Top 5 reasons not to buy an iPhone

happygeek 0 Tallied Votes 244 Views Share

So the Apple iPhone has finally gone on sale in the UK, with hundreds of fans queuing at the Apple store in London's Regent Street to be one of the first customers for what has become known here as God's Own Phone as it does everything, according to the fanboys including much of the media which would be equally excited if Apple launched an iToilet it seems to me. Staff at the store applauded the first customers through the door, as well they might considering the cost of this particular piece of over-hyped hardware.

I was not amongst those customers, nor will I be in the foreseeable future. Here are my top 5 reasons why I won't be buying an iPhone:

Cost. Although the £269 ($562) price for the handset alone is bad enough, this pales into insignificance when you start looking at the total cost of ownership. The minimum network contract for the iPhone in the UK is 18 months, with some deals requiring a full 2 year lock-in. The monthly contract cost varies between £35 ($73) and £55 ($115) which means that in total it will cost me a minimum of £899 ($1890) to own. That is a lot for any phone, considering that most handsets come free on contract in the UK and my 500 texts, 500 minutes and all the Internet data I can eat deal costs me just £30 ($62) per month or £360 ($752) over the course of the 12 month contract.

Speed. One of the things being pushed by the marketing people about the iPhone is how suitable it is for the Internet generation, that big screen, the touch interface, the ease of use. Unfortunately, cutting edge connection speed is not high on the list of functions, in fact it is missing completely. What you get is GPRS/EDGE rates, and not the 3G/HSPDA mobile broadband rates that other high end cellphones can achieve. Not good enough, I am afraid, especially at that price.

Typing. Yes, you heard me. I know that the iPhone is pretty much being universally praised for its ease of use, but all I can say is that the people praising it either have not actually used one or certainly have not used one for composing emails of any substance. The on-screen QWERTY keypad is extremely awkward to type accurately upon unless you have the elven fingers of a wood nymph. Which I do not. My stubby, fat fingers cope rather well with a BlackBerry keypad, or the HTC/MDA Vario III thumb-board, but not the ease of use is everything virtual keypad of the iPhone.

Storage. While 8Gb sounds a lot to most people, I am afraid that given the fact that this is a mobile phone, portable video player, iPod and Internet browsing device in one the truth is that it stinks. More so when you go to the Apple Store and take a look at the kind of storage you can get in an iPod these days, for less money.

Battery. Apple might not have gone down the road of Nokia with the N95 and its battery life which is great unless you actually use the phone for anything, but it has committed the cardinal sin of not allowing the user to replace the battery. I always carry a spare mobile battery with me, just in case. Not an option with the iPhone, it has to be recharged and that's it. What's more, when the battery finally dies, you have to return the iPhone to Apple for a replacement and they will charge you for fitting it as well.

So there you have it, this early adopting techno geek will not be rushing to buy God's Own Phone. In fact, I would suggest that nickname is wrong, and the Supermodel Phone would be more apt: lovely to look at, temperamental in use, expensive to maintain...

jwenting 1,889 duckman Team Colleague

reason #6: it's not offered on the network I want to use. Apple delivers solely through Vodaphone (I think it's going to be here), while I'm a happy T-Mobile user with an old aversion to Vodaphone.

newmote 0 Newbie Poster

Eleven Fingers of a WOOD nymph?
If not for image I'd not have taken the trouble to signup and post this post. From across the waters none the less.

However, great article though mate. We used to post similar ones back in June over here in the states when the iPhone first came out. And you are indeed RIGHT about the quid (price) or whatever currency you use there. I paid $600 (uS) for mine .. couldn't buy petrol for a week.

AND

Storage is (in a way) not a problem because there's ways to stream media content to your iPhone from lots of places even your computer at home without even hacking your iPhone.

AND

The network .. it's not as slow as you think. There's an interesting article on bandwidth on the www explaining how major bandwidth (like with a 3g network) does not always translate into increased speed when "latency" is many times the issue. I'm happy (well .. ok with) the speed of the eDGE network over here in the states. It's not WI FI speed but don't believe the hype about it being as slow as a tourtise with both hind legs in traction.

