Daniel Cazzulino's Blog : Why the iPhone is not ready for prime time

Why the iPhone is not ready for prime time

My “baseline” phone is my Nokia N95, so my quality and functionality bar is high. I’ll go straight to the point here:

1. Bluetooth audio: doesn’t support the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) profile, meaning you can’t use stereo headsets that support it to listen to music. I’ve got the BlueAnt X5 which work flawlessly with my Nokia N95 but only work as phone headsets with the iPhone. This also means that it doesn’t work either with my very cool Pioneer bluetooth-enabled stereo. This is a bummer as I have a very nice user experience with the N95 and the stereo: I can listen to my music through bluetooth, and as soon as an incoming call arrives, the music fades out and then pauses, and I get to answer the call from the stereo. That means I can use the stereo speakers to listen to my caller, and I got the provided microphone installed on the windshield close to the driver steat on the left, so I got a very comfortable hands-free experience. And it sounds much better than the (rather old) Morotola HS820 bluetooth headset I used before, according to friends and family.

2. Bluetooth sync: you can pair the iPhone with a laptop, but can’t sync over bluetooth. Again, this works great on the N95. I hate wires.

3. Keyboard without T9: it’s pretty much unusable. Tying to hit the diminute keys is so painful. The fact that the pressed key gets zoomed after you click it is of little help: it just shows me that I pressed the wrong one most of the time. An on-screen keyboard without T9 is a serious no-go for me. I can type MUCH faster on my N95.

I tried the TenGO Thumb for PocketPC a while ago, and THAT’s what the iPhone should have provided, nothing less. It’s the only thing that can make a querty keyboard bereable:

Imagine if the iPhone keyboard had something like that:

I’d only have to worry about hitting those 6 big keys (I surrounded each with a different color just so that you see what I mean), and the software would take care of disambiguating what I meant while typing. In my experience, this is the only productive way to type with your fingers.

1. Text input autocomplete is also very annoying: in order to select the suggested word, you just press Space, whereas if you don’t want it, you have to click on the suggested word (?!). This reflects too much confidence on their suggestions. If you happen to write messages in more than one language (I type most of it in spanish), then you’re going to have a very annoying typing experience, clicking on the suggested words to get rid of them (I usually forget and as soon as I press Space, I get a completely different word than I typed, and have to go back and delete it all).

2. Outlook sync: I hate outlook, granted, but it’s a fact of business life (especially if you’re so close to Microsoft as we are). The iPhone can’t sync with mails in Outlook at all. Contacts is fine, but no emails is a serious issue.

3. SIP: I know this is an advanced feature of the N95. I doubt there are many phones that support this feature. On the N95, you enter your SIP credentials, and it will automatically dial through the VoIP server whenever you are connected to Wi-Fi and the server can be reached. Now that I have an Asterisk Appliance at the office (it’s been a couple weeks only, so I’ll post some other day about the experience), I totally see myself depending on this feature quite a bit, specially when I’m travelling. I will just be able to pick up my cell (even if I’m using a SIM card from another country) and call home at a local argentinean call cost. They will also be able to call me to my office extension, and I can pick up on my cell. Something I was seriously looking forward, which I can’t do with the iPhone.

4. Dialing: the phone dialing experience is suboptimal. In my case, I’m typically calling the same 2-4 numbers all the time. On the iPhone you have to:

   • Press the Home button
   • Unlock the phone with the finger sliding at the bottom
   • Look at the phone and push the Phone button
   • Look at the phone and push the Favorites button (I need to do this because I may have switched the “tab” before)
   • Look at the phone and select the contact On my N95, I go:
   • Unlock the phone by sliding the screen
   • Push the “Call” button
   • Look at the phone and select the contact you previously called (you get the list of recent calls, 4 contact names fit on the screen, and you can scroll for more)
   • Push the “Call” button again What’s important to notice besides the additional steps on the iPhone, is that I have to be looking at the phone most of the time. With the N95 I only have to glance at it once.

