We live in the age of tech-overload. We buy it just to have it. But can you actually use it? Here's some great tips & answers in plain-English from e-guru Kenny Jahng on getting the most out of the gadgets & technology that surrounds us.
There’s enough hype and hoopla about how great the Apple iPhone is. People are even paying others $300 to sit in line outside the store for them overnight - on top of the $599 they’ll pay for the device - on top of the $800 they’ll pay the 1st year to AT&T Wireless for basic service.
After reading some of the press, like in the Walt Mossberg’s WSJ column or David Pogue’s review in the NY Times, etc, I thought I’d jot down a bunch of the cons of the iPhone cell phone for anyone that’s really trying to make a rational decision to abandon their current cell phone or smart phone like the Blackberry or Samsung Blackjack.
Is it worth $500 or $600 + ($60/month + tax) x 24 months = $2196.13+ for the 2 year contract at the very lowest rate plan? You decide.
Here goes for the 24 Downsides of the Apple iPhone:
You CANNOT LOAD MORE THAN 4GB or 8GB worth of video, music, audio, documents, contacts, email, etc because there is NO REMOVEABLE STORAGE CARD supported
Am I missing anything? Let me know by posting a comment below!
June 27th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Sure seems to me like Apple dropped the ball on a lot of this stuff. I’ve always been a fan of Apple gear, but I have never purchased an Apple product, and I never will. Precisely because of the sort of stupid crap you list above, and the ridiculous proprietary formats and functionality. I’ll just stick with my $99 RAZR thanks: it’s a great phone and does everything I need. Plus it’s anodised Aluminium, so it is tough as hell.
June 28th, 2007 at 12:04 am
I agree with mobius. Every single PDA-style phone i’ve owned from the original Palm to the latest Treo has had one fatal flaw, they’re easily breakable. I’d be surprised if the iPhone is any more durable. Cellphones get abused a lot more than MP3 players.
lots of hype = $500*1,000,000 buyers = http://www.huckstr.com/spoofs/apple-money-machine.html
June 29th, 2007 at 8:31 am
[...] One of the largest of all the drawbacks of the Apple iPhone is the fact that it will not run on the faster 3G networks (like my Samsung Blackjack does). When Walt Mossberg of the WSJ interviewed Steve Jobs for his review article this week, Jobs just stuck to his guns with “Walter, You know that we don’t talk about future products”. [...]
June 30th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Besides not supporting flash, it also does not support java, either!
July 1st, 2007 at 4:34 am
Some of these “reasons” are stupid. I’m not an Apple fanboy and don’t really care about the iPhone one way or the other, but this seems very slanted…
No Flash- the sites that I would visit on a mobile device either don’t use flash or the flash functionality is unnecessary
No Games- do you really think that there are no games releasing soon; that there will NEVER be games for this?
No itunes ON the device- why would you need the whole PROGRAM on your phone? You have all your songs, videos, playlists etc…
Typing is a pain- like EVERY OTHER PHONE?
No using it as a modem- This 90’s method of connecting is OUTDATED; every antenna or PC card for your laptop/pda is faster and more reliable than this method!
Doesn’t work right out of the box- oh NOO!!! You have to go home first?!?!?
No skipping the charger- Who the hell cares? Where are you vacationing that has cell phone reception but no outlets? If you would have to pack “multiple batteries” anyway, what the difference between packing the charger?
No copying/pasting- the BASTARDS! and I’m always typing the same paragraphs over and over on my cell phone…
No setting mp3’s as the ringtone- Actually, this one REALLY SUCKS
Show me a single phone that CAN DO all these things… If you do, then I could make a list of all the OTHER things that phone couldnt’ do…
July 1st, 2007 at 6:06 am
Mark, perhaps they aren’t real downsides for you, but for someone that works outside the office a lot, these are all valid.
My Samsung Blackjack can to most of these things, which is why I’m staying with it for now, until the 3G iPhone comes out and they improve a bunch. The whole point of this post is NOT THE FUTURE, when I’m sure some, most, all of these points might be solved on the iPhone, but of course, they’ll be solved on competitor models too. It’s not about the future, since technology will evolve of course. It’s about RIGHT NOW, where the decision point is — do you buy the iPhone and abandon your current smartphone, or choose another phone? Without knowing exactly what the downsides are for a given phone, you can’t make an intelligent choice.
“Doesn’t work out of the box” ACTUALLY HAS BEEN A DOWNSIDE, because a LOT of people apparently are angry and STILL have yet to have a live phone right now, even though they were the first to buy it on June 29th launch and ran home and activated it on their PC. Buying something for $649.50 ($599 + tax in NY) and NOT having it work 48 hours later doesn’t really make a user feel good.
“The typing is a pain” is not the point. The point is that specifically the period and comma requires going to another screen. These are 2 VERY common characters in typing, and to make unavailable on the fly without any keyboard shortcuts stinks. It’s a valid comment. Even the Wall Street Journal wrote about it. This one is very unlike Steve Jobs design.
“No Flash” - sure, you may not go to flash sites or not watch any flash files on your phone, but many other people want to — and can on other phones. The Samsung Blackjack for example has FlashLite that can be installed to watch Flash .swf files.
