The iPhone is a brilliant technology piece that has definitely helped further the cell phone industry. And yes, it also has some of the most annoying, bone-headed design flaws that have been nagging me for the last 9 months or so which are ruining the experience.
No MMS. This is bullshit, flat-out bullshit. I shouldn’t have to tell my friends (let alone, expect them to remember) to email me their camera phone pics instead of texting it, because the iPhone doesn’t support it!! Actually, I take that back–every time I get an MMS, AT&T sends me a txt with a convoluted-ass “username” and “password” which I can type into a browser to access the message. Great–except completely worthless on the iPhone itself as you can’t COPY AND PASTE the god damn strong of impossible to remember characters in order to enter it in the browser, thereby forcing me to use some other computer to actually access images SENT TO MY PHONE. ARGHGHG! Even worse, for some inexplicable reason, the images randomly won’t show up, even after ensuring I correctly entered the login information properly 5 times. This is bullshit and I’m tired of it. Why was my Razr able to handle MMS and my $300 iPhone can’t?!
No Copy & Paste. Honestly, I used to think this wasn’t that big of a deal and it almost seems cliche to complain about it at this point. But I think my initial ignorance regarding this was due to the fact that I actively try to avoid using the iPhone’s browser unless I absolutely have to. Sure, the iPhone does an okay job of sometimes automatically turning addresses/phone #s into a link, but it’s not perfect. Even worse is when the damn browser crashes after I’ve typed a lengthy message, which could be partially rectified if I were able to “copy” the message periodically. Which leads me to…
Browsing is not a pleasant experience. Sure, it may be one of the best handheld browsers available, but it doesn’t stop it from being a slow, crash-prone pile of ass. I do like the multi-touch zooming, but clicking links is a pain in the ass when your finger overlaps 3 of them at the same time. And the interface just isn’t that responsive, or “snappy,” as Steve would put it. Try loading it up and watch in amazement as it takes the keyboard several seconds to actually start responding to button input, dependent on the page.
Reception sucks ass in San Francisco. In my office building, I get a full 5 bars of 3G reception…yet it doesn’t bloody work! I can’t make calls, nor access the internet! WTF. Elsewhere, my 3G reception drops in and out at seemingly random–it’ll hop from a full 5 3G bars, over to Edge, and back again, and while the iPhone is supposed to handle this transition “seamlessly,” that is rarely the case. And if I switch to Edge, no signal at all–awesome!
Turning Wifi/3G on and off is a pain in the ass. Why oh why could they not have a quick toggle for when I don’t want the iPhone to dick around with finding suitable wifi or 3G signals? Instead I have to traverse a mess of menus to access settings that should be far easier to reach.
No multi-tasking. I understand the reasons for it, I really do. But it doesn’t stop it from being a complete drag that I can’t listen to Pandora while writing an email, a note, changing my alarms…or anything at all!
I hate iTunes with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. How does a company renowned for producing “easy to use” and “intuitive” UIs go on to make this complete piece of rubbish. I’ve used a lot of programs in my day, including several highly advanced video editors, and yet none gave me as much trouble as iTunes. Why do I have to “sync” it every god damn time I want to add content? WHY CAN’T I JUST DRAG AND DROP IT?!?!
Having your iPhone tied to iTunes means I can’t modify the damn thing at all unless I’m at home, by my computer, which is rarely the case. What if I wanted to add a podcast at work for my commute home? Nope, can’t do it.
Proprietary charger/file transfer cable. What the hell is this crap? Why do I have to drag this custom cable around with me everywhere I go if I want to charge my device? Again, my Razr was perfectly content to being charged via mini-USB (of which most people now have one readily available), and yet my iPhone isn’t. God forbid you forget the cable before heading out–you’re just plain fucked.
I’m sure I’ll be adding to this list shortly, but those are the top 9 issues that sprung to mind. I used to love my iPhone, I really did, but the honeymoon’s over and I’m ready to jump ship. Here’s hoping Palm knocks the Pre out of the park, as it looks like they’ve actually got their shit together.
[ul]
[li]It automatically switches to UMA/WiFi when I’m in range of a preconfigured hot spot. I get free calls at work, home, school, my bar, and my coffee shop.[/li][li]An 8GB micro-SD card is like $10 at Microcenter.[/li][li]The music player is reasonably decent.[/li][li]It’s also drag and drop.[/li][li]Video camera.[/li][li]MMS.[/li][li]The browser kinda sucks, but it does Google news mobile well enough.[/li][li]Mini-USB charging.[/li][li]And file transfer.[/li][li]Multi-tasking.[/li][li]Copy & pasting.[/li][li]$0.[/li][/ul]
Sure, I look like a management d-bag, but I am management d-bag. One who didn’t pay $300 for his phone.
Android (T-Mobile G1, more handsets coming soon) has some of these problems solved. It multitasks, uses a standard min-USB cable to charge/file xfer, no iTunes (you can just drag media files into a folder like any file). Dunno if it has MMS. I like the browser, but can’t say if it’s significantly better that the iPhone’s, I know they are both based on WebKit so they are probably pretty similar.
And of course it has its own problems, like shitty battery life, no multi-touch, and others.
