I’ve been the proud, delighted owner of my 16MB white iPhone 3G for a week now. I love it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its drawbacks. And I find that many of my complaints are around the absence of functionality I had on my BlackBerry Pearl. Following my first impressions, here’s what Apple could do that would make me say, “What BlackBerry?”
Must Have:
- Improve the battery life. The battery life is so bad that I find myself now becoming accustomed to charging my iPhone throughout the day. Granted, my usage is high. I ran the unit several times until it shut down to maximize battery life as an Apple Genius recommended. But any handheld communications-organization device needs to be able to run from the time I wake until the time I sleep. End of story.
- To-Do List/Notes Sync. I used Notes and the To-Do List (the “NextAction” add-on) extensively on my BlackBerry, and they integrated beautifully with Outlook, including Outlook Exchange Web mail. Now, I remain in a quandary as to what to do with the iPhone. I’m looking at Evernote, EasyTask Manager and OmniFocus as replacements (I’m a partial GTD adherent), but none solve all of the problems I have. (More on GTD applications to come).
- Copy/Cut-Paste. It’s beyond my understanding why this is not available.
- More Robust Email. The litany of issues is too long to enumerate. BlackBerry is way better, period. This is essential if Apple wants to steal share in the enterprise market.
- Voice Dialing. Especially in California, where headsets are now required by law when driving, easy dialing while in the car is essential. Favorites, Recents, Contacts — all of these are too difficult to use when driving. I’ve tried the SpeechCloud Voice Dialer application and it (1) isn’t a dialer – it’s a voice recognition lookup tool and (2) it doesn’t work well. In 4-5 tries, it never found the name I was seeking, and I then uninstalled it. In general, contact and phone number lookup on the iPhone require too many keystrokes, and the ease of use of the basic phone function is less than ideal.
- Overall Stability. My iPhone crashes. Not infrequently. Usually when flipping among applications. An open platform is great. It’s got to be more stable that this.
Nice to Have:
- IR Beam. Remember the Palm V? I do. I’d love better capability to transmit data from phone-to-phone.
- Video Recording. This isn’t that important to me, but I look forward to the day.
I’m still a satisifed promoter of the iPhone and look forward to future improvements. It’s been a week, and I’m still having fun.
