Featured

14 Reasons iPhone Sucks (or, Yet Another iPhone 3G Review)

By Johnny Fuery ⋅ October 26, 2008 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

I’m a Blackberry user. I had an 850 back when “Compassion Conservatism” meant “Clinton-esque economic prosperity, only with a tax cut”, a $10 trillion debt seemed like science fiction, and no one thought that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11.

Oh how times have changed. Here’s an old photo of the device, courtesy of about.com:

So. I’ve been carrying around a Pearl for about a year and recently purchased a shiny new iPhone 3G. It’s been reviewed all over the place, and if you read my blog, you almost certainly already know about, ahem, visual voicemail. So this article won’t mention SMS messaging and the “ooh” factor of the entire thread in view when text messaging. (Besides, my pearl does that, too, albeit with less animation.)

I’ll start with the cons first. Everyone and their Mom wants a friggin’ iPhone, and these things are supposed to be the most innovative devices since some goofball thought selling stuff (starting with porn) on the darpanet using a simple markup language might be a good idea. (If you don’t know the lore to which I’m referring, please do comment saying so. I’ll be happy to post the appropriate Wikipedia links if it’s that unclear.)

In other words, everyone wants one. I’m choosing to not hop on that bandwagon. At least not up front.

Why iPod Sucks

1. Calendar, schmalendar. Blackberry talks to my google calendar seamlessly. I can transfer an ical invitation in my inbox to my calendar with a single click, and before I can open 3 browser windows on my desktop, it’s already in my online google calendar and my offce manager knows about it. iPhone, on the other hand, a year after initial release, uses MobileMe, a subscription based service on top of the $40 minimum I have to pay AT&T every month. And then it talks only to Exchange. How well does it work? I dunno. I’m not gonna go install Exchange just so I can get a locked-to-outlook version of my perfectly good Google calendar. Sure, there’s an alternative out there, but it looks — ahem — a bit dodgy to me. Plus that ain’t gonna be free as soon as they can hire a designer for their web site.
2. I can sync contacts. To Outlook. With a Cable. Wireless? Just kidding!
3. Oh, wait, I can’t actually sync. I can DELETE EVERY CONTACT ON MY PHONE and then REWRITE them from Outlook. WTF? I’m sorry, I know that my little boutique software firm would have a hard time writing a seamless contact synchronization algorithm in less than three months. Hell, it might take four if you (gasp) asked for synchronization against more than one contact management system. But you’re Apple. You have $25 billion in the bank. C’mon, guys.
4. I can’t sync using Bluetooth. Sure, it might be slow. Sure, it’s not standard on all laptops. Heck, do MacBooks have them? Maybe that’s why there was this subtle omission. But what about that inevitable road trip where I forget my USB cable? Having Bluetooth-to-laptop connectivity at least as a backup would have been a nice value-add without a lot of additional engineering resources.
5. Speaking of cables, why do I need one? EVER? Let me repeat that question with a little more context. Why does my bluetooth-having, wi-fi sensing, 3G Network boasting, so cool it helps me get laid, star trek communicators are so 20th century, always-connected device EVER NEED A F***ING CABLE? You want to use one because it’s faster the first time you load up 14 Gigabytes of totally legal digital music on your brand new “I’m a Steve Jobs groupie” badge, sure. But a device with so many connectivity options should have an over-the-air (OTA) option for everything. EVERYTHING.
6. I can’t download a song from iTunes unless I use Wi-fi. Thanks, AT&T.
7. Mail has no search function. And, yes, my crackberry does.
8. Sideways keyboard on web pages, but not in (ahem) the mail application. I don’t much like the software keyboard, anyway.
9. I can’t delete podcasts. I can’t even mark podcasts for deletion on my next cable synchronization. Insert another expletive here for the cable issue. Yes, again. This is meaning of life stuff here, Jack.
10. I can’t download podcasts. Not even from iTunes over wifi. So I have to cable synch to my laptop connected to the same stinkin’ wifi network just so I can get my latest Robert Reich commentary and last week’s This American Life. Yes, I know, I’m a bourgeouis pampered bastard, but I grew up poor and I work harder than you, so bite me. =)
11. The software keyboard, take two. On a Blackberry with a full keyboard (e.g. the Curve), I can type probably 35 words per minute. No, not the 75-90 I can blast out when blogging passionately on a full-blown keyboard, but still not too shabby. Good enough, in fact, to manage a software project completely from a blackberry, especially with solid administrative help. I can reply to an email with three paragraphs in two minutes, including the requisite backspaces. The apple predictive capabilities with the software keyboard are top-notch, but it’s still dependent on software to guess at your intention after you fat-finger your way to gobbledy-gook heaven. You will remember predictive texting, right? You know, that feature you turned off on your old Nokia the minute you started trying to send your third SMS ever back when too much of the country still thought W. was a good president? (I told you so, btw. Yes. I did. 5 years ago. Check my archives. =)
12. Camera — old news, yes, but there’s no light. No zoom. My Blackberry has that.
13. Camera — wish list. It’s a good camera. Good enough to replace my desire for a Canon/Sony/Nikon. I’m not a professional photographer, and I’m well aware that I don’t need more than 2 megapixels to warrant sending Shutterfly a few dollars. But there’s no video (my 5 year old Sony Walkman phone did that for crying out loud), there’s no flash, and there’s no — and this is the biggest issue I have with all camera phones — lens protection. Would it be so hard to allow us consumers the ability to protect that lens so the damn thing can take a good picture for more than 3 weeks after you unwrap the thing?
14. The software keyboard, take three. You can’t send a text with one hand. This is pretty much across the board, don’t even try. Not that I’d ever consider sending a text message or email while doing something (cough) Holding a steering wheel (cough) with my other hand.

Later in the week, I’ll post an entry on what I actually like about my iPhone. Despite all of the above complaints, yes, it still has its merits… but the verdict is still out on whether or not the Blackberry gets retired.

Tags: Blackberry is not dead, iPhone, iPhone Flaws, iPhone Sucks