iPhone? Hmmmm......

Consumer.org.nz have a thorough review of the new Apple iPhone 3G. It's well worth reading.

The iPhone has a lot of very cool features. The touch screen. The ability to rotate the content on the screen to remain "level". The Safari web browser is probably the best on any cell phone to date. The ability to work out where it is via GPS. Total coolness and by themselves great additions to a full-featured 3G phone.

Unfortunately, the iPhone isn't a full-featured phone. There is no video camera. There is no voice-activated calling. You can't move files on and off the phone easily via a memory chip. Photos have to be imported via iTunes.

Setting aside the $80 / month, account-only, two-year contract to buy one for $549, the lack of these features make the iPhone less useful than my current phone.


OK, my $128 Vodafone 715 has a smaller screen and can't do voice commands, but it can make video and check my Internet e-mail and play Flash videos and I can move MP3s photos and any other data on and off it easily via USB. I can make a video and instantly upload it via Vodafone e-mail to YouTube or any of many other video-sharing web sites. I can even recharge the battery via a USB connection to my laptop if I'm caught without access to a power point. Converting vids to 3g2 format and copying them to the Vodafone 715 has been fun for my daughter. She makes videos with her digital camera, edits them and then takes them to school on her phone to play for her friends. The V715 lets you play vids "fullscreen" (rotating the video to play landscape on the screen instead of portrait). This makes the actual video display area on this small phone larger, for example, than the more expensive Samsung a900 or the Motorola Razr phones.

My next phone will have a big screen, 3G, WiFi, Video and still camera, web browser, voice commands, MP3 player, at least 1GB of removable storage, support USB data transfer on and off and be a good phone with reasonable battery life. It will work with a pre-pay SIM if I want it to. There is already a lot of choice out there for these features. I'll be buying my next phone soon. I particularly want the voice-activation for calling in the car, via the bluetooth earpiece I use with the V715 to receive calls.

Given that list, my next phone won't be an iPhone. Besides....cool as it is, I don't really need a touch screen. I don't really need to rotate the content or use GPS to find out where I am. I usually know where I am. If I wanted a true mobile office Smartphone, I'd get a Blackberry.

Sorry, Apple. Almost....but the iPhone's extras aren't extras I need and some of the stuff you left out, I use a lot more and don't want to do without. The proprietary marketing iTunes and other stuff have no value to me. Worse, I'm a Linux user....not an aphid to be stroked for cash. I use tools. They don't use me.