Ten Things I Hate About iPhone 3G

I got my iPhone 3G just about a week ago. For those of you used to using Nokia S60 series (the N73, N95, etc) and considering an iPhone for upgrade, my advise is: DON’T!! You’ll be disappointed. It’s more expensive, and less features than average Nokia S60 phones.

From the technical point of view, iPhone 3G is not a glamorous as what most people think. Or at least I disagree. Here’s why:

1. Predictive input while writing a non-English text message is annoying. And we can’t turn this feature off.
2. There’s no character count while typing our text message, thus we wouldn’t know how many characters left until we are charged for additional SMS cost. Luckily enough for me, sending a text message to any phone number in Australia is FREE!
3. There’s no way to send an MMS. Not sure about receiving though.
4. No video calling feature. Although I almost never use it, this is just ridiculous; a 3G-enabled phone, but it doesn’t support video calling.
5. Not only does it not do video calling. It does not let you record video either. This is pathetic.
6. The only good thing about iPhone is the web browser, Safari. This means you have internet connection anywhere you are (provided you’re within the 3G network). But even Safari has its problem. It doesnt come with Flash Player and Java Applet. Without Flash Player, it won’t be able to correctly render websites containing Flash. And I gotta say iPhone 3G data connection is not the fastest. It takes a comparatively longer time to load youtube clip compared to PC via standard ADSL. And to make things worse, the inbuilt YouTube player actually load a lower quality version of the clip, which is annoying.
7. Bluetooth connection only works with Bluetooth-enabled headset and nothing else. This means you can’t connect and share files with other bluetooth-enabled devices.
8. There’s no way to transfer photo from the phone to PC. Not even if we use iTunes. I’m wondering, if we can take pictures, but can’t share it, then what’s the point, really? I suppose this is Apple’s marketing strategy. By disabling this feature, a lot of users will fall into the trap of using MobileMe service, which charge their customer for the service they provided. This problem, however, has a workaround, and that is by installing Jailbreaker and another application on top of it that enable file transfer from/to iPhone. I’ll try that when I have enough free time on my hand.
9. There’s no cut-n-paste functionality. There’s no Draft SMS capability. That means if you ever needed to forward an sms, or if you’re done typing an sms, but forgot the number of the recipient, and need to find it out from Recent Call Log list. Then you’re screwed. You’ll need to rewrite your unsent sms once you leave the New Message screen.
10. Puny battery. It’s irreplaceable. And the battery life is short. It only lasts about two or three days for me under normal usage. Compare this to my previous Nokia N73, which can last around 4-5 days even after nearly two years of usage.

On the positive side, here’s some of the features that I like:

1. The idea of touchscreen. Most of the operation on the iPhone is done via our finger touch on the sensitive screen (using the normal PDA pen won’t work, though).
2. The orientation-sensing of Safari and YouTube. Based on how you hold the device, the screen will automatically adjust to either Portrait or Landscape. This, at least makes the internet more browseable. And the display resolution of Safari is quite sharp, making almost every webpage looks exactly the same as how they’d get displayed by other browsers on PC.