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

I’ve been talking up the Pepper Pad and Nokia 770 a lot, and I’ve mentioned a moment of lust for the LifeDrive (despite my complaints against PDAs), but today I bought a Treo 650 (even though I had doubts).

My decision surprised me, but the following factors all weighed in its favor:

• My cell phone contract expired. Verizon was dangling their standard $100 discount (on top of other discounts) on a new phone if I renewed. That, and Palm dropped the price on the 650 a lot recently.
   
• My Clie TH-55 is kaput. Yeah, I had complaints, but it turned out that I missed the damn thing.
   
• With the Clie out of commission, I was also in need of a small camera/video camera. I was thinking of getting a refurbished Stylus Verve for about $150 (when you can find them). The Treo’s camera can’t match the Stylus, but it’s better than the Clie’s and will do the job.

Well, that’s how I justified explained it to Sandee anyway.

cameraphone, cell phone, cellphone, palm, palmone, pda, phone, small camera, smart phone, smartphone, treo, treo 650, treo650