I have a confession: I stopped in at the T-Mobile phone store yesterday, to see if any of the new Blackberry products were sufficiently sexy to lure me away from my iPhone. And I spent an hour on the ATT Wireless web site this evening, checking to see if any of the new Samsung, Nokia, or Palm products were worth the effort of dropping my iPhone. At the end of the exercise, I decided not to change anything; but I’ll definitely keep checking every couple of months, because my iPhone is no longer as thrilling as it once was.

I got my iPhone in early July, so I’ve now had three months of experience with it. I don’t make that many phone calls (which, ostensibly, is the primary reason one should buy a cell phone, right?), but I do use it on a daily basis for several other purposes. As a phone, it’s okay — not fantastic, not terrific, but okay. But seriously, isn’t that what you would say about almost any cell phone today? How many people hang up after a cell-phone call, and exclaim loudly to everyone around them, “Damn! That was the best cell phone call I’ve had in a long, long time!” In fact, it continues to annoy me that I don’t have a one-key speed-dial feature, like most other cell-phones have, which makes dialing a call while driving a dangerous adventure indeed. On the other hand, Apple’s recent software update (which apparently turned some iPhones into “bricks”) made it much easier to navigate to my “favorites” list.

At least in the U.S., one’s opinion of a cell-phone is likely to be more a function of the carrier than the device itself. I had Verizon and/or ATT throughout the mid- and late-1990s, when I first started using cell phones; but for about the past five years, I’ve been a reasonably happy T-Mobile customer, primarily because they provide international service. Well, “happy” is a relative term: it’s hard to find anyone who really likes their telecommunications carrier. T-Mobile customer service has always been pretty good; but like every other U.S. carrier, there are unpredictable “dead zones” through New York City (where I live), as well as other parts of the country. The same is true of ATT, which I’ve been forced to use with my new iPhone; they’ve improved from 10 years ago by adding international coverage, but they too have dead zones. Overall, though, I find that I get about the same number of dropped calls and weak signal strength with ATT as I do with T-Mobile.

But as I mentioned above, I don’t really make that many phone calls with my iPhone — or with the Blackberry and Palm Treo devices that I used previously. I use email much more heavily; I occasionally browse some Web sites; and I very much want the calendar and address-book functions. As for the camera, the music-player, and various other gee-gaws … well, if they were spectacularly good, they might persuade me to abandon my Palm Pilot, my pocket digital camera, and my iPod nano. But they aren’t; and in particular, the iPhone doesn’t replace these devices.

Here’s what I’ve concluded, after three months:

