Since its release in the US markets in June 2007 and its subsequent release in Europe later in the year, consumers are picking up the iPhone with delight. iPhones have been sold not only in the regions where it has been officially released but also in emerging countries like India, China, Brazil & Middle East through the ever blooming gray market.
But is the iPhone worth all the hoopla surrounding it? Diehard Apple fans are definitely thrilled by the iPhone, but the iPhone has many weaknesses which challenges its claim to be the best.
Anyone buying a iPhone should be aware of the following iPhone shortcomings:
- 3G networks not supported !
- The operating system underlying the iPhone takes up 700MB of the iPhone’s capacity! Earlier versions of Windows on desktops also did not use this much space !
- There’s no option to cut, copy, or paste text!
- No A2DP support for bluetooth. So you can’t listen to the songs using a bluetooth headset in stereo ! And the iPhone is supposed to be primarily a music phone !
- In fact the bluetooth on the iPhone can only be used to pair with a headset for making a call, you cannot use its bluetooth to transfer files to another bluetooth enabled device as it doesn’t support all bluetooth profiles !
- MP3 files can’t be used as a ringtone !
- The iPhone camera can take photo and play videos but cannot record videos ! Amazing !
- MMS is not supported !
- Java & Flash not supported !
- Voice dialing is not supported !
- No support for basic WAP connections since there is no option to enter WAP proxy anywhere !
- GPS feature is not available !
- The iPhone cannot read contacts from a SIM card !
- According to Apple after about 300-400 charges the iPhone will lose battery capacity. Subsequently you have to send it back to Apple and get the battery replaced for a fee. 300-400 charges means just over one year of use !
- You cannot install third party softwares, so its not a smartphone ! Apple has however now released its SDK to third party developers, so we will soon see this functionality in iPhone 2.0. But the iPhone 1.x does not have this functionality!
The only feature which makes the iPhone different from other phones is its Touch interface which is amazing and exceptionally good. But other manufacturers are soon ’copying’ this iPhone speciality. The HTC Touch and LG Prada are already based on the Touch interface though its still not as good as the iPhone Touch and Nokia has just announced the Nokia Tube which is its iPhone copy.
After reading all this, do you still want to go out there & buy a iPhone 1.x ? Its probably a good buy for the non-techies out there who are not concerned about the lack of advanced functions, but the iPhone 1.x definitely does not satisfy the ever growing appetite of the techies.
[...] finally announced the new iPhone 2.0 at the WWDC. The previous iPhone, though revolutionary, was quite disappointing in many aspects. Unfortunately, the new iPhone again fails to deliver on most of the items on the wishlist of the [...]