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Saturday, February 24, 2007
karan bajaj
At the launch of the iPhone, consumers were promised that it was a 'revolutionary and magical product that is five years ahead of any mobile phone'. Well, we beg to differ. All of you who went ga-ga over the initial pre-launch specs and images of the iPhone, here are 10 reasons to scrap your upgrade plans and stay away from the iPhone.
1. Availability: The iPhone would be available initially only with a two-year contract from Cingular. It would be available in the US in June later this year, in Europe in the last quarter of 2007, and in Asia it's supposed to arrive in the last quarter of 2008. So basically someone residing in India will not be able to get the iPhone for the next two years.
2. Price : The announced price of iPhone is $499 and $599 for the 4 GB and 8 GB model respectively. This price is quite high for a phone with just a two-year contract. Other high-end phones, such as the Blackberry Pearl and the Palm Treo 750, are available for a price range of $199 to $399 on contract from Cingular. Considering the fact that prices of the majority of cellphones fall by 50 per cent after a year of their launch, taking the iPhone at the current pricing (and that too on a two-year contract) would be quite dumb.
3. iTunes and Fairplay: You still have to use iTunes to transfer music to the phone. This is unlike most phones, which allow direct drag-and-drop. Also, there's no Wi-Fi sync available with iTunes to transfer music. The songs bought from iTunes can only be played on the iPhone or on iPods due to the Fairplay digital rights management software created by Apple.
4. No 3G: A phone that costs so high should have come with 3G functionalities. 3G is expected to be available within an year from now, and iPhone users will then be left out of all the value added services available via 3G (such as video conferencing).
5. Camera: The iPhone is equipped with a 2 MP camera. Sadly, there are no details available as to whether the camera is auto-focus or not, what are its zoom capabilities, or if there's any supporting flash of any kind. Considering the fact that there are a number of phones with a higher megapixel camera, and tons of functionalities, available at a lower cost than the iPhone, the Apple concept doesn't seem so revolutionary now, does it?
6. Battery: The battery life of a phone depends on its usage which differs from person to person. Since the iPhone is touted as a video iPod, phone and an Internet device (all in one), its usage will be much greater than just a simple phone. Add to this the battery usage of powering a huge touch screen and Wi–Fi; this means that the claimed five hours talk time may be far from accurate and the phone may have to be charged multiple times in a day. Also, the iPhone features a non-removable battery. So if a user faces any battery issues, the phone would have to be sent back to Apple for repair or replacement.
7. No physical keypad or stylus: The iPhone doesn't have a traditional keypad that most people are used to type on. Instead, it has everything onscreen, including a QWERTY keyboard on which you type with your fingers! No stylus! But in case you are a heavy SMS/email user, would you really like to type out messages on the screen? Even if your answer to this question is yes, think of the mess the screen would be with fingerprints all over it. As the screen of the iPhone reacts only to human skin touch, don't even consider using a make-shift stylus or fingernails.
8. No Voice Dial/Voice Memos: For a phone without a traditional dial pad, the absence of voice dialing certainly seems to be a big let down. The phone does not support voice memos either, so they would have to be typed in using the onscreen keyboard every time.
9. No support for Word/Excel files: With a full Operating System like OS X running on it, the iPhone supports PDF file but lacks Word and Excel file support. What good is a phone supporting only PDF files, when most of the content comes in Word and Excel formats, both online and offline?
10. Charging problem: The iPhone doesn't use a standard universal wall charger that usually comes with phones. Instead, it comes with a docking station similar to the ones available for iPods. It gets charged while it is docked. And considering that you may need to charge it several times a day, according to your usage, carrying around a huge docking station would definitely be cumbersome.
Source: Living Digital
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