I must admit, when I got my hands on an iPhone last weekend at the Apple store at Jordan Creek Mall in Des Moines, Iowa… it was cool. It’s so much smaller than I ever imagined it to be, and it’s slick. I spent a good 20–25 minutes playing around, and of course, I had to pull up CyberNet to see how it looked. It looks lovely, and my quick experience with the iPhone was great. But, besides the fact that I hardly use my phone as it is, which means chances are that I’d hardly use an iPhone, here are my thirteen reasons why I’m not buying an iPhone (for now, at least).
- Synchronization Problems: Have you seen all the problems Paul Thurrott is having trying to synchronize his iPhone with Outlook? He’s got a three part series dedicated to his iPhone syncing woes!
- No 3G network: Big mistake Apple. While reports were coming in that the EDGE Internet was in fact speeding up, I’ve heard nothing but complaints about how slow it is.
- Safari Crashing: It happened to me at the Apple Store and I’ve been reading all over the web about it crashing for others. As I’ve seen some bloggers say, at least it crashes “gracefully.” You almost don’t notice when it does crash since the application just closes, but it happens a little too frequently.
- Cost: This is an obvious reason for many people. Not only the up-front costs of purchasing the phone for $500 or $600 dollars, but the cost of the service over the two years that’s required. Then of course there’s the cost of the battery which is reason #5.
- Battery: There’s no way to simply pop out the battery and put in a new one as most of us are used to with our cell phones. Instead you’ll be required to pay $79 for the battery along with an additional $6.95 for shipping. And for an additional $29 you can get a loaner phone while yours is in the shop for repairs.
- AT&T: For five whole years, AT&T will have Apple all to themselves. While most service providers these days all have lists of faults, so I’m not saying that it’s AT&T in general that’s the problem. However, it would be nice if those who wanted an iPhone right now didn’t have to worry about paying fees for breaking a contract. Even members of a congressional panel are slamming Apple for only offering the phone through one provider.
- Where’s the GPS? Not on your iPhone, that’s for sure.
- IM or Lack Thereof: What’s that you say? You don’t like text messaging? Me neither. But that’s your only option for quick messaging because there’s no instant message capabilities built-in.
- No Modem: Want to plug your iPhone into your computer to use as a modem like you can with the BlackBerry? Sorry, Apple won’t let you do this.
- Applications: Wouldn’t it be nice to install the applications that you want to install on your phone? Everything has to be done through Safari, so that means very limited selection, not to mention limited functionality.
- No on-the-go syncing: No one will come out and say it, but there’s gotta be a reason why you can’t download songs or podcasts using Wi-Fi or the Edge network. Instead you have to hook-up to your computer, and then download all your media through your iTunes account. Could it be that AT&T doesn’t want the extra strain on their network with people downloading podcasts?
- Camera Limitations: While the iPhone has a 2 MP camera, it does not have a flash or zoom which essentially makes it another useless camera on a phone.
- Keyboard: I can’t complain a whole lot about the keyboard because it actually wasn’t that bad. But, the nice horizontal keyboard which makes your typing a lot more accurate is only available in Safari. Why?
Wow, that list reads like an obituary. Having seen that I am tempted to ask, is there a phone that doesn’t have those 13 problems, that would still be the ‘ultimate mobile phone’ to a user? I’ve heard a lot about BlackBerry’s but never actually seen one, how do they compare?
Blackberry’s do most of the stuff that the iPhone doesn’t, except they don’t have the “cool” multi-thouch screen. They have instant messengers that you can download, you can install applications that you want (such as Opera Mini for an iPhone-like browser), GPS capabilities, user-replaceable batteries, faster Internet service (without AT&T), you can use it as a modem, the physical keyboard is nice, and lastly there are few problems with synchronizing it. Of course with that being said you also don’t get the huge amounts of storage with a Blackberry, which can be seen as one of the drawbacks.
If they didn’t include a 4gb drive the price would be almost cut in half. We have treos here at work, and have also had blackberrys. They all have issues. Treos can be unstable for no reason and aftermarket software is never supported and loves to crash the OS.
We thought about switching to the iphone but were concerned about the keyboard when typing. (we use our phones for customer service emails, so we literally send hundreds of emails a month on them).
ATT does suck, so doesn’t the built in battery. The first thing we get whenever we upgrade our phones is a extended after market battery.
People who usually buy apples typically don’t know what the hell their doing in the first place (in my experience, other than graphics, music or CAD users), and they have the assumption that Apple can do no wrong, which is far form the truth. Even the Ipod freeze up. When ever you have a new device or operating system you always want to wait at least a year before getting one, unless of course you need to test the newest stuff out.
I thought Microsoft stopped making Apple software? They they allow Apple to create a Outlook patch? I would have figured they needed a license for that.
I think anyone can create software that integrates with Outlook without needing a license. That is part of the nature of Outlook, and if Microsoft didn’t make it openly available for interaction with other applications and devices it probably wouldn’t be as popular.
All good reasons to wait. Actually, I’m on my iPhone now and Safari crashed while I was reading this page… and that’s not the first time. But it hasn’t happened enough to really annoy me, so I’m not regretting my purchase because I think the fun and features of the iPhone outweigh the downsides.
If anyone is interested, I wrote an iPhone review on my blog (just click my name).