iDon't Want One

As I've mentioned, Jeff Kirvin and I don't see eye to eye on politics, but when he's buzzing on technology, he's spot on more often than not. In The iPhone is a bad phone he writes:

Let’s look at this objectively. This is, at minimum, a $500 phone that has no tactile feedback for dialing, no voice dial, no smart dial (ie dialing 5478 to narrow your contacts to KIRV), no Bluetooth stereo headset support, no dial-up networking support for an attached computer, 2.5G data that is normally about 2-3 times dial-up modem speed, no video recording, no MMS for sending pictures, only takes pictures at 2MP and automatically resizes them to VGA for email (no way to override either of those sizes). The SIM card is removable and will work in other devices, but other SIMs will not work in this GSM world phone, so you’ll have to pay AT&T roaming charges to use this outside the US. Unlike every other phone available today, there is no free 14-day grace period and if you buy an iPhone today and return it tomorrow, you’ll have to eat a 10% ($50-60) restocking fee. The battery is not only not removable, and when it dies (after 300-400 full charges) you have to send it back, for a fee, to Apple and get it replaced, meaning you’ll be without your cell phone for Apple’s standard 3 business days. And as for talk time, Mobile Tech Review reports that an hour long call dropped the battery to 15%.

And in his follow-up, iPhone Hands-on, he goes on...

In many ways, the iPhone reminds me of the HTC Touch in reverse. While both devices sport finger-friendly and artistically gorgeous home screens, on the Touch you find yourself digging for the stylus and familiar Windows Mobile complexity once you get past the veneer. On the iPhone, by contrast, once you get past the beauty and style of the UI, you pretty much have nothing.

Like Jeff, I don't understand the insane desire for an iPhone that grips these people. Then again, I didn't understand the insane desire that gripped people when they had to have a Mac. It's a purely aesthetic appeal that appeals to me not.

There's little that the iPhone does that my 2+ year old Treo 650 can't do already, including suffering with AT&T EDGE connect speeds. This first generation iPhone is horribly crippled, yet the style conscious line right up. Remember the striper in Independence Day, as she looked up at the alien ship and cooed, "Pretty!" And then she and the rest got blasted.

The iPhone is a barely adequate phone and it doesn't do any of the things I assume a "smartphone" should do (e.g., create and edit Word and Excel documents). Thus, as my Treo begins to flake and I approach the end of my indentured servitude with AT&T, I look elsewhere, and the current gem in my eye is the Sprint Mogul. The Mogul is a true smartphone, does pretty much everything the iPhone does (albeit without the same grace and style; whoop), plus: accesses a true 3G network; edits/creates Word, Excel, and even OneNote files (once you install the OneNote app, included when you buy the desktop version); costs $100 less than the iPhone; and has a data plan that's a shade more expensive than the cheapest AT&T iPhone plan, but that includes unlimited text messages, unlimited data access, plus a slew of other features either not offered or unsupported on the iPhone.

All I "lose" is the 4GB/8GB internal memory, a problem that is cured, as far as I'm concerned, by the the MicroSD slot built into the Mogul, for effectively unlimited memory expansion.

Hmm, let me think. Cheaper, faster, more capable, better phone and data plan for about the same rate.... Tell me again how great the iPhone is(n't).