My iPhone 2.0 Wishlist

May 12th, 2008

There has been speculation for a while about the impending 3G refresh of the iPhone. Now Techcrunch is reporting that the newest release could be imminent .

As an early adopter (I was one of the saps who paid $599 for one of the first iPhones) I have noticed a few areas for improvement with this device. My complaints are minimal as this is definitely the most amazing phone/camera/web browser/mp3 player I’ve ever expected to carry around in my pocket. Here’s my wishlist for the newest iPhone:

3G This goes without saying. I mean it’s basically what all the speculation surrounding the newest iPhone has been about but I think it bears repeating. AT&T’s Edge Network is slooooow. It’s by far the biggest downfall of the iPhone. I mean if my little sister can access the Internet faster on a Nokia POS than I can what’s the benefit? Why am I paying for a full version of Safari if I have to be sitting in a Wifi hotspot for it to work properly? This has to happen.

MMS Another peeve of mine is the inability to send or receive picture texts. Everytime someone sends me one (which is more often than you’d think) I’m directed to viewmymessage.com which is another awful AT&T implementation. The website is slow, sometimes it doesn’t even work at all, and my pictures are deleted after a week. So annoying.

MS Exchange Support This is an item that has been confirmed by both Apple and Microsoft and should be implemented by the end of June. This is long past due. Now I’ll actually be able to check my work email and my Hotmail on the phone. Ah delicious. I’ve been complaining about the lack of this feature for awhile and people often ask me why I’m not using Gmail or some other email service and my response is that I’ve been a Hotmail user since about 1995 and changing would be more pain that it’s worth. Just please add this feature to the phone and quickly.

Sharing Music I would like the ability to share music in your iTunes library with any iPhone in the nearby vicinity. I realize there would be some copyright concerns but Microsoft has already figured this out with the Zune. Too bad nobody actually uses a Zune. This would be a perfect app for the iPhone. Maybe they could delete the files after a certain number of days or plays.

Videos The camera for the iPhone sucks but it is still the best camera phone I’ve ever used. However, it lacks the ability to record video. I would like to record a video and send it via text. Another reason to allow MMS.

Radio (AM/FM/Sirius) Imagine listening to your latest Britney Spears download and then flipping over to Howard Stern on Sirius or whatever local talking head you listen to. It would be a nice addition.

Some other minor additions:

• Ability to copy/paste text
• Ability to search your contact list
• Widescreen support for text messaging
• Flash support for the mini Safari browser

These are pretty standard requests. Many people have posted similar blogs over the past year. Hopefully Apple will pull out a few or all of them. If they do I’ll be selling a year old 4GB iPhone on eBay and upgrading.