One feature that neither provides which I now realize I depended on quite a bit on my previous Windows Mobile phones (O2 Atom Exec and Audiovox SMT5600) was to start typing the phone number and have the contact list automatically filtered until the right contact/phone was displayed, at which point I would simply select it and call. Typically, I’d only dial the first 3 digits before I got a full match (or a narrowed 2-3 contacts list that I could select from)

1. UMTS/HSDPA 3G broadband: this one is an unnaceptable oversight by Apple. Either they spent too much time making the iPhone to the point that their “broadband” technology is already obsolete, or they are really convinced (wrongly) that ubiquitous wi-fi (especially outside the US) is a reallity. It is not, unfortunately, and mobile broadband access is pretty much the only ubiquitous choice in many countries. This might sound like a corner feature to you, but according to some users, EDGE (iPhone’s supported technology) is as much as 5 times slower than 3G. There are some rumours of a 3G iPhone coming to Europe, though, and I feel like this will happen sooner than later.

2. Installing apps: unbelievable that I have to go through a hackerish “jailbreak” process in order to be able to install more apps on the phone.

3. RSS reader: there are a lot of options for platforms like Symbian and Windows Mobile. I know it’s a matter of time ‘till the iPhone gets the same. Right now, the only reader I found sucks badly. This is almost a showstopper for me.

4. GPS: ok, another one that most consumer phones don’t have, but which the N95 nailed down. It would have been awesome to have this with the gorgeous iPhone screen :(

5. Camera: a 2 megapixel “camera” is nothing more than a crappy toy that can never be used seriously as a camera. I can’t even understand why a phone maker even bothers putting such a camera in a phone. Seriously, who wants to keep a memorable photo in such a terrible resolution? Add to that that pretty much all of the phones lack flash and autofocus, and it’s really a useless feature. Compare that with the very nice 5 megapixel camera on the N95, which also has autofocus and flash. Here’s the comparison just in case you’re in doubt yet:

[
[daylight]

[
[low light]

Guess which photos are from which camera :p
Certainly I don’t worry anymore about forgetting my camera when I travel:

[San Diego is gorgeous]

1. Video recording: this is related to the previous one. With the N95, I can also shoot pretty good looking videos, although not so much under low-light conditions. But in daylight, it’s quite good.

2. Storage: fixed storage is another tough one to swallow. Storage capacity doubles about every year, so I know for a fact that one year from now (maybe much less if rumours are true?), a new iPhone will have twice or more as much storage. 8GB already feels tight for an iPod/media player device. With my N95, I can have as many microSDs as I want. It only takes 4 x 2GB nowadays to get comparable storage. And 4GB microSD are already hitting the market. I can easily imagine a not-so-far future where just one microSD with 8GB will give me the equivalent of today’s iPhone storage. And I will still be able to have more than one. There’s even a new version of the N95 coming out that already has 8GB internal storage. Suck that tangerine, iPhone (ok, that’s an argentinean saying :p).

3. Fixed battery: batteries aren’t forever. With any other phone, I just have to buy a replacement battery pretty much anywhere, swap it and be done without any “phone downtime”. With the iPhone, I’ll have to bring it to an Apple store, maybe leave it there for a day (if I’m lucky, I guess), and get it back later with a new battery. What am I suppossed to use in the meantime? Are they going to give me a replacement while they fix mine?

“Minor” annoynces:

1. TV-Out: I know this may be available soon, but right now, it isn’t. I use this feature quite a bit on my N95, where I carry a microSD with TV shows/screencasts/conference videos/interviews and play them wherever I am. I know I could have an AppleTV, a media center extender on XBox, etc., etc., but you can’t beat the simplicity of plugging the phone to the TV (and I can do this even when I’m not at home). Showing family videos is also another great use. Photos don’t look very good from the N95, though.
   And btw, I’m pretty sure to use the feature on the iPhone, I’ll have to buy a $19.99 cable :p (I got everything needed for my N95 in the box). I just hate that on Apple.

2. Audio out: can’t connect a standard headphone or line-in cable to an amplifier?! I had to buy a $10 Belkin adapter to be able to do so, and it just ruins the experience having that long big adapter on my pocket. Taking the already quite tall iPhone plus the long adapter out of your pocket is something you can’t just do fast enough.

3. iTunes: it’s probably no news to anyone, but this software sucks. Being tied to it for everything I want to sync to the iPhone is just too much. I doubt anyone would be willing to drop Picassa for iTunes.

So, I join Jeff’s “no iPhone v1” crusade:

/kzu