Why The iPhone Is Over-hyped

If you haven't been living under a rock, you have surely by now heard of Apple's new iPhone that will be released on June 29th, available only on AT&T Mobility/Wireless/Cingular/AT&Tingular, or my favorite, "The Carrier formerly known as Cingular." While Apple has pulled all the stops out to revolutionize the phone market, I have a few problems with it.

DISCLAIMER: This is all my opinion. Nobody is paying me to do this. I am not an Apple hater, as I am writing this on my personal iBook. [/DISCLAIMER]

1) Lack of UMTS/HSDPA. This is a big one. With most of the higher-end phones on AT&T's network having 3G connectivity, whether it by via UMTS or HSDPA, the iPhone, which will become the most expensive phone on the network, will NOT have broadband-like speeds over the cellular network. While Apple claims that the reason is that most people will be using WiFi instead at home, some people may not have WiFi connections at their home seeing as they may have only a desktop and have no need for WiFi.

2) Lack of 3rd Party Apps. Apple's solution: develop applications on the Web. My solution: give developers the SDK. With the Mac having such a great lineup of third-party applications, it astounds me as to why Apple wouldn't let third party applications onto the iPhone. I know they want to keep this phone locked down so they can do things to it as they see fit, I understand. But the thing about it is that I have no idea why Apple wouldn't have a third-party application testing department and make sure that the applications work to their requirements. Then in order to download the application, all iPhone users would have to do is go to the Apple Download Store on their phone and download the Application from there. That way Apple can be sure that the developers haven't slipped some sort of malicious code into the application.

3) Virtual keyboard. The idea of a virtual keyboard is very neat indeed, but what Apple should have done/should do is release a wireless physical keyboards where you can actually feel "click-backs." Most people these days are used to typing documents or text messages on either number pads or QWERTY keyboards and get some sort of feedback. While Apple says that it may take users only a day or two to get used to the new keyboard, it may take some people longer because of the lack of a physical "click-back" that people have been accustomed to.

4) No one-touch speed dial. At the very least, Apple could enable a feature that puts icons to people in their address book on their home page with a picture of them to have that type of speed dial, ala Treo 700wx. While some may think that just touching the icon you could accidentally call them, my solution is that you would have to hold the icon down for 3 seconds, a "dumb" phone standard.

5) The 5-year exclusive deal with AT&T. This is quite possibly one of the biggest downfalls. This means that all the new Apple innovations that will be released onto the iPhone will be limited to AT&T's network. While this is great AT&T, this means that some people who live in rural areas or have little-to-poor reception with AT&T will have no shot at getting this phone anytime soon unless they either move or AT&T expands their coverage. Now, this is not a shot at AT&T, seeing I was would switch to them if they were in our area to get away from Verizon, but Apple reducing the amount of innovations to a select number of people is quite sad, if pathetic, seeing as how the current Apple ideas can reach all around the globe because Apple ships all over the world for the most part.

So there you have it, 5 reasons why I think the iPhone is over-hyped. Have comments? Post them underneath.