Iphone Limitations
I have already described how much i love my Iphone. But still i don’t recommend it to others. Now its launched in India so many people ask me whether they should buy it or not. For them i will list its limitations.
It works on Mac operating system so expect compatibility issues with windows .
- No Universal Inbox
I have 11 accounts which I use regularly. Different ones for
different sites I own, work, home, etc. Does Apple really think I want to go in
and out of 11 different inboxes to view 14 messages? I mean, come on…
- G-Mail
Even though Apple has GMail listed as one of its supported
3rd party mail providers (even going so far as including their graphic when you
try and set up a new account in Mail from the iPhone), GMail has issues. Every
one of my Sent messages is showing up in my Inbox.
Edit This can be fixed by going into mail settings, clicking
on the account in question, going into advanced, then turning “Use recent
mode” off.
If you set up Gmail as a POP account rather than going through
the icon provided, it solves this sent message problem
- Junk
Some of my accounts get a lot of Junk mail. The iPhone
doesn’t let me mark stuff as Junk… lame.
- Mark Read
No contextual menus means the only way to mark these as read
is to open every single message I get.
- Email Attachments
There are loads of attachments that you just can’t open!
e.g. A simple text file created in notepad (MS) opens fine, but if you rename
it to .log, it won’t open! :-/
Calendar
- Day View
I was expecting when viewing in Day View to simply be able
to flick to either side to move between days, in the same way as you can in the
iPod, Pictures, and most other interfaces in the iPhone.
Phone
- Voice Dialing
no voice dialing.
Can’t record audio.
- One-push speed dialing There is no equivalent of the
push-and-hold speed dialing that exist on most other phones. Instead, the
iPhone Favorites list gives you a quick(ish) access to the most frequently
dialed numbers.
- Bluetooth DUN Profile Unlike nearly every other Bluetooth
enabled cell phone, the iPhone will not share its internet connection with
other devices (e.g. a laptop). In fact, out of roughly 25 common Bluetooth
profiles for cell phones, the iPhone only supports two (see: iPhone’s Bluetooth
is dumb, purposely crippled or both?). This is a limitation of the firmware/OS,
not the hardware.
There have been reports of people sharing their iPhone
internet connection via a SOCKS or HTTP proxy over an ad-hoc WiFi network; this
requires running SSH and/or “srelay”, manual IP address
configuration, etc;
- I wish there was an auto-answer app or feature of the
iPhone!!!
Safari
- Text Selection
Why can’t you select just a specific bit of the text? I’m on
rajivbhardwaj.com/index.php?thread=456, I want to go to rajivbhardwaj.com/Apps.
Why do I need to delete 20 letters to type 4? It’d make way more sense to
highlight the index.php part and just write apps.
- Saving Images/Files
We have a gallery here of iPhone wallpapers. I browse to it
on the iPhone. I find my image I want. And then I… wait, I can’t download it?
I can’t choose to set it as wallpaper? I have to go to my Mac, browse to the
URL again, download the photo, purchase and install iLife, import the photo
into iPhoto, set it to sync with the iPhone, open up iTunes, hit sync, then
browse to it on my iPhone and set as wallpaper? Hmm.
- Flash
Seriously? No Flash support? I can’t live off YouTube
videos. Even when using YouTube, I cant save the clip on the phone.
Camera
- Quality
Overall camera quality is lame. If there is ANY movement at
all during the shot you get a blurry image, and the general quality is just
mediocre.
- Options
There are none. Where’s my Zoom? Exposure? Maybe save a few
in not full res?
- Video
Doesn’t shoot video.
General Usage
Cannot transfer music from two computers. If you sync with new computer old data will be overwritten.
No handwriting recognition.
-Cannot use as USB drive.
Waste of so much available space.
- No Contextual Menus
Where are they? You’d think holding your finger on an item
for a couple seconds would bring up a contextual menu with items like Delete,
Copy, Move, etc depending on what you had selected. But nope, not the case. A
little limited. These menus are also not available via a button anywhere – they
just aren’t there. Which brings me to…
- Copy/Paste
The phone lacks copy and paste functionality.
- File Management
There is no way to save files which are attachments in your
Mail, nor from Safari. A Documents folder wouldn’t be too bad, Apple…
Cannot Text message a Photo, Important? not really but quite
handy.
Can’t browse files in the phone. Only way to transfer files (music & video only) is thro ‘Itunes’.
Can’t use as reader for excel doc or pdf files.
- Contacts
Cannot copy contacts to or from SIM
No way to input standard DTMF commands as part of the phone
number. e.g. pause (p) and wait (w) commands.
SMS
Can’t forward the SMS.
Can’t send phone numbers via SMS text message.
When receiving phone numbers/contacts, e.g. VCARD, I can’t
save them to contacts.
Can’t click on MMS notification to go to Safari to view.
Hardware
Only Bluetooth headset support, cannot transfer files (pics, music, videos etc)
Bluetooth Stereo Headsets: Bluetooth stereo headsets work
perfectly well when you are on a call. But due to a redundant bluetooth stack,
you can not stream your music. what good is bluetooth then? you are not calling
people all the time, but you are listening to music all the time.
