Candy For Idiots

So I’ve been able to delve pretty deep into the iPhone after having the thing for over a month now and there are some real great pro’s and con’s to the device. To preface, this is one of the most amazing devices I’ve ever held in my hand, but it’s glitz and glamor are somewhat dimmed by the restrictions of the device.

First though, let’s talk about the good… The iPhone is an aesthetically beautiful piece of equipment. It’s sleek, compact, comfortable and still useful. It’s a bit slippery so a case of some sort is pretty much a must. Plus, I felt it necessary to protect the metal from scratches…

Not only is the iPhone aesthetically beautiful, but the interface is a dream. Seriously, someone could have only come up with this interface in a dream. Tripping on shrooms and lollipops made this interface. But it’s useful, functional and beautiful! The touch-flow, pinching and expanding, accelerometers; just everything is darn-near perfect!

Safari is the best feature of this phone. Having a fully-functional web browser on a mobile device is a dream come true. I’m not talking about some watered down version of Internet Explorer, or some buggy huge Opera application,  but a small, compact, fast, multi-window/browser/tab/whatever CSS rendering web browser. It is freaking amazing! Safari alone is worth the iPhone price tag, which is a lot cheaper, by the way, than Windows Mobile phones that still use crap-browsers, as I like to call them.

Now, the bad… Look, I’ve always been an Apple guy. Always been a Mac user. I love the company and the products they put out are always genius and ahead of the curve, including the iPhone. But I had been on a Windows Mobile device for the past two years and really fell in love with it. In fact, the only thing I hated about my old phone was that the hardware was two years old and slow! I didn’t need the MP3 player feature so I never had a real use for an expansion card above 1 GIG, but at least it was expandable, unlike the iPhone. I loved being able to sync my Outlook email without having to have the email pushed to my device; something the iPhone doesn’t do. I loved the openness of Windows Mobile devices and that you could crawl through the bowels of the OS to tweak sounds, hack registry settings, or whatever! It was a much more workable OS.

The iPhone is on complete lock-down. Apple not only handcuffed early users of the iPhone for two years with pre-loaded apps, but the only programs that you can put on there now have to be acquired through an Apple venue and Apple has to pre-approve them! WTF? So, unlike my Windows Mobile device which allowed me to use my unlimited data line by tethering my phone to my laptop and surfing the internet, I get functionality such as “iBeer” which simulates, you guessed it, drinking beer. Rrrrright… Now, there are other options, don’t get me wrong. You can “Jail-Break” (appropriately named, I might add) your iPhone which will allow you to install applications independently written and not Apple approved. That community is very large and active and have some really amazing stuff out there. They’re taking the iPhone in places that Apple really needs to go. You know, like the ability to copy & paste. Yeah, I don’t know why Apple fell asleep behind the wheel on that one…

I hate the mail application. It doesn’t give you a lot of options with the email, and it doesn’t give you any search functionality whatsoever. It pretty much sucks. There’s no MMS. Yeah, I know. Anytime I get a picture message, AT&T shoots me a text with a username and password which is IMPOSSIBLE to remember to retrieve whatever message was sent to me. If it happens to be a video, no dice! It really sucks. The calendar is awesome, but once Outlook items are downloaded to the phone, they stay there unless deleted from the phone. So the conference call on Thursday that the meeting organizer canceled and deleted from my calendar didn’t sync to my iPhone, so I’m the only loser listening to the wonderful Teleconference music for 10 minutes while driving down the road.

The camera is a joke. I know that cell phone cameras always suck but they really could have put a little more effort into installing a camera worth a damn. I’m just sayin’!

Last but not least, AT&T. What was Apple thinking? EDGE? 3G? Dude, Verizon is way better.

All in all, I really do love this phone, but I’m probably what you would consider to be a power phone user and need a lot out of my phone that Apple has hindered for no good reason. That’s Apple’s culture and I purchased that culture when I bought this phone but it doesn’t mean it has to make sense to me.

To sum up; I’d like to see Apple open the device up so that applications don’t have to be scrubbed through the App Store before they can be installed. I’d like to see a turn-by-turn GPS solution. I’d like MMS messaging. I’d like Copy & Paste and a more advanced email client. I love the beauty and simplicity of the device, and it has an absolutely gorgeous screen. The battery life is very adequate and the profile of the phone is very fitting. Web browsing is a dream and I love having my music, movies, TV shows and books with me on the go.

Whereas I don’t regret converting to the iPhone, I do find it disheartening to feel the need to be one of those people who carries two phones around. What Apple has given us on this phone for the most part is the best that anyone has to offer, but what they’re keeping from us is pretty significant as well. On a scale of 1-5, I give the iPhone an all-around 3.4.