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iPhone 3G: 14 things I hate about you

Reader Adam Dempsey is having a bit of an arse with his move from his Nokia N95 to the iPhone 3G. Nothing traumatic. He’s just come across a lot of things that are (mildly?) annoying him. I found myself nodding along in agreement as I read. I asked Adam for permission to republish here — thank you Adam.

Here we go:

– – – – –

Just a rant about some things which annoy me about the iPhone!

Reader Adam Dempsey is having a bit of an arse with his move from his Nokia N95 to the iPhone 3G. Nothing traumatic. He’s just come across a lot of things that are (mildly?) annoying him. I found myself nodding sagely as I read. I asked Adam for permission to republish here — thank you Adam.

Here we go:

– – – – –

Just a rant about some things which annoy me about the iPhone!

1. Not being able to forward messages – I often use to receive jokes which I’d send of to a few mates, can’t do this anymore! I imagine this is something which will get added eventually, it’s not exactly rocket science!

2. Bluetooth only supporting Hands-Free Profile (HFP) and Headset Profile (HSP), not Basic Imaging Profile (BIP), File Transfer Profile (FTP), and Object Push Profile (OPP), meaning you can only use the Bluetooth to connect to headsets, not send or receive files from friends or even sync via Bluetooth to my computer. I’m not sure if it’s a hardware issue, or I expect it’s just limited by software so possibly in the future this could change!

3. No MMS. I didn’t think that I actually used multimedia messages that often, but in the last few weeks that I’ve had my iPhone I know of at least 3 or 4 times where people have asked if I’ve received a picture they’ve sent me which I didn’t even know about!

4. Not being able to edit the auto-complete dictionary. It’s quite useful that it corrects some of my mistypes, but I often shorten some of my words so I can type quicker, for example ‘bk’ always gets changed to ‘jk’ which annoys me!

5. Considering it’s basically an iPod with phone features added, the built-in speakers don’t go very loud at all! My Nokia N95 was much much better in that view.

6. I have many multiple phone numbers saved under one contact name for Facebook, but even though they are all from the same contact, messages from all the different numbers show up as different conversations in the SMS app, how hard would it be to at least have an option to group them by contact and not just by number.

7. A 2 megapixel camera and not even a flash? Seriously? Even my Nokia N80 which I had 2 years ago had a 3 megapixel camera with a decent flash!

8. No removable battery. Not a massive§ issue, but for previous phones I always used to keep a spare battery which I would charge and take with me if I knew I’d be without access to a charger. Also a friend recently dropped his iPhone in a sink of water, normally you’d remove the battery and leave it to dry out, but obviously he couldn’t do that and his phone was ruined.

9. No call recording, this isn’t really something I’d necessarily expect to be built in, but I’m surprised there’s nothing in the AppStore to be able to do this, unless using the SDK it isn’t possible, I’m not sure.

10. Not being able to sync between multiple computers, I have different selections of Music at both home and work and it would be nice if I could sync both lots of them to my iPhone, but instead I had to burn a dvd of the music, take it home and then sync it all from the one computer.

11. Not sure if this is a SDK issue or down to the App developer, but I noticed with a few games I was playing that if I receive a SMS it shows on top, blocking the screen and making me lose the game. Surely the game could pause or something similar?

12. When updating applications from the AppStore, why do all the new icons have to go to the end? I put them in the order I wanted so why do you change that? How hard would it be to update them and leave them where I want?

13. No clipboard? Surely this is something which will get added in a future firmware update. I often used to copy a number from my contacts and paste it into a new message to send to people, annoying I can’t do anything similar now.

14. Custom Ringtones. How hard would it be just to let me choose a MP3 or AAC file to use as a ringtone? It’s my phone and I want to choose what I want to alert me to a phone call or message! I know there are workarounds to create .M4R files, but we shouldn’t need to.

– – – – –

Here, here, Adam!

– – – – –

Here, here, Adam!