Finally .. I discovered this a few days ago.
Typing on that .. thing is now a non-issue.
Google "Predictive typing" iphone.

It's astonishing. Predictive typing. I had this feature all along and didn't know it.
Simply start clicking virtual KEYS with your thumb or middle finger and
99.9 times out a hundred, iPhone will FIGURE OUT the word you were trying to
type and insert it. All this time I'd been slowly trying to hit a key then hit the wrong
one then
BACKSPACE
then hit another wrong key. Test it yourself in a store and you'll see. So,
typing's a non-issue but like you say, QUID (is that your unit of currency?)
(I've been out of the loop since Monty Python got canceled) QUID adds up especially for the number Apple is asking you to fork over.

Great article. Folks need to listen to you and weigh the plus's and minus's but as time rolls on those minus's that you see over there may not disappear but will dwindle.
The battery to all of us over here in the states is a non-issue because there's not been enough time for it to fail yet. Maybe in 2008 we'll ALL be .. .. (for lack of a better word), peeved. But not today. Battery's fine today last I checked.

All said and done though .. I've had iPhone for quite a while. I sleep with it. It's my music, my videos, my phone, my weather, my games, my stocks and bonds, my camera, my notepad, my EMAIL, my internet and regardless of price or battery the novelty never wears off. Just like the commercials say, it's your life .. in your pocket and no I don't work for Apple. Yet. Maybe after they read this post they'll hire me. Especially if I mention the phrase "wood nymphs". With 11 fingers.

happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster

Elven fingers, not eleven :) Perhaps I was getting at the fact that Apple must be away with the fairies if it thinks I am buying an iPhone right now.

The Internet browsing issue is important for me, as I do a lot of it on a mobile phone. Having got used to the speed of a HSPDA connection, dropping back down to a GPRS one is not to my liking. It isn't that it is slow, but slower than the competing mobiles at the top end of the market that is the problem.

I've used an iPhone, and really cannot get on with the virtual keypad I am afraid. I like a keyboard I can use without having to rely on software to guess what I mean to say :)

jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster

i like orange

scru 909 Posting Virtuoso Featured Poster

lol, "non-issue". Spoken like a true fan

peter_budo 2,532 Code tags enforcer Team Colleague Featured Poster

@newmote well done on spending that amount of money, I will not do for just flashy phone. But it was your choice and choice of many others that fallen in love with Apple products. No offense

@jbennet, no offense but this is not about promoting your mobile provider ;) (by-the-way I had orange for ower year when they came out with 3G phone and I would not ever return back to them. It can be the case they just had bad year that time, often outbreaks in service etc)

My current phone is fine, not gone tell you which, but my contract is ower and I'm looking for something new maybe something with UIQ Symbian on it.
But wait little longer and we may get something good out of Android project soon...

Dani 4,074 The Queen of DaniWeb Administrator Featured Poster Premium Member

I'm an iPhone owner and very happy with it. I can also type on the touch keyboard just fine. I used to have a Treo (Windows mobile version) and I rarely did web browsing on it, so I don't majorly miss the lack of browsing speed. It's fine for email, my latest stock prices, and Google maps, and I'm fine with that.

My major gripes ... storage space and the fact that I had to switch from a family plan with Verizon that I shared with my mom (that she paid for) to my own plan with AT&T where I am paying about the same price my mom was for both of us. The camera is also very good quality but could definitely use a flash, as it's practically unusable at night.

newmote 0 Newbie Poster

Great comments and input everybody. I come at it from a vantage point of
"been there done that". I still have a Tmobile Razr contract and phone that I have to live out and it's nice to see folks saying .. "No, this iPhone is not for me at this time".

