What the iPhone Doesn’t Have

Finally Confirmed: What the iPhone Doesn’t Have – Gizmodo

More reasons not to waste $500 + activation fee + 2 years of monthly payments to AT&T.

It seems to be more eye candy and fluff than practical. Kind of like Windows Vista.

Key points, for me:

• Songs as Ringtones
I would have thought this was a given. I can’t believe it doesn’t do this.

• Any flash support
So much for that fancy browser!

• Picture messages (MMS)
You’ve got to be kidding me. It can’t do something a $19 phone could do years ago?

• Video recording
Ditto.

• Voice recognition or voice dialing
Ditto. Ditto.

• One-size-fits-all headset jack (May have to buy an adapter for certain headphones)
Not sure what exactly this means. If it doesn’t have a plain-old headset jack- that sucks.

• 3G (EV-DO/HSDPA)
Their little Google Maps integration demo in the commercial would actually take several minutes.

• GPS
This seems odd too, especially given the coolness factor of the maps and that GPS integration is quickly becoming a standard item on cell phones.

• A real keyboard
I have friends with other “smart phones” that use on-screen keyboards. They suck. No physical feedback when you press keys or to indicate key locations or boundaries. They also force you to look at the phone- making it exceptionally dangerous in certain situations- especially driving.

• Removable battery
This, along with AT&T being their carrier, was one of the two biggest reasons I decided not to bother with one of these. Generally Lithium Ion batteries are only good for about a year in cellular phones that get frequent use. Their life and performance starts to drop off after that much time. So- you are spending $500+ and committing to a two-year contract on a device that will probably be unusable before the contract is up (unless you don’t mind using it while it is tethered to its charger).

• Direct iTunes Music Store Access (Over Wi-Fi or EDGE)
This is something else that just blows me away. All the hype about how cool this phone and its Internet browser are- and you can’t even use it to download music from iTunes directly.(?!) I could understand EDGE- since it sucks and it would take a half-hour to download a song, but you certainly should be able to over WiFi.

All-in-all I think the iPhone has a lot of potential to change the smart phone industry. It is certainly unlike anything we have seen before, and the demos I have seen online and on TV are very impressive. It is lacking in a lot of what I feel should be “standard”, both for a cell phone and a “smart” phone. I guess we shall see what the iPhone 2.0 looks like.