Problems with the iPhone

I've previously expressed my opinion on the iPhone; that is, I don't care about it. On the surface, it's a neat gadget, but it seems lacking in some ways. I've had a Sprint Treo 650 for the past two years and definitely love it. But even this two year old phone has critical features that the iPhone lacks. I wonder how many people are going goo goo gaa gaa over the iPhone, but don't realize what it DOESN'T have.

1) You cannot tether your iPhone to a laptop.

This is a MAJOR feature that I use constantly when traveling. Regardless of where I am in the US, I can sit down, press a few buttons on my phone and get on the Internet using my laptop over bluetooth. The connection isn't all that fast, but it works. No matter how powerful the iPhone's built in apps may be claimed to be, I'd much rather use my full size laptop to get on the net when I can. Leaving out such a critical feature that even the lowliest of phones have these days is inexcusable.

2) No memory expansion at all.

Even my two year old Treo and many cheaper phones have SD/miniSD/microSD slots; why doesn't the iPhone have one? Yes, it has a few gigabytes of flash memory built in, but what if I want to expand upon it? SD cards will probably be up to 8GB or even 16GB in a couple of years; I should be able to insert one to upgrade my phone. Can't do this with the iPhone, no way!

3) EDGE

EDGE is slow. It's even slower than 1xRTT, the technology my two year old Treo uses. It's INSANELY slower than EV-DO, which the new Treos support on Sprint and Verizon. All the demos you've seen of the phone have been on fast Wi-Fi networks. Don't expect mobile performance to even come close. And, on top of that...

4) AT&T sucks

I've heard nothing but complaints about poor coverage, slow data, dropped calls, etc. People who had AT&T and moved to Sprint or Verizon have been much happier. There's NO REASON the iPhone should be limited to one carrier! You can get a Treo on Sprint, Verizon, AT&T.. any provider you want. I'm sure the providers were climbing over each other to get the iPhone in their lineup; why did Apple go exclusive with AT&T? Plus, their data network sucks; see point 3 above.

5) No third party apps, especially SSH

Yes, there's full AJAX support, but some things, like SSH clients, can't be implemented securely with AJAX. They've wasted the potential of a really powerful device by not allowing third party apps.

In any case, I'm not the only one in this boat; lots of folks can't go iPhone because of these deficiencies. Apple had the chance to do something really groundbreaking, then crippled it. And the sad thing is that they're taking attention away from their product I really DO like, the Mac, to promote this crippled phone.

Sorry, no iPhone for me. And that's all I have to say about that.