Confidentially .. I've little use for it at work or at home since I have real computers at both places. It's when you're NOT at work or at home is when iPhone makes a dent in your life.
Or when you're in bed and don't won't to lug a wireless laptop to bed with you to listten to or view stuff. Keep up the analysis and input everybody but .. it's kind of fun to see June 2007 (Iphone release day in America) playing out again in front of our eyes and
YES .. it's not for everybody the iPhone. I'm a web-oholic though and regardless of speed or typing capability .. nothing even comes close to having the www in my pocket where ever I go. Baghdad even .. I might hear a BOOM first then sirens but at least iPhone's showing me the weather.

jwenting 1,889 duckman Team Colleague

i like orange

So do I, as a colour, in moderation. As a service provider, no thank you.
Maybe they'll improve now that T-Mobile has bought them (at least the local operations here), but why try when I'm already using T-Mobile?

I want my phone to be a phone, darn the phone manufacturers, not a radio-camera-mp3player-pda-internetdevice-messagecenter.

jwenting 1,889 duckman Team Colleague
newmote 0 Newbie Poster

Sorry to keep filling up this page with posts but I perhaps don't see it like many do.
The last thing in the world iPhone is to me is .. a phone. I barely use it as a phone. They should have named it iPuter or something. That's it's use to me.
And, if it happens to ring while I'm watching a movie or listening to music or checking out utube .. well there you go. If I saw it as a PHONE though, then you're right. There are plenty of devices (cheaper and way more useful in fact) that blow this thing right out of the ocean onto the shore. I never owned an iPod until now. Especially one that plays movies. Or surfs the web. At the very bottom of my list is it's "ring ring ring hello" capabilities but that's just me. Others might get lulled into buying it thinking it's a phone that does stuff. To me It's not, it's a mobile computer that does stuff which also happens to have a phone chip in it.
For example, I work at Dell. There we're not allowed to go to Yahoo email. I can sure do it via my iPhone though. One time I got lost looking for a store. I pulled over, brought up Google maps on iPhone, bingo. If you want a phone and an Ipod AND a camera .. you're either going to carry 3 different things around in your pocket or get an iPhone-like device and as you see, the competitors are coming out fast.

happygeek 2,411 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster

My beef is that I can do all these things without paying over the odds for the iPhone which, with the possible exception of playing music, does all of them less efficiently than existing handsets which have been around for a while.

For example, I have been using a T-Mobile MDA Vario III (rebadged HTC TyTn) for what, 18 months now. The handset came free on contract, for my £30 a month I get more texts and more minutes than the equivalent O2 iPhone contract in the UK (which, by the way, costs significantly more if you use an iPhone than the same O2 plan would with any other handset - yet more evidence of it being a rip off in financial terms), my web browsing is via a super fast HSDPA connection, I get a decent screen, decent browser, decent hardware keyboard, it runs the business apps I need, it has a camera (including flash) and as I say - this is an 18 month old device. Oh, and it has a touchscreen as well...

If you look beyond the design, and there is no denying that Apple have got something that is truly beautiful to look at, the iPhone really is not that innovative, new or exceptional - it is just over hyped, over priced and over here :)

MattEvans 473 Veteran Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster

In my experience with phones...I'd rather have a standard, no frills phone; a nice mp3 player (by nice, I mean, a solid state portable drive that lets me dump .mp3 files on it and play them, with as few buttons / on screen displays as possible ); a top-quality digital camera without a builtin video/image compositing program; a nintendo ds; perhaps a handheld computer or laptop for internet/document reading/writing. A video player.. why? the bigger the screen the less portable the device, the smaller the screen the less useable the device.. it's something of a self destructive product.

Something about 'putting all of ones eggs in one basket' is appropriate here; with a dedicated device for each function; I can replace/upgrade any one of them easily, and make sure, for example, that I get the best camera independant of the phone, mp3 player, etc. It doesn't really bother me that I'd need a small suitcase to carry it all around - I don't need a camera or games console if I'm only going to the supermarket; and if I'm actually away from a standard computer and/or television for more than one night; I'd probably have a suitcase anyway.

I DO have an all-frills phone with internet and video player on a small screen, a hard-to use mp3 player, substandard camera/video camera, nicely made but simple games, etc, and, I never use any of these things, infact, I rarely carry the phone. It was free on a reasonably priced contract.. so I don't feel as though I'm wasting much.

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