After sleeping on it, I woke with two entirely opposite feelings about the iPhone.
On the one hand I’m thinking this thing is the future. It’s the Star Trek communicator with a Minority Report multi-touch interface. It does everything: video, audio, phone, internet, wireless… If you went back even 10 years and pulled an iPhone out of your pocket no one would question your credentials as a time traveller. It’s freaking amazing. Am I an idiot for doubting it at all?
The multi-touch thing might be a game-winner. Patented, intuitive, and as whiz-bang innovative as the original iPod scrollwheel.
But another part of me wonders if they could have done it better. Paul Kedrosky makes some good points. Others rumour that the battery life is only 2 hours of video viewing. Watch one video and your phone is toast. The specs say “Battery Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing” however. Who to believe?
I don’t worry about the Cingular lock-in because I’m not in the USA, but I do worry about the mods required to Cingular’s voicemail system to make it work. Will it work at all with a non-modified voicemail system, or will the visual voicemail be the only thing disabled?
And where is Apple’s head at not having an SD slot or some sort of memory expansion in this thing? SD cards are coming in huge sizes and are growing all the time, which would allow users to double or even quadruple the default storage of the iPhone.
Heck, some people are coming right out and stating that the iPhone is not a smartphone.
