Ive had my iPhone for about 3 months now, I talked about how I got it here. Then a couple of weeks later I gave my impressions at that time. Now, I feel like Ive had sufficient time with the phone to make a real statement about what I think of the phone. Sadly enough, I have to say

I absolutely hate the iPhone

Dont get me wrong, Im not saying that the phone is bad, all Im saying is that "I hate it". It has some good features, and it is cool looking. I like the design and the stylings of the phone, But thats is almost where my fondness for the phone ends.

Why do I hate the iPhone.

1. One thing that I was worried about has turned out to be the worse part of the phone, that is the touch screen. Using a touch screen to tap icons on a phone is ok, but most of what you have to do on the iPhone involves using the touch screen to type things. Sending txt messages, email, dialing phone numbers, visiting websites, using the maps app, searching videos in Youtube. All those features require using the touch screen to type. Typing with the touchscreen is horrible. I really like the email app but having to touch type email makes having such a great email app a waste.

2. When I carry the phone with me during the day, the battery last a good amount of time if I don’t use the phone. Once I use the phone, whether it be using the web, the iPod portion or making calls, the battery life isn’t that great. I find myself having to charge my phone most days before I get home from work. The ipod feature of the phone is great to have if you like using an ipod, but you better have your charger with you because there isnt enough battery life to use the iPod and make phonecalls for a full day

3. Of coarse everyone with an iPhone that isn’t unlocked is on AT&T’s network. Say what you want about AT&T, everywhere is different but for me, dropped calls has became a thing of the past every since Ive joined AT&T (been with them for about 4 or 5 years). The first month or so, I noticed that the signal with the iPhone wasn’t as strong as previous phones Ive owned, but now in the last month Ive been getting random dropped calls, its starting to drive me crazy. Not only am I getting random dropped calls, Im starting to not receive random incoming calls. This phone is becoming less reliable by the day, and Im a "cell phone only" guy. No land line. I need my phone to work.

4. There are a lot of ringtones on the iPhone. Like most phones, you may only find 1 or 2 ringtones that you actually want to use. So what do you do? You either download ringtones to use, or you buy some. You can download a ringtone to use with your iPhone, but as soon as you sync your phone, it removes the ringtone you downloaded. You can buy ringtones from iTunes, but its all music. No different sounds or voices or anything that is normally available. Just SOME of the music available on iTunes you can create a ringtone from. I say again, SOME of the music. Not only are you limited to music, you have a limited selection of music you can use. What I like to do is assign silent ringtones to numbers that I don’t want to answer, cant do that here. And I’m sorry, I dont want Flo-rida as my ringtone like every other iPhone owner.

5. Speaking of syncing. iTunes is about as bad as realplayer, I dont want that installed on my PC but now I have to have it. To be honest, this is something I can overlook. Synching software is ussually a bit annoying but after the rest of my annoyances with the iPhone, the iTunes annoyance is just magnified.

6. No explanation for this, all I have to say is everyone that buys a cell phone today has the ability to send and receive pictures that they have taken with their phone. The iPhone has a very nice camera, you can sync your photos with your PC pretty easily, but you cannot send a picture to anyone (via mms). if someone try to send you a picture, you get a message telling you to go to a website to view the picture. To compound the annoyance, you now have to use the crappy touch screen to type in the website, username and password that the message tells you to type in to view the picture. Crippled functionality overload!

7. Before I got the iPhone, I bought a nice semi-expensive pair of noise canceling earbuds. They are great, I have become pretty attached to them. Guess what? They do not fit into the iPhone. Dont know why they did this, but they took a standard earbud jack and made it proprietary. That is just an annoyance that they had to go out of their way to do on purpose. There is no reason to do this. Of coarse, I went on ebay and bought an adapter that will make any earbuds work with the iPhone but why should I have to do that!!!

8. Lastly, I cant do anything with the phone, its not a smartphone. Yea there are a few applications, but after that, the phone is pretty boring. There has been plenty of times that I’m bored, waiting in line for something and pull out the phone thinking I can tinker around with some of the apps…LIKE I DID ON MY TREO FOR YEARS…and theres nothing to do. Not even a single game, no 411 app (directory assist anyone).

There is rumors that a lot of functionality will be added sometime this month that should make the iPhone more of a real smartphone and I am looking forward to that to see if i like it more. But it still doesnt fix the biggest problem which is the touch screen keyboard. As of right now, the iPhone isnt for me. I hate the iPhone and will probably have it replaced.