The iPhone... The greatest phone???!!!

Now there's no denying that the iPhone is a great phone but were people lining up in their droves when the iPhone was released here in the UK a couple of weeks back on November 9?

At £269 and an 18 month contract it seemed people were not prepared to spill out for it. Why is this so? It's suppose to be the "greatest phone" but I beg to differ. It was being pushed as the smartphone to rival the Nokia N95 but the iPhone is far from being a smartphone. Yes the interface may be years ahead of others but it is definitely not a smartphone. It should've been advertised as being the phone with the best interface/operating system. Then maybe it wouldn't been so bad but they pitched it against the iPhone and both phones are in a totally different league to each other. I had found a few lists of cons over the net (www.allaboutsymbian.com/forum) a few days ago which you can see below:

• No MMS.
• No video recording.
• No 3G.
• No custom ringtones or SMS alert tones
• No instant messaging.
• Lacks tactile keys which makes texting horrible.
• No memory expansion.
• No games.
• No speed dialing.
• No installable software.
• Battery can only be replaced by sending the whole phone away.
• No voice dialing.
• The camera is only 2megapixel, has no autofocus and no flash.
• No cut/copy/paste.
• No A2DP (for bluetooth stereo/headphone output).
• No GPS.
• No document viewing, let alone editing.
• No flash support for the web browser.
• No file browser.
• Visual voicemail laggy and slow.
• Only takes iPod cable which is non-standard and prone to breakage.
• No TV output.
• Web browser is slow, even over WLAN.
• Can't type anything in landscape mode.
• Only one picture at a time in email

Now I don't own an iPhone, as I don't want one, never did right from the start, and after reading that list above it puts me off even more. See what I mean when I say it cannot be a smartphone - you can't even view documents on it! Now I know there are other phones that do not have some of these features but most smartphones do. And as for the 2megapixel camera that's not even autofocus or has a flash! That's going backwards.

This may only be first generation but they could've done better with the features to class as the greatest phone.

I'm not saying the iPhone isn't great cos it is as far as the interface goes. It is miles ahead than others but the features bring it down to much for it to be even considered for me. I love my N95 and I'm going to be sticking with it for awhile to come. The only phone that I would consider instead of the N95 is the N95 8GB version but that doesn't have an expansion slot so I guess that still leaves me with my trusty N95 where I could use an 8GB memory card. And with a recent firmware update that increases the internal RAM by about 30MB.

So all in all right now I think the iPhone isn't worth the £269 and 18 month contract. Not until they can make all the features alot better and really turn it into a REAL smartphone. Then and only then will I even consider getting it.