I was anxiously awaiting the coming of the Apple iPhone like everybody else and I even waited in line for two hours on opening night and was relieved when the Irvine store hadn't run out and I was able to get my hands on one - forget relieved - more like extremely excited. I travel a LOT so this was to be my great new travel gadget that I could use on flights to now watch my movies in landscape mode, listen to music and just plain play with, all of the cool features are too numerous to mention and I'm sure everybody has now heard of how unbelievably cool this thing is. So it is with unusual trepidation that I make the following statement:
I just took back my iPhone - and it's hard to explain why...
Know when you love something SO MUCH, that when you find a flaw you are more disappointed than with something less ordinary that you would normally be more accepting of?
I just couldn't get past:
1). The slow Edge network
2). The no GPS on Google maps (which my Samsung SCH-i730 has and it ROCKS! - shows traffic patterns and I can be somewhere - and hit connect and it tells me where I am)
3). The 8GB capacity
4). No swappable battery plus Apple just announced that after 300 - 400 charges you have to send in your phone to have Apple replace it for $79.00 and a loss of your phone for three days (which I cannot do)
5). No external memory and no swappable SIM (which is why you get GSM in the first place - so you can swap it out in Europe)
6). No compatibility with Microsoft Exchange Server and Active Sync - my perhaps favorite feature on my current PDA the Samsung i730 - even though rich text emails on the iPhone looked incredible and my Gmail worked especially well
7). More of my friends, family and daily calls are on Verizon - or 'In my network'
8). The text/email portion didn’t adjust to landscape mode when turned sideways which would make the keys larger and easier to text
9). The recessed headphone input - rendering my $400 Westone UM2 audiophile headphones obsolete - unless I bought a silly adapter
10). No stereo support via Bluetooth. (OK - now I'm nitpicking, but did I mention the slow Edge network???)
Even still, this was not going to be my primary phone! I actually have an ATT account and phone (RAZR) that I maintain to take WebmasterWorld/PubCon calls on and also use primarily when I travel to Europe.
All things considered, I really, really loved this phone (the user interface was out of this world), I am becoming more of an Apple fan because of it and I'm seriously considering getting a MacBook Pro now. Also to complicate my feelings about the iPhone and my incessant raving while pointing out its flaws, I dropped it on the pavement once while showing it to a friend and scratched the top, bottom and a little bit of the screen (!!!), further pushing me apart from it (I know - I have tons of scratches on my Samsung SCH-i730, yet seeing ONE scratch on my iPhone really, really hurt).
To make myself feel better about returning it, I exchanged two thirds of what I paid for my iPhone ($599) for a 180GB Apple TV ($399) - now THAT thing really rocks - I can't tell you how cool it is to have all of the contents of my audio and a lot of my video library readily available not to mention slideshows of all of my pics set to music as a screensaver for my plasma TV...way cool! All wirelessly streamed via my home network without having to manually sync like I do with my iPod.
If Apple were to fix even half of these things, they would have even more of a real winner on their hands. In the meantime, I anxiously await the arrival of the new Samsung SCH-i760 which is supposed to be out any day now. I firmly stand in the camp of waiting for the second generation of the iPhone to come out before I will break down. Before that happens however, I have a feeling that I will be first in line for the new sixth generation iPod player - which is hey, what I was really looking for in the first place now wasn't I?
Update 7/23/2007:
Perhaps the best pro/con review I have read on the iPhone yet...and we come to just about all of the same conclusions. ;)
