not tell where I am at and give me directions, or local attractions. I can pinch a digital image to a smaller size, but I have to tell the phone where I am at? Bad form Apple.

• Battery Life

Now this one is more confusing than aggrivating to be honest. The “iPhone technical specs page”(which doesn’t have anything terribly technical on it) says that the phone has “Up to 5 hours of talk/video/browse” and “Up to 16 hours Audio playback.” Now … does this mean that one battery can last 5 hours of solid talking OR 16 hours of solid playback? Or is it how Kevin Rose said it would be last month on Diggnation with one battery dedicated to Audio playback that lasts 16 hours, and another battery for everything else that lasts 5 hours? Also, why is there no standby battery life listed?

• Syncing

Apple put Wi-Fi(a/b/g[/n?]) and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR in their phone. Good job Apple! They did something right with the phone part of their phone! Oh … but wait … you can’t use either of them to sync your iPhone with your computer, you have to dock it. I personally don’t see a reason for Bluetooth 2.0 EDR when the only thing you can use it for is a wireless headset, a lesser version of bluetooth would have been fine(and might have dropped the hefty pricetag a bit).

• IM

I know the text messaging looks a lot like IM, and you can AIM over SMS. But where is the true, honest to goodness, text messaging? iChat anyone? I’m not a huge fan, and there are better alternatives on the Mac, but for mobile IM, iChat would do just fine. What I really want? Adium on my iPhone. AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, GoogleTalk(Jabber). All of them done right with a pretty interface.

• Cingular

I am not a huge fan of cingular. Thier plans are overpriced and they use Rollover to justify it, when in reality, I would hardly, if ever have rollover minutes. I am paying a $20 premium for a service I will never use. With other phones, this is not an issue. Go online, download a phone utility(or instructions), unlock it, and pop in your favorite sim card. But I think a few of the features of the iPhone will only work with cingular. Visual VoiceMail being the most obvious, as something like that requires a fairly large infrastructure change on Cingulars part.

• Expandable Memory

To be fair, I see a little slot on the side of the phone that COULD be used for expandable memory. But nothing was mentioned about support. Photo’s are another killer app for the iPhone. Why can’t I pop my SD card out of my camera, drop them to my iPhone, and email them out? 2 Megapixels isn’t enough for a lot of people.

• Battery

An internal battery on a phone? Palm tried that with the Treo 600, we all know how that worked out. Having worked in cell phone warranty/support I can not tell you how many issues were solved by removing the battery and reinserting it(also knows as second level reset, or a hard shock, or one of a hundred other terms used). iPod battery inside, phone battery outside(if they are seperate) would be an ideal configuration. On the contrary though an internal battery does make for a more solid feeling product. But practically I don’t think it is a good thing.

In the end? I will still get one. I might wait for Rev. 2. I might not. I am pretty impatient. Hopefully enough people will complain and allow third party development on the phone. Which would let me overlook the rest of the downfalls. I also give Apple a lot of slack on these downfalls, because they are new to the phone market. There is only so much you can learn from research and surveys. A lot of people don’t even know that they want to run third party desktop class applications on thier phone, but they do. Apple also has another 5 months to finalize this product. I am 100% positive that we have not seen a final product because there were so many standard phone features that were not mentioned. Does it vibrate? What kind of ringtones does it support? How many contacts can you have? MMS as well as SMS? Will it run current java phone applications? What kind of utilities does it have(calculator, alarm, chrono, etc)?

Popularity: unranked [?]