Cliff and Vasken wrote up some link bait complaining about how the iPhone doesn’t meet their expectations or is a lesser competitor to a crackberry. But I challenge them to find a device that offers what they say is missing or even matches what the iPhone has.

Still, I’ve been using mine for a month now, and I can say there are few things it’s missing or could do better. None of them are deal breakers; in fact, it’s only because the device is so generally good that I’ve got any complaints at all. Call me a fanboy if you want, but I’d be interested in hearing from anybody who’s spent significant time with an iPhone who’d rather go back to their old phone.

Like Cliff, I’m frustrated that the built-in GPS isn’t user-accessible or integrated with the Google Maps app, but having used it a lot in my travels recently I can say that the maps are hugely useful even without the GPS. (though this is funny and useful too) The lack of Flash support is frustrating, but I’m not aware of any mobile browser that fully supports it, and the YouTube app is actually much better because the stream dynamically adjusts its bandwidth based on the connection speed (EDGE is way slower than WiFi, though not nearly as bad as some are reporting), and the high bandwidth stream looks much better on my iPhone than in Flash on my desktop. And despite some whining that not all the YouTube content is available, the Apple press release on the subject did claim that all YouTube content would be available by fall.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have complaints. I already noted issues with data getting lost after a firmware reset, but that post missed a few more general issues:

• No copy/paste/clipboard
• Browser doesn’t save passwords, or synchronize passwords from the big-screen browser
• Form auto-fill seems a little dumb compared to the big-screen Safari, perhaps because the history isn’t sync’d?
• The .Mac RSS reader is pretty good, but it can’t display aggregated feeds the way Safari on a Mac can
• The email inboxes aren’t aggregated as they are in Apple Mail, and I must instead check each account individually
• When using GMaps, is there an easy way to switch out of route-view to search for a single point?
• No search tools — especially useful for finding music or contacts

All of those can be fixed in software. My list of hardware-realted complaints is tiny by comparison. I mean, I’ll agree with those that point out the phone can’t properly orient itself while in orbit and doesn’t have a metal cutting laser, but my own complaints were smaller scale. I was surprised to learn that my Belkin car audio adapter didn’t work, somewhat less surprised to find my camera adapter didn’t (wouldn’t it be cool to offload pics from the camera to iPhone, then view them and upload the good ones to Flickr?) and I’m eager for somebody to develop a small external keyboard (hey, check out Pogue’s iPhone keyboarding tips).

iPhone, complaints, early adopter, version 1.0, progressive refinement, user feedback, apple, smartphone

On Thursday I had trouble answering a call. By Friday night it was clear my iPhone was seriously porked. A visit to the nearby Apple store got me a swift replacement, and a promise that once I synchronized the new device it’d have all the info the old one did.

Hrm.

Well, the Mac Genius did ask if I had any photos I hadn’t offloaded, as those would be lost in the swap. But, as it turns out, there’s a lot of info that gets lost when an iPhone is either swapped or gets a firmware reset (my phone first got the reset, then when symptoms persisted, replaced).

Things that should be simple to back up on an iPhone, like contacts in the favorites list aren’t, same for special ring tones I’d set for various contacts and they were all lost even after the restore. It may be less surprising that various settings and preferences, the default ringtone or whether to sound an alert when new email arrives, are lost. Those are fairly easy to reset, but a real shock to me was that any data in the notes application is lost. And, unfortunately, I’d started to keep a lot of info in there. Everything from ideas I wanted to followup to trivia that, well, like any trivia, just couldn’t be filed elsewhere.

The loss of those notes was a painful surprise, and a reminder how delicate my digital world is.

Then, while enjoying the iPhone as a diversion between flights in PHX, I realized that my browser cookies weren’t backed up. Cookies aren’t expected to be persistent, not even by me, but it was just another thing and a reminder of my frustration that the iPhone doesn’t save website passwords the way big-screen Safari does (though some websites leverage cookies to make it less troublesome, but when cookies aren’t sync’d…).

That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on my iPhone (so don’t ask if you can have mine). Some of this is part of the bargain early adopters take on, but I also expect these issues will be addressed in software soon.

Extra: oddly, the replacement iPhone was retail boxed, and this receipt is very different from how I’ve seen them handle repairs/replacements of Mac products. The best part is the receipt shows my warranty was extended a few weeks.

[tags]iphone, complaints, early adopter, replacement, reset, lost data[/tags]