I was probably one of the first to buy the latest iPhone 3G when it was launched in the UK thanks to the enormous hype Apple created about the iPhone.

I must hand it to them, their marketing team really knows how to market their products.  The problem is that they don’t tell you about its problems and lack of features hence the reason why I am writing this post!!

1. Apple iPhone’s Bluetooth
   Even though they say that it supports Bluetooth 2.0 they don’t tell you that the Bluetooth can only be used with Apple’s headsets and macbooks. Unfortunately for me, a poor Sony Vaio laptop user with a Nokia Bluetooth headset, I was the victim of their advertising because I am unable to connect my laptop or my headset with the iPhone because of their restrictions. So what am I supposed to do now?? Buy an Apple iPhone Bluetooth Headset  for which they currently charge £59 with 1-2 weeks delivery time? NO THANKS
2. MMS and picture sending with your cool iPhone - dream on
   Well again sorry to disappoint you but that is not possible because iPhone doesn’t support it. Almost every single phone that is on the market nowadays supports MMS so it’s beyond me why that feature is not built into the iPhone. Another basic feature that’s missing is that you cannot forward your text messages – you can only reply to the original sender.
3. iPhone and calls
   The number of times I have lost my connection while talking on the phone is just not acceptable – not even for a home users. Apple claims that the problems is fixed in the new iPhone software version (2.1) which I installed on the same day it was released but the problem still persists. iPhone 3G has no Voice Activation for dialling phone numbers and/or calling up programs.Here is what they say about their iPhone 2.1 software update:
   - Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
   - Significantly better battery life for most users ( I guess am not included in this group because my iPhone’s battery life is worse than ever – it’s very good if you don’t use it at all. By the way the battery is not removable so if you are unlucky enough to need a replacement battery you will need to send it to Apple for that and as we all know their prices can be extortionate.)
   - Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes (no difference whatsoever)
   - Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts (again can’t say that it’s any better)
   - Faster installation of 3rd party applications (true)
   -  Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications (not true)
4. Flash content on the iPhone
   To have flash videos and animations to play on your iPhone (Safari) is not possible. Yet flash player is available for every single browser out there, be it windows or linux based, so why not allow flash player on an iPhone? Seeing that you can watch YouTube videos which are flash based I thought if you can play them on your phone then why can’t you view flash on a webpage? Well that is a another trick from Apple – YouTube is actually converting some of the video clips to a format that works on a iPhone so you can watch only a small selection of iPhone ready videos on YouTube but not all of them.
5. Video recorder on a iPhone
   Video what??? It looks like Apple doesn’t realize that every single phone on the market comes with a video recorder as well as a 3 to 5mp camera. I was so disappointed to find out that you can’t record videos on an iPhone that I wished I never heard the name “Apple”. How can you launch a flawed product, spend millions on advertising and marketing and then expect people to love you and your products after tricking them into buying something that is nowhere near as good as advertised?
6. Love Skype? Well forget about it because you can’t use it on an iPhone (well sort of)
   While you can use AIM, MSN and YM probably the best application out there called Skype is still not available on an iPhone. Why is that I wonder. There is a website application powered by Ajax  that lets you use skype but giving your Skype login details to someone is not something I want to do.
7. Web browsing
   By now you have probably seen iPhone’s adverts on the TV where it shows you how quickly loads pages, zoom in and out, move left and right etc – well all those features are very good apart from the browsing speed especially when you use 3G. Even when I use my high speed broadband connection at home on my iPhone I can say that I was browsing the web faster with my old 3 mobile. Safari keeps crashing every so often and once I had a problem where Safari crashed and I was unable to do anything for 2 hours until the battery died completely. Pressing the off button wasn’t doing anything so all I could do is wait for it to turn itself off so that I can restart it. Maybe not a major issue for home users but for a business person that is not acceptable to be stuck for hours without a phone.
8. iPhone for business people?
   We’ve all see the adverts when they open pdf and doc files and how fast it is right? Well you might be able to open Word documents to read them but you cannot edit them so I ask what’s the point?
9. Syncing the iPhone
   It would be nice to have the ability to sync without any wires or bluetooth. Why is this USB cable needed for something we have bandwidth for through Wifi, 3G, etc.?
10. Precious photos on your iPhone
    Another day another discovery. I have over 400 photos on my iPhone  and was going to share some with my friends and the only option you have is to email them and that is 1 photo per email! How useless is that? You can’t even Bluetooth them across.

After complaining about the lack of advertised features, the answer I received was that I could have made an informed decision prior to purchasing it!!!

Well I guess I was the unlucky one as I just wanted it so badly and bought it without researching it first. So hopefully this article will help you make an informed decision and if you still go ahead and buy it all I can say is good luck to you.

Is there anything I do like about the iPhone? Yes, I like the email functionality and that is the main reason why I purchased it but then again the lack of basic features even with that functionality makes me wonder why I ever bothered with Apple products when there are lots of better phones out there, including blackberries .

Article written by Nenad Rajsic
http://www.nenad.co.uk