iPhone I love you but you drive me nuts
As a high volume iPhone user (clocking more than 100MB data/mo), I wanted to share some of my less positive experiences of late, particularly as a new device is upcoming.
We’ve come to expect a lot from our iPhones, prodded by the processing power and HD capacity, as well as Apple’s marketing.
Worth noting, I live in NYC and use underground transportation extensively.
Here are my experiences/comments:
1. the offline mode needs improvement:
a. the email client is very clunky in offline mode, generating error messages for every composed draft.
b. most apps have a sub-par offline mode: Google Reader’s is non-existent, the NY Times and WSJ apps cannot download full articles, …. Great efforts such as the Techcrunch offline reader are missing key features like “send a friend”.
2. AT&T’s network is a painful experience in NYC: dropped calls, calls that mysteriously go straight to voicemail as the network shows 5 bars….
3. the 3G network shows no demonstrable improvement in speed. The email client for instance can routinely take up to 30 secs to download less than 10 text emails. Former Blackberry users (I confess…) have a hard time dealing with the speed issue.
4. the camera functionality: aside from the absence of flash, the camera load time is sometimes so long most candid shots are lost.
The photo to email function is buggy: just yesterday, I had to hard reboot my iphone because pics were arbitrarily reduced to 16k during emailing. MMS, anyone ?
5. Search and sync: as our iPhone become our primary communications and browsing devices, a top-notch search functionality is lacking. Searching email is a chore (disclosure: I’ll be testing ReMail today). As I’m contemplating moving to a 100% Apple setup and ditching Windows, I’m trying to find a sync tool for my 1500+ contacts. The iTunes contact sync feature is clunky and underwhelming. It also suffers from the lack of any web-based feature, which is a drawback if itunes runs on your home PC, not your work PC.
Feel free to add your own experiences and suggestions !
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Tony B’s take :
6. So many applications lag or crash, even system applications like Settings.
7. Call quality is terrible
8. No service in tunnels (vs Verizon - pure AT&T issue)
9. No way to edit the dictionary, and it refuses to learn many words
10. 3G battery life still sucks
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Please add your own experiences and suggestions !
