apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

WAAANNNNNTTTTTTTTTT

seriously. Where do I buy it? The video chat alone is worth the price of admission.


http://embritadesign.blogspot.com

definitely!!!

Until Apple opens it up and allows real development, in the realm of things like MS Exchange, It'll never be a viable contender for the business market. Blackberry and now likely Palm Pre have that pretty well covered. Also, camera phone business user often doesn't work well together. Many very large companies don't allow or won't provide phones with a camera due to the ease with which trade secrets can be leaked.

I certainly agree with the physical keyboard, but I can't see apple actually doing that. It'll make their precious little device twice as thick and muddy up the cleanness of the design. That's always been more important to them than functionality.

And finally, not that I'm a huge fan of windows mobile, or that I agree with everything on the following list, I think it does a good job of pointing out what needs to be fixed on the iphone. I'm just copying this from a comment by user Hamidxa and later McLovin to the Engadget post here: http://tinyurl.com/dnaza2

1. No multitasking (outside of a few nominal system apps needed for basic functionality -- ever wonder why it appears smooth, well no kidding, you are only running 1 app at a time 90% of the time)
2. No turn-by-turn voice navigation system (a poor man's Google maps version is available for the system however)
3. No Flash support inside Safari (SkyFire can do this with ease, and Flash Lite for Opera even works better than Apple's offering)
4. No copy and paste (WinMo handles this elegantly by comparison)
5. No VGA or WVGA screen (instead we are given a low-Res screen leaving much to be desired. come on Apple, at least give us VGA resolution if not WVGA)
6. No way to edit documents (SoftMaker Office for Windows Mobile handles this impeccably well, even Office Mobile suffices to a certain degree)
7. No bluetooth music streaming and/or file transfers -- A2DP (video is out of the question)
8. No voice command (WM devices have featured this for years now and it works brilliantly on them)
9. No video recording (seriously Apple, I mean come on, my grandmother's 5 year old flip phone has this feature)
10. No capability to take handwritten notes (Asian markets that rely on this and many of us Note takers in general that rely on this critical feature are left out in the cold)
11. No user replaceable battery
12. No physical keyboard (no amount of fooling one's self will make up for the lack of a true hardware keyboard)
13. No drag and drop file juggling
14. No tethering (natively)
15. No MMS (natively)
16. No external storage card support (Micro SDHC cards are up to 32 GB now, 8GB is NOT enough these days, especially for a media device, and besides choice of being able to carry additional media is always a plus)
17. No Java
18. No IR port (it's something many take for granted, using their phones as a remote for well...anything just about)
19. No Live TV (that doesnt require you to be connected to an app like Orb on your home PC, which defeats the purpose, why would I want to watch it on a dinky non VGA screen instead of just on my home PC when im at home anyways)
20. No camera flash
21. No camera zoom
22. No auto-focus
22. Same old, subpar, 2 MP camera for that matter as in the first iteration
23. No radio
24. No front camera
25. Limited video format support
26. Limited picture format support
27. Limited file format support in general
28. Only 128 MB of RAM (Cant run many apps simultaneously -- I mean not that it matters since multitasking is for all intents and purposes out of the question! New WM phones are getting 256 MB of RAM, with 150 MB free on bootup)
29. Sluggish performance (perhaps due to the aforementioned 128 MB RAM limitation. why does it take several seconds to open up the contacts list or why does it lag when typing text)
30. A very stringent and almost "closed" development environment (why does Apple have to give its seal of approval for every single app distributed on the phone. This is counterproductive and in many ways even stifles competition. Apple for the longest wouldnt even allow developers to write their own web browsers. SkyFire with flash would otherwise have been an option already for the iPhone, but that would threaten their own Safari browser. Let's not even get into all of the other potentially cool, and not so ethical apps that are simply not even allowed to exist)

charmac, we have to remember that the iPhone is a phone and not a PC. it's a phone and not a camera or camcorder. it's a phone that corrected the phone market by combining the elegance of an iPod with a great internet browser. at it's inception, the blackberry, nokia n95 and winMo phones put web browsing secondary on their list.

the reason it is selling so well isn't because it tries to complete a checklist of everything we want on a phone but what apple thinks people should already have on a phone.

as for sluggish performance and development - remember that apple corrected a lot of those problems with firmware updates. my iphone isn't at all sluggish with built in apps.

and keep in mind that developers are making a ton of money on the app store. following apple's strict policies for apps is a downer, but it is paying off in the long run.

the iPhone isn't a perfect phone - but it's perfect for the owners that love the features.

Like I said, I just copied the list from elsewhere and I don't agree with everything on there, but lack of multitasking and copy-paste is just silly.

As for correcting the phone market, I'll have to disagree. Blackberry didn't have the greatest browser, but it's a business phone primarily. Nokia and WM phones were perfectly fine, and many were 3g when the first iphone came out with almost useless 2g. And no, it's not a PC or a camera, or a camcorder, but many other phones out there can do most of what's on that list. They don't do it as attractively as the iphone might, but they do it.

Anyway, I'll agree that it's an attractive phone, though somewhat at the cost of functionality. My main point here, though, is that it isn't (and really isn't intended to be) a business phone. Blackberry is diverging their offering somewhat to pick up more of the non-business market. Apple will have to do the same if they want to pick up business users; and support for exchange, or at least allowing apps that support exchange is a must.

I don't care that the iPhone doesn't have a physical keyboard. If they improve things, that's fine. If they don't, that's fine, too. I'm quite happy with mine (one of the original, non-3G).

For a complete list of iPhone failings, see http://iphoneannoyances.net/forum/

I have a feeling that hardcore "business phone" users and the casual iPhone users are purposely designed a world apart. The requirements and preferences of each market dictate each phone's GUI and functionality, so although there is crossover, one can argue a Blackberry is currently the preferred phone because of the very inherent flaws to an iPhone devotee, and vice versa (subtracting glowing issues like no copy and paste in the iPhone and RIM's "ehhh" GUI/industrial design). That isn't to say that improvements can't be made to either phone/platform, but the debate is certainly moot in regards to the ideals of cell phones become a de facto standard in each the consumer realm and the business field.

I just got my iphone one week ago, so I may not be up to speed, but wouldn't one just put the phone in airplane mode and use the wifi to access voip, email, browser, etc when overseas?