iPhone 3GS A Month Later. Still A Lot Missing

It seems it was yesterday that I unboxed my iPhone 3GS for the first time. Of course it was love at first sight. It is fast and elegant, but now that I’ve been using it for a month, I notice there is still a lot missing to make it the perfect phone.

Copy/Paste is Clunky

Woohoo, the iPhone finally has copy/paste. It only took Apple 2 years to implement this basic feature… The reality is that they did a terrible job. I think copy/paste on the iPhone is clunky and intrusive. Now everytime you touch your iPhone screen, you have this annoying popup asking you if you want to select/copy/paste. Apple products usually are about amazing user experience and copy/paste for the iPhone is a big fail.

Those of you who installed hClipBoard, the copy/paste app for jailbroken iPhones, probably miss it. hClipBoard was very well designed, easy to use, and allowed you to copy several items to the clipboard in no time. Maybe it’s time to install this app again…

No Flash Support

Like copy/paste, Flash integration on the iPhone is an old debate. Although Adobe publicly said they were working with Apple to release Flash on the iPhone, there hasn’t been much said from Apple about it.

So why wouldn’t Apple let Flash make its way to the iPhone? There are several reasons:

  • Flash is a processor hog
  • AT&T’s network can’t handle it
  • Flash may allow users to circumvent the App Store to buy videos and games
  • QuickTime finally has a shot at becoming the standard on mobile web
  • Flash’s days may be numbered as HTML 5 is just around the corner

No Background Processes

I never really missed background processes until the beginning of the year when I started working for myself. I now “make money online” and the iPhone takes over a lot of tasks I would usually do with my laptop. While the iPhone is closer to a computer than it is to a phone, the ability to run several applications at the same time is a feature I miss more and more. Try switching from app to app very quickly and you’ll see what a pain in the butt it is…

I have to shamelessly admit that I am jealous of Pre owners. The Plam Pre allows you to switch from app to app just by sliding your finger on the screen. Now that’s a great feature that should make its way to the iPhone.

Poor Design

Like I said above, the iPhone 3GS looks great, at least it does if you think the 3G looks great too since it’s the exact same design. I really like the design of the 3GS but I’m very disappointed that it’s no different from the 20 million iPhone 3G that were sold within the last 12 months. When I spend $600 in a phone, I expect it to be different. I expect it to make me stand out from the crowd. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you like your iPhone for its features. You like your iPhone for the social status it comes with.

When the first iPhone came out, people would literally stop me in the street asking me if the phone I was holding in my hand was the iPhone. While it became annoying in the long run, it was a nice feeling to own something that amazed people. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that it makes me feel superior to others. It just makes me feel different. You know it makes you feel different too.

Now I don’t feel different at all. I feel like one in 20 million people who own the same phone.

Poor Battery Life

I already wrote about it last week so I won’t spend too much time on how poor the battery life of the iPhone 3GS is but I have to say it’s a big let down. Apple claimed the iPhone 3GS battery was going to be improved by 20% but users can tell that if anything, the battery life was decreased by 20%.

Like I mentioned in my previous article, the poor battery is due to bad energy management and can easily be fixed in a future firmware update. OS 3.1 should fix this. In the meantime, you can read these tips on how to improve your battery life.

No Front Speaker

With over 55,000 applications sold over 1.5 billion times, there is no doubt that Apple is trying to make the iPhone the next gaming platform. And they’re doing a great job at it. I’m not a gamer. I just don’t like video games. I’ll play Rock Band for a couple hours with friends but that’s about it. However, I’ve seen myself downloading more and more games lately (namely Resident Evil and 2XL SuperCross).

The problem comes when I hold my iPhone in landscape mode, my hand sometimes covers the speaker. Not a big deal, I can manage to move my hand a bit so I can hear the sound but that’s not the way it should be. The iPhone 3GS should have a front facing speaker.

Yet the iPhone is My Favorite Possession…

No matter what, the iPhone 3GS is still my favorite phone ever. I know I talk a lot of smack about the iPhone but it’s because I really care. It has the potential to truly be the best electronic device and only Apple can unleash this potential. Hopefully they will sooner rather than later.

What do you think of your new iPhone 3GS? Is there anything you’d like to see on it?