10 COMMENTS

  1. Number 3 is a strange one. Yesterday I was sent an MMS for the first time (that I'm aware of) since getting my iPhone 3G. I received a text from O2 with a link to a web page to view the message. I wonder why you haven't received those?

    I hope Apple relaxes (even partially) its ridiculous obsession with restricting basic functions on the iPhone, otherwise I can see myself going back to S60 (or maybe over to Android) before the 18 month contract is up!

  2. I can sympathise with Adam having just changed from an N95 to iPhone myself. A number of additional niggles:

    – can't send contact details to another phone via SMS
    – don't seem to be able to switch send SMS sound off without using mute
    – doesn't handle UK dial strings intuitively e.g. +44 (0) 123 4567 8901 is dialled as +44012345678901 instead of +4412345678901 (although other phones are the same but due to clicking on a number embedded in a email and not being able to edit the number before a call, it's not that great!)
    – no flash and Java (widely reported)
    – no video (bye bye Qik!)

    Apart from that I'm happy (until I find something else 😉 – especially with the 'unlimited data' contract – but still find myself looking longingly at my trusty N95!

    PK

  3. @kluap one way to disable the SMS tone is to create a blank mp3 (or a silent one) and set that as the message tone

    Point 9 is SDK related. You can't have background apps – when the phone app is launched, your voice recording app would be forced to quit, and then started again after the call has ended.

    Point 11, I think, is an iPhone thing. Developers can't disable or suppress them, but they may be able to pause the game if one appears – not 100% on that though.

    I agree with almost every single one of your points though.

  4. Ah maybe the MMS issue is because I'm not on a proper iPhone contract so maybe I just need to get it setup then.

    They have limits saying that no third-party apps can compete with their own software on the iPhone, so no browsers, SMS applications etc are allowed, which in my mind defeats the point of having the SDK, which is allowing the users to have a choice!

  5. Ah maybe the MMS issue is because I'm not on a proper iPhone contract so maybe I just need to get it setup then.

    They have limits saying that no third-party apps can compete with their own software on the iPhone, so no browsers, SMS applications etc are allowed, which in my mind defeats the point of having the SDK, which is allowing the users to have a choice!

  6. Number 3 is a strange one. Yesterday I was sent an MMS for the first time (that I'm aware of) since getting my iPhone 3G. I received a text from O2 with a link to a web page to view the message. I wonder why you haven't received those?

    I hope Apple relaxes (even partially) its ridiculous obsession with restricting basic functions on the iPhone, otherwise I can see myself going back to S60 (or maybe over to Android) before the 18 month contract is up!

  7. I can sympathise with Adam having just changed from an N95 to iPhone myself. A number of additional niggles:

    – can't send contact details to another phone via SMS
    – don't seem to be able to switch send SMS sound off without using mute
    – doesn't handle UK dial strings intuitively e.g. +44 (0) 123 4567 8901 is dialled as +44012345678901 instead of +4412345678901 (although other phones are the same but due to clicking on a number embedded in a email and not being able to edit the number before a call, it's not that great!)
    – no flash and Java (widely reported)
    – no video (bye bye Qik!)

    Apart from that I'm happy (until I find something else 😉 – especially with the 'unlimited data' contract – but still find myself looking longingly at my trusty N95!

    PK

  8. @kluap one way to disable the SMS tone is to create a blank mp3 (or a silent one) and set that as the message tone

    Point 9 is SDK related. You can't have background apps – when the phone app is launched, your voice recording app would be forced to quit, and then started again after the call has ended.

    Point 11, I think, is an iPhone thing. Developers can't disable or suppress them, but they may be able to pause the game if one appears – not 100% on that though.

    I agree with almost every single one of your points though.

  9. Ah maybe the MMS issue is because I'm not on a proper iPhone contract so maybe I just need to get it setup then.

    They have limits saying that no third-party apps can compete with their own software on the iPhone, so no browsers, SMS applications etc are allowed, which in my mind defeats the point of having the SDK, which is allowing the users to have a choice!

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