1. The music player (i.e., the iTunes functionality on the iPhone) is unusable, for the simple reason that the choice of earphone/headphones is severely constrained; indeed, about the only thing you can depend on is the miserable earphones supplied by Apple with the iPhone. Maybe they work for some people, but they hurt my ears — really badly. The earphone jack on the iPhone is recessed, so a large number of third-party ear/head-phones simply won’t work at all; and the few that do work are (in my humble opinion) inferior. So, after much gnashing of teeth, I now listen to music on my old iPod nano (and since I have no interest in watching videos, I have no interest in buying the new iPod nano … at least, not yet).
2. The camera is okay, and the integrated iPhone software makes it relatively easy to email photos, and/or to synch the camera’s photo library with one’s desktop photo archives. But it’s only a 2-megapixel camera, it doesn’t have a zoom capability, and it doesn’t have video. Thus, it’s actually worse than the cameras on many other cell-phones; in any case, it’s not something that stands out as a positive feature of the iPhone. And for anyone who is the least bit serious about his or her photography, it’s hard to limit oneself to a 2-megapixel camera when there are so many affordable 10-12 megapixel cameras that fit easily into your pocket. And so that’s what I’ve done: I currently carry a Nikon Coolpix P5100 with me wherever I go, and I’ll probably replace it with a Canon Powershot SD950 later this month. If there’s a cinema verite moment where I’ve got to use the iPhone camera because there’s nothing else available, maybe it will do; but it’s more likely that I’ll simply forget that I have the capability.
3. The address-book capability of the iPhone is okay, as long as you’re content to use the Macintosh desktop “Address Book” program; and that is indeed where I’ve got the names and email addresses of approximately 1,000 people with whom I interact via email. I’ve also made sure that I’ve got the phone numbers in those address records, because that’s obviously important if you want to retrieve that information on the iPhone. But there’s a great deal of additional information that Apple’s “Address Book” doesn’t handle very well — e.g., multiple notes associated with each record. I use Now Software’s “Now Contact” program to keep the full details of some 9,000 business names, addresses, and related information; it’s roughly equivalent to Microsoft Outlook in terms of its functionality. And it doesn’t (yet) synch with iPhone. Boo …
4. Along with contact-names and addresses, the other critical thing that I need on my mobile device is up-to-date calendar information. To put that onto iPhone requires that you first enter all of the relevant information into Apple’s iCal program. And iCal has always, unfortunately, been a mediocre product at best; it may be okay for simplistic use by an individual; but for the past 14 years, my wife and I have enjoyed the benefits of a shared, networked calendar using Now Software’s “Now Up to Date” program (again, Windows users should imagine something roughly equivalent to Outlook). A couple weeks after I got my iPhone, I tried switching over to iCal; I really, really tried to make it work for me. Unfortunately, it simply doesn’t do what I need it to do (I’ll spare you the details) … so I’ve switched back to Now Up to Date. And to make that calendar information available on a mobile device, I synch it (easily, automatically) with my Palm Pilot … which also has my 9,000 business-contact details.
5. The iPhone has no mechanism for synchronizing notes that one might create on a desktop computer with Stickies or any other note-taking program. Yes, it does have its own built-in, standalone “Notes” program — but what you obviously want is to do 99% of the work of creating, updating, and organizing those notes on a desktop/laptop computer with a full-size keyboard, and use the iPhone to refer to those notes, and make minor updates as necessary. The lack of this capability is breathtakingly annoying, incredibly short-sighted, and simply unacceptable. So I’m using my Palm Pilot for that function, too — with the synchronization being provided by a simple $40 desktop program called SOHO Notes.
6. Another important role for my mobile device is to act as a repository of all of the dozens of ID numbers, membership numbers, frequent-flyer numbers, and other such information that used to clutter up my wallet. It doesn’t happen very often, but when a bored hotel/airline/government clerk asks me, “What’s your driver’s license number? And what’s your wife’s Social Security number? And while you’re at it, could you tell me the account number of the insurance policy on your automobile?”, my mind goes blank. So, all of that information has been typed into a simple shareware program called SplashID; it runs on my desktop, and it synchronizes simply and automatically with my Palm Pilot. But it doesn’t work on my iPhone; and as far as I can tell, there is no program for maintaining this kind of information (in a secure, encrypted fashion, of course) on the iPhone. There’s a program called Password Wallet that cleverly keeps a list of user-ID’s and passwords for various websites, implemented as a Safari bookmark that can be automatically synched on your iPhone (and which doesn’t require any hacking or controversial software tricks) — but it doesn’t keep all the other kind of information that I need to keep. So, once again, I depend on my Palm Pilot.
7. In general, then, the closed nature of the iPhone is turning out to be a major pain in the neck for me. It’s not that I want to download and install a bunch of games or frivolous applications; I need the programs listed above to keep my life under control. I’ve read all of the debates and discussions about Apple’s policy of keeping its iPhone environment closed in order to prevent chaos and security problems, and I know that it’s consistent with Apple’s policy from the early days of the Macintosh. But that “closed” mind-set is one of the main reasons Apple lost the PC battle with IBM in the mid-1980s, and I’m beginning to get the feeling they may be doing it all over again.

Having said all this, I should note that I find the Google Maps, the stock-market program, and the weather program really nice; and on a couple of occasions, the Google Maps program has been really helpful, as opposed to a simple amusement. And I also find the overall design and usability of the iPhone to be terrific; it does have some bugs (i.e., some of its programs occasionally get stuck, and one has to retreat to the “home” page), but I’m willing to put up with that. Indeed, I’m willing to put up with a whole bunch of stuff, particularly because I realize that this is a “version 1.0″ product.

But my hope that the iPhone would be the only mobile device in my pocket has proven unrealistic, so far. Annoying as it may be, I make sure that I’ve got my iPod nano, my pocket camera, and my Palm Pilot with me — in addition to the iPhone — whenever I leave home. I’ll put up with it for now, and I’ll keep my fingers crossed that iPhone 2 gets announced — with solutions to at least some of these problems — before I completely lose patience.

In the meantime, though, I’m going to continue checking the T-Mobile and ATT websites periodically to see if some other vendor has out-Appled Apple. I’m loyal, but only up to a point …