Why Is There a Downside to the iPhone?

Apple launched a beautiful device when they manufactured the iPhone. It's such a simple device and one that is unique in the industry of PDA/Phones. The iPhone is probably the easiest PDA phone to use, especially compared to devices like the Blackberry and the Treo. But, Apple did get a few things wrong with this device, including not allowing for expandable memory, no cut and paste and the costs associated with the AT&T service is really annoying.

It's a wonder how Apple could miss out on these features? Essentially, I believe Apple is playing the "move up" game and coercing people to upgrade devices every year or two as they build in functionality which should have been built in from the beginning. That's exactly what happened with the 2G upgrade to the 3G. The 2G did not incorporate 3G speeds, which is critical to using the Internet, for example.

Limited memory is one of the downsides to the iPhone. The iPod Touch which is essentially an iPhone without the phone can be purchased with 32G. But, the iPhone maximum memory limit today is only 16G. Why would Apple be so stingy on the memory on the iPhone? One movie alone is probably 200M or more. This will turn off many people who like to download lots of content.
 
One thing Apple could have done is allow people to add more memory by using some type of SD card. It could have been small enough so as not to detract from the beauty of the phone. More memory would also give users the ability to extend the usefulness of the iPhone.

Battery life is not very good either. In fact it's worse than my old Treo 700p. I use my phone, any phone, a lot. I was out of the office one day, all day, using my iPhone within about 4 hours, I was half full on the battery … compound that issue if you were watching videos or listening to MP3s. There are battery extenders on the market and we discuss this in more detail in future articles.

The service from AT&T is not bad. In fact, it's probably better than Sprint in my particular location, but it's pricey. The minimum monthly cost that you can expect to spend on the iPhone on AT&T is something like $75. This gets you a paltry 450 voice minutes, unlimited data (which you’re required to buy) and 200 text messages (which is nominal)? Compared to Sprint it's about 30% more expensive. But, that's the price you pay for an iPhone 3G, which arguably is the sexiest phone/PDA on the market.

Another issue that Apple did not address is the lack of a copy and paste function. Say you are in an application that has a phone number and you want to put it into the dialer, you can't copy that phone number into the dialer. You'll have to remember the phone # or write it down. There have been so many times that I needed to copy something from one application to another, but had to resort to writing it down first. This is such a basic feature for any PDA phone.

Don't get me wrong. The iPhone is still a cool device especially because of its gorgeous 320 x 320 screen.