“No copy/pasting” - this one is real too if you are someone that uses your smartphone to really email, compose/edit microsoft office documents, on your phone. Powerusers that use their keyboard on their phone as much as the actual phone option need copy/paste. It’s just something that is a part of composing / replying / editing.
No using it as a modem — actually, using my Blackjack as a modem is MUCH more reliable than trying to find hotspots when I’m out of the office. The comment was NOT about using the modem when you’re home as a dial-up modem. The point is when you’re on the road, business meetings, anywhere else with your laptop, you have either a choice of getting a CDPD or EVDO wireless modem card from the cellular networks or getting a WiFi account with T-mobile etc to get access at hotspots, or drive around trying to steal bandwidth from open unsecured wifi routers. I’ve found it SO much more reliable and easier to just click over to “modem” on my Blackjack and then connecting at near DSL speeds for internet access on my Blackjack. So this one is REAL.
“No iTunes direct”- I didn’t mean you need the iTune program on the PC, I meant that you cannot browse and download directly over the air on the iPhone. You’re forced to go back to your PC and sync. How often do you sync? How often do you want to sync? Getting new songs should be available whenever you want, when you’re walking around, when you’re waiting in line, when you’re in school, at work, on the bus, etc. Instead, this just becomes another mp3 player where you have to download songs on the pc and then push them to your iPod-iPhone. This is a commentary on the political issues that restrict this feature. It’s not a technological limit.
“No Games” - I’m not a gamer myself, but if you’re going to call it “the best iPod ever”, then it should be the BEST ever. NOT being able to use any Games you bought on iTunes for your exisiting iPod doesn’t make it the “best ever”. Stop calling it “the best ever” or make it do everything other iPods can do and more. Sure, Apple may allow it in the future, but maybe not — perhaps they have another business model that involves AT&T through another channel. Perhaps, perhaps perhaps. The point is that it’s not supported, there are no alternatives right now, and there are no games period. Again, “the future” doesn’t help if you’re about to commit $2,196 right now for this iPhone.
July 1st, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Very well analyzed Kenny. I will have to agree with you on this one.
Mark, my guess is that you are a student who uses a phone primarily as an entertainment device and do not personally utilize these features currently, or have no need for text composers, editors, high speed mobile net, 3rd party apps, etc.
My company’s philosophy is to maintain CONSTANT communication with customers and be able to take care of database updates within minutes, so having a powerful and reliable device would be necessary for my professional stability and responsiveness. I use a laptop currently, and just have a regular cell phone (for many reasons: one being I need my laptop to hook hard drives up to when I repair PC’s)
While most people will just adapt to Jobs’ keyboard design by not using periods or commas, I would not be able do that.
I think there is validity in the argument that an iPhone is not intended to be a professional device. But the only flaw with that is to then think why not get a blackberry, which has superior capability, for sometimes even less than $499? And when you do become a successful professional and want to integrate with the rest of the world with a portable device, do you want to have to buy something entirely different?
July 2nd, 2007 at 3:51 am
Fair enough, Kenny… You make valid points, especially with the extrapolations. My personal nitpicking aside, I completely agree with you; AS IS, $599 is too much to spend on the iPhone…
July 2nd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I am currently posting this via my apple iphone. As an owner of the iphone i would have to agree with some of these but also disagree. I admit that the keyboard can be annoying sometimes but overall it is very nice to type on. Also i can see why somebody who uses there phone strictly for business may not want the iphone. But after using the iphone for a couple of days i have found that for me it was well worth the 600 dollars. Most of the things that you mentioned can be annoying but after you get used to them you notice that it really is a great phone. While it may not be for everybody it most certainlly is very fun and much more advanced that mostly all other phones. And even if there are other phones that can do the same things this phone can do them better than most.
July 2nd, 2007 at 9:01 pm
I have the phone and it sucks.
I have already returned it.
God bless you guys for bringing out the truth about the iPhone.
Kenneth H. Cox
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:38 pm
DAVID - Congrats on the iPhone purchase. Send me a pic of you and your iPhone and I’ll post it on essistme.com!
I can see how for the people that DO buy the iPhone, most of the downsides may not be as annoying and you can simply live with them - especially after investing so much, it’s in your vested interest to “like” the device.
Realistically, I understand that most of these are not going to be “deal breakers”. However, there ARE one or two for me personally that are, especially after my Samsung Blackjack as a modem for my laptop — like I’m doing now from a hotel room to post this comment. It not only saves me the $10/day for internet access at the hotel, it also gives me freedom to NOT plan my catching up on my emails, etc based on internet access, but rather plan my days around WHEN I need to work on the computer. According to speedtest.net right now, I’m getting over 716kbs download / 337kbps upload speeds, and that’s pretty much DSL speed — and more importantly fast enough for me to do almost any work I need to on my laptop whenever/wherever I am remotely, away from home/office.
