Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Why I hate iPhone

Why I Hate iPhone

I love Apple. Seriously. I in fact, would endorse and with quite a bit of pride too, different products Apple has to offer. Take for instance, I prefer using Apple Safari on my Windows box and not IE or firefox; iPod is a must when I workout (Fitness One plays pathetic songs) or when I am on those long haul, you-can-do-nothing- while-on-board, international flights. And I was quite ecstatic when I heard the first time iPhone’s being released. 

Why? Well, for starts it’s from apple; then there are those cool ads you see on the net and on the TV as how and what all you can do with your iPhone; then the fact that I am a total complete gizmo freak that too in a typical ‘nerd’ kind of way. (I have like a dozen or more cell phones; My PC is jam-packed so badly with peripherals that most of them just hang out of the box with a mesh of wires so tangled up that I would’ve have to cut through half of them if ever I have to move it to someplace else… you get the idea).

So my friends were surprised when they saw me coming out of an apple showroom without an iPhone. And while iPhones are still a rage, I was surprised to find that the iPhone is a lot more limited than I expected. And I’m not talking about lack of wireless broadband support, either. Perhaps, I should’ve put this post earlier. You never know – it might’ve saved someone’s green-backs.

It turns out that, despite Apple’s claim that “This is not a watered down version of the Internet” on the iPhone, it is a watered-down version. I don’t even need to get overly technical. The iPhone doesn’t support Flash. Seriously? No Flash support? I can't live off YouTube videos. Even when using YouTube, you can’t save the clip on the phone. Its support for JavaScript is limited to five seconds. It doesn’t handle frames well. A lot of Web sites won’t display properly, or even well, on the iPhone.

Then why can't you select just a specific bit of the text? Why delete all those characters?

I am browsing the web or perhaps, visit the iPhone Wallpaper gallery. I find my image I want. And then I... wait, I
can't download it? I can't choose to set it as wallpaper? I have to go to my PC, browse to the URL again, download the photo, purchase and install iLife, import the photo into iPhoto, set it to sync with the iPhone, open up iTunes, hit sync, then browse to it on my iPhone and set as wallpaper? 

Let’s talk about the camera now shall we? My girl friend’s ancient Sony Ericson k750i has better quality than the iPhone’s 2 MP camera! There are absolutely no options available – No zoom, no exposure and no resolution control. I take a little pride in my photography skills but c’mon, any movement and you get a blurry image. No video capture? That does it!

How we all love texting! So here are some notes on iPhone’s SMS incapability. No MMS - which century are we living in btw? You can't forward the SMS; can’t call chat-buddy from SMS view - WTF? Can't send phone numbers via SMS; when receiving phone numbers/contacts, e.g. VCARD, you can't save them to contacts; crashes if receives alphanumeric SMS sender; can't click on MMS notification to go to Safari to view.

Other not so nice limitations

You can't select multiple ANYTHING, which becomes most prevalent in Mail. So if you have 10 messages you want to delete, you have to individually delete every one of them.

No Contextual Menus - Where are they? You'd think holding your finger on an item for a couple seconds would bring up a contextual menu with items like Delete, Copy, Move, etc depending on what you had selected. These menus are also not available via a button anywhere - they just aren't there. This brings me to the lack of copy and paste functionality.

There is no way to save files which are attachments in your Mail, nor from Safari.

They want Business users? I am a power user and I can do with a text box kind of search which can find names, company, categories, anything?

They give you a Bluetooth headset, a f***ing expensive Bluetooth enabled phone and no voice Dial? Bluetooth stereo headsets work perfectly well when you are on a call. But due to a redundant Bluetooth stack, you cannot stream your music. What good is Bluetooth then? You are not calling people all the time, but you are listening to music all the time.

I agree that iPhone is still quite a buy due to the wow factor, but I guess, I still would want to stick to my O2 XDA II for some more time.

4 comments:

crasiezt said...

I was considering buying one...now you confuse me:-(

Tairebabs said...

Ah this post is timely. I lost my phone awhile back and I have been planning to buy an iphone. Not sure I would be buying it anymore.

Shailesh Mishra said...

@tairebabs and crasiezt

Er... Ahem!
I admit, I was being ambitious and wrote the post too soon.. rather too late (on the eve of the launch of the new iphone).
To rectify what I posted earlier I came up with...

http://relativeconstant.blogspot.com/2008/07/iphone3g-phone-ipod-internet-and-more.html

Soham Shah said...

I am using iPhone since january .. I crcked it myself and and using it ..

SMS forwarding is the main thingI am missing lot ..

No zooming for camre .. no video recording .. Bluetooth only works for other iphones .. Cant set any ringtones.. so many problems..