Do not get me wrong: my iPhone has proven a better companion than any cell phone I’ve owned, but this is mainly due to third-party applications, and the fact that unlocking the phone has given me a carrier choice that enabled me to maintain, and even decrease, my previous cell phone bill. An iPhone sans such luxuries would hardly merit the praise that many continue to give the phone, a phenomenon I can only ascribe to few people having owned a smartphone in the past.
Old arguments aside, let me comment on a recent post at PhoneDifferent, in which a PC Magazine article is quoted where people rate the iPhone’s features. Stunningly, the iPhone’s coverage was rated 8.2 out of 10, which means that by “coverage,” we’re clearly not talking “reception,” but rather the coverage the AT&T network gets. I say this because the iPhone’s reception is poorer than my old Sidekick III’s reception was, which in turn was worse than my T610 Sony Ericsson before it. That’s not to say that the iPhone’s reception is poor, but rather that it isn’t even as good as phones at least two generations before it.
Then we come to the iPhone being “tops” in text and picture messaging. While interface-wise, the iPhone is great at texting, the input interface is only better than traditional phone keypads, but doesn’t come close to the tactile feedback of QWERTY keypads. And as for picture messaging, the iPhone doesn’t even support MMS. Having to rely on e-mail is not tops, it’s bottoms. At the very least, if we could factor third-party applications in (which we really shouldn’t for the average iPhone consumer), then we can’t even count on utilities that make sending pictures easier (and better, since natively sending pictures downsamples the respective resolution).
Apparently, Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field (RDF) has latched onto the iPhone and is continuing to spread rampantly, even to the extent that pilots need to trust the iPhone instead of relying on the millions of dollars worth of equipment and personnel native to their own damn airports.