14 DAY TRIAL // Just how new and revolutionary is the iPhone concept, when it actually comes with a huge pack of disadvantages? These days after its launch, people have had the chance of trying it themselves and seeing just what this mobile phone is capable of doing.
Although with an appealing touchscreen and great looking operating system, the iPhone also comes several important drawbacks. Even Apple's policy on the carriers has been a serious constraint. It is the same case with the device itself, as its owner receives much less than he expects when buying this handset.
To start with, the iPhone does not support a SIM card which has not been activated for that specific cell phone. This means that you can't even borrow the phone for use to a friend to insert his SIM card when his battery has discharged on his own iPhone.
AT&T brings some limitations too, as all buyers for Apple's phone have to subscribe for a two-year contract and comply with several high data rates. In fact, this has been the main dissatisfaction for most people considering buying themselves an iPhone.
Next time you think of all that the iPhone can do, just give a thought to what it cannot, too. It has no UMTS, VoIP functionality and can not be used as a modem. There are no instant messaging applications supported, shockingly, no MMS and neither does it have Java or Flash support.
The iPhone lacks third party applications support, only Web-based ones. One more disappointing news for mobile phone gamers out there is that this handset comes with no games included and there is no possibility for such applications to be installed.
The camera, not very evolved to start with, at its 2 megapixels, comes with no possibility for changing the settings. There is just a key to capture an image and nothing else to adapt to certain lighting situations. Moreover, there is no flash-light, which might result in captures of rather poor quality in some situations.
One huge disadvantage is that the iPhone does not allow file transfer from the PC through the USB cable other than by means of Apple extensions, such as iTunes and iPhoto. All that 8 GB space that 90 percent of buyers have chosen to be filled only with this type of files and nothing else sounds rather disappointing.
There are also other flaws in the iPhone dream concept, such as the fact that the copy-paste possibility for the text is missing. Few people have thought about all these specifications until now. This is probably the main reason for the half a million iPhones sold only in the first weekend since its release, on Friday.