One of my roommates actually has a G1, and I’ve really liked what I’ve seen so far. The pull-down notification menu is slick as hell, and the browser isn’t bad (though I do miss the lack of multi-touch). Though the battery life does concern me. The Android platform is certainly something I’m keeping my eye on, though I’m pretty smitten with the Palm Pre based on what I’ve seen of it so far.
I have both, and I VASTLY prefer my iPhone. There are many things about it which annoy me (though, interestingly, my list of annoyances has almost no overlap with yours), but I still like it better than my G1. If I were going to switch (and I have considered it), I’d go back to a Blackberry. As it is, I’ll probably stick with the iPhone despite its flaws.
I will say that most of my friends in SF complain about the reception on their iPhone, but I have no problems whatsoever in Seattle. It seems that AT&T’s 3G network in SF is way overloaded.
Yeah, it’s garbage. Can’t even get a 3G signal from the Apple Store downtown. Which is made all the more ironic considering that Apple is based out of here.
I still LOVE my iPhone, in fact, I just got my THIRD replacement…
Large touch-screens do not bode well for often drunk college students. Neither does a lack of receiving MMS messages, specifically from other drunk college girls who can’t be relied on to remember to send that AWESOME picture message of her to my email and NOT my number like a normal phone. :smack: I do however find it a great deal better than any of the other phones I’ve had any experience with.
I don’t have an iPhone but my Samsung Alias does have a full QWERTY keyboard, and my Verizon service plan gives me enough ability to Google things, get directions, look up Wiki articles, and so on, when I’m away from my computer.
Except the reception is a pile of pants just about everywhere in my new neighborhood, and we’ve also got two aircards with Verizon which, at this point, would cost us $100 each in cancellation charges. My Samsung’s cancellation is about $80. There are dead spots in the apartment where none of the cellular equipment works. There is one coffeeshop, which I do not otherwise particularly like, where the reception is decent, all the better places have bad reception. Otherwise, I have to hang online by the skin of my fingernails, and performance is such that I can only do the most basic sorts of things. It’s about like AOL dial-up in the 1990s. As far as I can see, Verizon’s attitude is, “We’re done setting up the L.A. area, that’s it!” Their website certainly doesn’t give any hint of the dead zones all over Palms and Culver City–and we can’t just say, “You know your signal strength absolutely sucks all over this district, and all we can get is a couple of feeble ticks on the strength indicator, never mind actual bars, and we don’t want you anymore.” Not at least without ponying up $300.
Did I mention my wife’s phone is the only one that we’re not chained to? It adds about $12 monthly to the bill.
At the old place, on the other side of the 405 not more than a couple of miles away, our aircards worked almost as well as our wireless DSL. The same was true at all the neighborhood coffeeshops, and also at UCLA, which I sometimes visit for meetings or extension classes and doesn’t allow visitors to access the web on their own system. I can’t tell you how much I miss it. I’m getting used to having to take the car everywhere, because if I do have time to stop for a quick coffee and to get a little work done, I don’t want to spend half of the 30 minutes I’m there struggling with connection issues.
Yes, you can. On your iPhone, go into iTunes (which has probably been pushed to your very last page, because it used to be worthless), click “Podcasts” (or click “Search”), find what you need, and add it.
Yes, it does suck, and it sucks even more that if you really need one, you have to go into Best Buy and spend way too much money. So in the meantime, head over to monoprice.com and buy 5 of them for $2 each and connect them to every computer you might ever come into contact with.
I don’t have an issue with the cable since I own four or five of them from my ipod and have one in the car for the charger, one in my office and three of them at home, one for every computer.
I hate that it doesn’t let you manage songs on Itunes like my Ipod did. To me, this is a bigger issue. They took something that worked fine and broke it for the Iphone.
I want to jailbreak mine to get a particular app that Apple is not allowing.
I’m scared to death that I’m going to brick the thing if I try to jailbreak it though. Is that a real risk? Do you end up with problems when Apple does a software update and you load the update with iTunes?
Jailbreaking has almost no risk. If it goes south, you can just a a complete reset through iTunes and it will be fine. However, even with jailbreaking and SwirleyMMS, you can’t do MMS on the iPhone (at least with AT&T service.)
And you can just “drag and drop” things instead of syncing. There’s a setting somewhere in iTunes to manually manage apps, ringtones, and music.
Yeah, I don’t get this complaint, either. Syncing is the least efficient method in the known universe - that’s why apple has that big checkbox next to every single sync option to turn it off. Just drag your song/movie/podcast/ringtone from the iTunes library to the iPhone name on the left - done.
Hmm, this half solves my complaint. You’re right, I didn’t realize it allows you to download full podcasts (regardless of file size) over wifi. Unfortunately, it restricts you to 10MB and under if using 3G…and how many podcasts are actually under 10MB? Good to know though, now I just have to find a wifi point near my house.
I really hope they fix that crap 10MB limit over 3G though. I don’t care how long it takes, it should be an option.
I know this and it’s still a pain in the ass, which brings us back to my “iTunes has a rubbish interface” complaint. I knew about the checkboxes for sync options, which I’ve already used liberally to disable crap like calendar and contact syncs.
But still, when I think drag and drop, I don’t want to have to use iTunes. Ideally, my Mac would identify my iPhone as a storage device and let me drop anything I want directly onto it, without being forced to add it to my “iTunes Library” first. God damn I hate that program.