7 iPhone disappointments? Really?

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 24 June 2008 19:01

Mobility

A news report catalogs 7 disappointments with the iPhone – but are they really disappointing? Let’s tear ‘em down, while agreeing with one or two along the way.

Tech journalist Brian Caulfield in the US says he’s got 7 big disappointments with the iPhone.

These are the cost, no Adobe Flash support, no replaceable batteries, no video recording, no cut and paste, no MMS and no video dialling.

Disappointment 1 is “the cost”. The 8GB iPhone 3G will retail for US $199, and the 16GB model for US $299. These upfront costs are certainly cheaper than the previous 2G iPhones, which started at US $599 for the 8GB model, then fell in price to US $399.

Caulfield’s beef is that the iPhone’s monthly cost in the US is going up by $10 per month for data usage, but is that so surprising?

3G will suck a lot more data than a 2G iPhone per month, and with the iPhone having “unlimited data” in the US, something we’re not assured of here in Australia, the 3G iPhone will be an ever bigger drain on telco data usage than the 2G iPhone already is.

Paying an extra $10 per month so the phone company can afford to put in more infrastructure and pay for all that extra bandwidth isn’t evil, it’s a cost of doing business, and for at least double the speed (if not even faster) it’s a pretty good deal.

That said, the total cost of owning an iPhone over two years will be, all up, close to $2000. But any modern smartphone with 3G, a relatively high calling plan and data usage will cost the same, so the iPhone is no different in that regard to existing phones on the market.

At least in Australia we already have two providers ready to compete for iPhone customers, with Telstra said to launch it will also sell the iPhone on June 26 at the opening of its T[Life] store in Melbourne with Sol Trujillo, Telstra CEO, to make the announcement.

Heck, even Three Mobile is supposed to be coming onboard the iTrain soon too, and if they apply the X-Series data pricing the cost of owning an iPhone could well be cheaper in Australia than anywhere else in the world, with poor Americans stuck with just one telco: AT&T.

So, for a lower upfront cost but a slightly higher total cost of ownership, you get faster data speeds and a built-in GPS. Pretty good if you ask me.

Next up is the supposed disappointment number 2 of “No Flash”. No, we’re not talking about the lack of a flash for the camera on the back of the iPhone, which is, incidentally, a disappointment, as is the fact the camera is still stuck at 2 megapixels.

No, the disappointment is the lack of Adobe Flash. But what is flash mostly used for on today’s websites? Internet video and ads. Yep, that’s really it, when it comes down to it.

Sure, there are some sites that are made in Flash, but they normally have non-Flash versions in the background. And there are sites that have Flash videos that can’t be seen, which is definitely a shame.

So, what disappointments can be blast out of the water next? Continued on page 2.