David Hurst

Anyone that knows me, knows that I am a big Apple fan. I also spend ludicrous amounts of money on having the latest gadgets. So, it would be reasonable to assume that I’d be queueing outside the Apple store today to pick up a shiny new Apple iPhone, but I won’t be. I think Apple have failed to adequately research the UK market, instead building a device for the American market and expecting that to translate overseas.

I’ve not yet seen an iPhone in the flesh. From the videos I’ve seen, I’m pretty sure the touch screen interface would blow me away, but one needs to look beyond the initial romance period and look at the overall usability of the device.

Firstly, the phone isn’t 3G. It uses 2G EDGE. This is basically GPRS on steroids, but the O2 network to which every iPhone will be tied, only has 30% national coverage with EDGE, so any internet browsing on the move will likely be painfully slow. This means you will spend much longer with the iPhone in your hands, ensuring the attentions of every light-fingered chav in the vicinity. This is a huge disappointment really. I have been on the Three network for the past six months with a Nokia E61. The phone is average, but the network is superb. Browsing in 3G is completely painless, and what better companion could there have been for Apple’s excellent Safari browser?

OK, the iPhone has WiFi, and internet browsing on that is fine, but I can’t really see the point in this, unless you spend a large portion of time near WiFi hotspots. Maybe in London or the other big cities, but not anywhere else. And I’m not going to sit browsing the web on a tiny device on my home WiFi when I have a computer I can use.

The iPhone does not offer instant messaging (IM). My Nokia E61 on Three gives me free MSN Messenger. In fact, the majority of Three’s handsets and contracts offer free IM.
The in-built camera on the iPhone is very poor when compared to equivalent handsets like the Nokia N95. Given that the iPhone is directed primarily at the consumer, a better camera would have been appreciated. Using it appears to be very fiddly too - particularly for self-portraits.

I say the iPhone is targeted directly at the consumer, because it certainly isn’t targeted at the business user. It doesn’t have true Exchange server support out of the box, and this is what most business users require.

I have to wonder too at how firmly one will be able to grip the iPhone’s shiny surfaces. I imagine a lot of people will end up dropping their pride and joy.

Of course the main excitement with the iPhone is its built-in iPod and video playing features. These do look amazing, but I have to question just how much music and video one can fit on an 8Gb memory. I have a 30Gb iPod Video, and with my music collection and videos on it, I only have about 1Gb of space left.

In America, the cellular phone market is very different to the UK. They seem more interested in phones that double up as CB Radios. The expectations of the American market are clearly different, because there is no way I would be satisfied buying a latest generation device that uses out-of-date technology. 3G is old hat now. It’s about to be revised to become even faster with download speeds of 1.5Mbits (the Nokia N95 - iPhone’s main competitor - supports this new technology by the way).

Another reason I won’t be buying one is the cost. The £269 is not subsidised in any way. Normally, when buying a contract mobile phone, the cost of the phone is subsidised by the contract. For £35 per month with Three you can have a state of the art Nokia N95 (with 5 megapixel camera, and GPS) with 300 anytime cross-network minutes or texts, plus 300 Three-to-Three minutes, free IM, free Skype and unlimited Internet. The iPhone will cost me £35 per month too, but I also have to pay £269. It’s just too much money considering the iPhone’s limited feature set. Not only that, I’m forced to go with O2, a company I have found to be completely useless in the past.
Don’t forget too that Apple constantly upgrade and change their models. The iPhone is not new - it’s been around for many months in the USA, so it is due for a feature upgrade pretty soon. Early adopters will pay for this. At some point, Apple will be upgrading the memory, and the feature set. No doubt they will give it 3G capabilities too. Perhaps they’ll also drop the ridiculous network tie-in, which seems to breach every rule on monopolies, and open it to any network. Then we’ll get competition, and better pricing.

I think the iPhone is amazing in terms of its user interface and the way it looks, but I can’t ignore the shortcomings. I know that if I were to buy one it would be purely for the gadget factor, and that is not a sound basis for making a decision on an important business communications device. For now, the Nokia N95 represents far better value for money.