Being able to watch real live tv by streaming from my desktop tv tuner card through the internet on my Blackjack is also a neat feature that you REALLY get used to…
July 4th, 2007 at 3:38 am
I’ve tried the iphone and it looks great, the GUI is wonderful but i feel that it falls in the same category of the nokia 7280 (wich my GF have) it’s all “LOOK MY PHONE, SEE HOW COOL I AM!”even if you spend 10 minutes to txt “hello buddy” i find my N95 far superior with much more features and easier to use, besides when it arrived i just slipped my sim into it and i was talking (you can even use it without service too). I think that the deal with AT&T is what will hurt the “Iphone revolution” Unless apple plans to release the gsm version, i don’t see 10 million people switching to AT&T wich has the honor of the worst service.
July 8th, 2007 at 2:28 am
What if the iPhone is bought for you as a gift and you have no intention of using it as a cell phone, but would still like to use it as an iPod and mobile Internet device, do you still need to activate it?
July 9th, 2007 at 8:35 am
[...] http://www.essistme.com/2007/06/27/20-real-downsides-of-apple-iphone/ [...]
July 11th, 2007 at 2:49 am
I had an Iphone and returned it three days later. 15% restocking fee on the phone and all accessories, for being a customer for 6 years from when NEw ATT Mobility was ATT Wireless and before Cingular took them over, it didnt matter, I got treated poorly, I know it is policy but for misleading advertising, c’mon!
My blackjack by far is the best phone I have used! It does everything I need and quickly for the office!
Be prepared to purchase a good Bluetooth headset for around 90-150 dollars so you can here people talk! Also it might as well not even have a speakerphone because that sounds like what putting it up to your ear should be like.
YOU CANNOT HEAR ANYTHING WITHOUT AN EARPIECE, and I can here everything!
You can watch the battery bar go down when playing music. From halfway dead, it takes 1.5 hours to fully charge. 3 hours when dead.
The Iphone is very hard to wipe away finger smudges, I did try to scratch at the bottom screen but it is nearly impossible.
Aluminum looking side of the Iphone scratches very easily, it will look like hell in less than 3 months, not to mention the labeling will rub off if it.
My Iphone froze so the only way to reset it is to format it via Itunes which means losing your contacts.
Transferring your contacts is almost impossible, contacts cannot be transferred sim to sim, so att store puts contacts on a flash drive (15 bucks, cant use your own and non returnable even tho it doesnt work) in which itunes cant read, even once you get the contacts on your Iphone, they are NEVER able to be saved onto the sim leaving you with nothing if the device fails.
YouTube and Safari SUCK!!!!
Sorry YouTube, it works good on my vista based PC, but as mentioned above, the Iphone is not 3G compatible. You tube videos will download and play after nearly 3 minutes or more download time. Video quality is extraordinary but video skips since it is streamed and on the slow Edge speed.
Fairly easy to navigate thru menus
Visual voicemail is nice, the message is on your phone, no calling the vmail system anymore.
You cant take video clips
Aluminum looking side of the Iphone scratches very easily, it will look like hell in less than 3 months
Dont make the mistake I did! You will be sick with this phone.
There is so much more to tell, if you give me a specific question, I can answer it. Email me!
cmbugno@ameritech.net
July 11th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Also the keyboard is not convenient, not easy to type on at all
July 23rd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
[...] After paying a whopping $608 ($599 + tax in NY for example) for the iPhone, you won’t walk out of the store with an activated phone which was previously mentioned as one of the iPhone drawbacks. [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 9:32 pm
As a long time Window Mobile user (i.e., iPaqs, Dell Axims, & HTCs) I was finally relieved that I no longer have to use Microsoft’s crash prone and clunky products to help stay productive and entertained on the road. I purchased the 8 GB version of the iPhone and like almost everyone else I was impressed with its characteristics. I know that no phone is perfect, but the iPhone is certainly leading in the smart phone category. Microsoft is probably feeling like they got their a*! kicked and its engineers are probably trying to reverse engineer the iPhone.
December 10th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Excellent, excellent points.
But curious as a human being that I am, I went to test the iPhone yesterday.
I am really, really amazed at how simple it is to use. Really simple, and my finger touched everything.
And even though it’s bloody huge, it is so lightweight.
And now i know i committed a sin because I also published iPhone SUCKS in my blog. but now i think i’m falling in love with it.
ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
February 15th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Wow thanks guys… I wanted to buy one real bad…. But now im not so sure.
May 6th, 2008 at 2:52 am
HAHA Dont worry guys all the drawbacks in software can be solved in curtain applications launched by people who got annoyed exactly the same. >> Like 4 example:
COSTIMIZING YOUR RING TONES >> A software is developed for that and it is working as good as the iphone built in applications. So u see all this drawbacks have got curtain applications built to solve it.. >>My Advise
June 4th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Hi,
Just wanted to thank everyone for the comments and helping me decide not to buy an iPhone
As for “microsoft hater” well looking at your name instantly i can tell your comment is bias and garbage. I am going to look for a nice blackberry or something like that with a nice full keyboard with easy to use periods and commas. The phone needs to work with youtube since most phones do now says and the ones that dont are dinosaurs as far as im concerned. Good day to you all.
~Joecool6101