Ryan McFarland

I’m definitely an early adopter. But there has been no salivation for the iPhone on my blog. Why? Because my last 3 phones have been better than an iPhone. Here’s why…

1. The keyboard. My 680 has a touch screen - and i use it often enough. It comes with a stylus too. But most of my entry in my phone is using the keyboard. The iPhone has a touch screen that many people say is too small to text with two thumbs. My 680’s keyboard has nice little raised buttons in a gentle upswept curve to allow for two handed texting.
2. Memory slot. Sure, my phone can’t load 8 gigs of music on it. But it has an SD slot that will let me pop in memory cards to expand the capacity.
3. Battery. It won’t cost me $85 plus having to ship my device to Apple to change the battery on my phone. And they do you the service of erasing everything from your iPhone while they change your battery.
4. Selecting text. I quote people in emails and paste text from websites. I can select text from an email and delete it to make the message length better. The iPhone will only delete one character at a time. Backspace, backspace, backspace… In fact you can not copy or paste from one application to another.
5. To-Do’s. I use this all the time. I have them for specific work projects, for things to work on at the house, things to pack for trips and errands for the day or things to buy at the hardware store. I’m sure Apple will fix this glaring omission though.

Admittedly, there are two things the iPhone has that i wish my phone had. WiFi and a better camera. WiFi primarily for speed when downloading email or uploading pictures. The better camera… if i really want a good picture i’ll use my digital camera. I think the technology to replace a solid 5 or more megapixel camera with a phone size device is a long way off. Digital zoom is no replacement for optics. But it still wouldn’t hurt to have a better quality camera.