BPSoftware.com Blog

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Is there an 'I' in phone?

I spend a lot of time reading various news articles to keep up with what is going on in the world of technology. I can't remember the last day that had passed without me reading something about the IPhone. Ironically, a few months ago I was due for a phone and ended up with grabbing an IPhone. Today, after reading the articles 'iPhones rule in US smart phone market' and 'The iPhone Is Now the Best Selling Phone In the U.S.' I started thinking about my own experience with the IPhone.

Overall, I think the IPhone is a pretty slick device, however I tend to lean towards it being a lot more hype than what is really there (I too had succumb to the hype). The phone seems to be more trendy and more of a statement than it is umph. I really enjoy the WiFi and Web browsing features along with the ease of use. The web on the 3G network has saved me a number of times while I have been out and about. The GPS and map application is a nice useful feature. There are also a lot of neat applications available through the App Store (some of the Apps are practical while others are more of a novelty that are a great 'ice breaker' for showing off your IPhone. The responsiveness of the touch screen and the motion of the IPhone is really neat! (You should check out Google Earth for the IPhone). The IPod software also allows for the need to carry only one device for phone and music.

Just as there are things that I like about the IPhone, there are several things that drive me absolutely crazy. The weird thing is that what drives me crazy seems to be trivial features to most phones available today. The lacking feature set is so mind numbing that they almost have me regretting ever picking up an IPhone.

Here is my list of the top 5 lacking features. These features make me want to literally pull my hair out. I have other minor gripes that I can live with, however these are the 'regret getting the phone' complaints:

1. NO Cut, Copy, Paste - for the life of me I do not understand why you can not use basic editing features while composing email, text messages or any other text functions (there isn't even a Select All).

2. NO MMS - Camera, IPod, YouTube, and many other multimedia rich options/applications and for the life of me I don't understand why you can not send or receive MMS messages with the IPhone.

3. NO Text forwarding or Resending - Yes, if you need to resend or forward a text message you need to retype it. I do mean retype it because as I had already mentioned there is not a cut, copy or paste function.

4. NO Camera Zoom - If you're going to pack all of this into a phone, why not at least add a camera zoom? If you're taking a picture with a phone, don't you think you'd want to be a bit closer?

5. NO Battery Life - The battery is draining, literally. I need to charge this thing once or twice a day (and I am not living on the phone like others; I consider my usage 'average').

Well, those are my big gripes for now, you should also check out PleaseFixTheiPhone.

Labels: Misc

posted by Brad Prendergast at 6:29:00 AM

Comments:

Hi,

I also recently got an iPhone, it was released in South Africa about 2 months ago.

But I'm also disappointed. It's a beautiful phone & great multimedia device but kinda sucks as an actual phone, cos it's kinda lacking when it comes to actually doing things one takes for granted on most phones.

I can't even delete an individual SMS only an entire conversation with someone, besides the lack of SMS forwarding and other things that you also mentioned.
And why is it so hard to have Application folders, now I have to flip through 8 home pages to find my application I want to open, especially since I downloaded quite alot of third party apps, and so irritating that any app that has a web link, closes the app before openning up the safari web-browser, then I have to go manually open the app again afterwards, and even more irritating if I clicked the link by mistake.

Also since the Maps application is tied to Google Maps which unfortunately has terrible maps coverage of South Africa making the GPS & Maps essentially useless here. So I pay for a major feature that I can't use, and since many third-party apps also tie into the GPS & Maps for lots of things, this omission is rather painful for me.
Even Nokia on a cheap handset has a usable GPS & decent map coverage here.

So I don't know who to blame, Google Maps for not having proper coverage of South Africa, Apple for not making sure Google Maps has proper coverage for a country that they releasing the iphone into, or Vodacom (mostly owned by Vodafone) our service provider for not ensuring we have proper map coverage before releasing the iphone here.

And I wanted to return the phone within the second day of getting it once I noticed these short-comings, but they refused to take it back, saying once box is opened, it's yours forever...
Not sure what the case is in other countries?

Anyway that's my story... the iphone sure looks cool tho :)

Stevie

posted by

Anonymous Tuesday, November 11, 2008 10:50:00 AM

The hardware is very well done and has great features, as a phone it works well, but as a PIM - very poor.

I have used Palm and WinMobile devices and that experience exposes omissions that make the device difficult to use as a PIM.

Syncing is problematic at best. Every app has its own way to sync to the desktop or uses all these web based providers, which exposes your data. With Palm and WinMobile, I just plug in a cable and everything syncs. Using wireless was possible with the other devices for sync, but with the iPhone you have to sync through application specific http servers and such running on the PC or the iPhone, this introduces problems as network setups can present multiple challenges and roadblocks for data flow.

The iPhone does use Microsoft ActiveSync for Exchange sync which works very well but the PIM support is sorely lacking.
No task/todo support, and amazingly no support on the device to connect contacts to appointments!

Pocket Informant is working on a PIM app but the OS does not allow third party apps to run in the background or provide access to the calendar data so you have to run the PIM app to check on appointments and tasks, and without access to the on board calendar data, ActiveSync will not sync the Informant tables to Exchange without another web interface.

If you turn the 3G, bluetooth, and wifi off the battery will last for a reasonable amount of time.

posted by

BCleland2 Wednesday, November 12, 2008 8:18:00 AM