I personally am going to wait until the second version of the iPhone in it’s current form factor comes out, hoping that it’ll have a larger flash storage chip and also 3G capabilities. Not to say that I don’t think the current iPhone is sweet, because I do and I think it makes my HTC-made AT&T 8525 look like an ugly brick (especially in it’s equally cumbersome protective case…glavin)…but to me the whole point of having an Internet-enabled cell phone with such a gorgeous screen would be to surf the Internet at decent speeds. It was one thing to use my last candy bar-style Smartphone on Cingular’s 2G network, but using Opera to have a basically desktop-like browsing experience would be terrible on the slower network. It seems slow enough as it is even when it’s running on the 3G network.

Hardware limitations aside though, the iPhone seems to have an incredibly slick user interface, a beautiful screen, and a lot of features packed into an ultra-slim body. I’ve heard great things from those who do have one about its ease of use, how great the apps are, and that it’s a pretty nice iPod on top of everything else.

Apple makes great products, but aside from wanting 3G I’m always a bit leary about purchasing the first version of anything they make. They always come up with really innovative products, but they often come with some pretty sketchy problems the first time around. By the second revision Apple is usually on top of things and the product just gets better from there. To that end, Robert from AppleHound.com has cataloged 68 Known iPhone Bugs. Frankly though, the list to me seems mostly comprised of minor UI inconsistencies than actual bugs with the iPhone. And in fact, some of the issues he describes aren’t bugs at all, but things that I wouldn’t even have been expecting to work on the phone (or my computer for that matter). For instance, Robert has this bug:

Web pages do not remain loaded after powering off the iPhone…[turn the phone off and then on]…tap the ‘Safari’ icon on the home screen. Notice the web page or pages that were loaded are no longer. Seeing as the Safari application remembers the pages that were visited, the expected result is for the page content to remain loaded.

Um. This is a bug?? I’m pretty sure that the web page I’m on right now writing this post is cached in my browser history. But if I were to turn my computer off (and this computer has 10 times the storage of the largest iPhone), I’d come back and load Firefox only to find that…*gasp*…the web page I’m on right now with all my typing and everything is mysteriously not loaded either, nor are the other tabs I’m browsing right now. I mean, really–this doesn’t work on regular computers, and shouldn’t be an expected behavior on the phone. So, I’ll be waiting the list of *actual* bugs from the iPhone, which I’m sure will pop up here soon. What will be interesting to see is how easy it is for Apple to fix these “bugs”. I just flashed the ROM on my 8525 and it was perhaps the most confusing and difficult software upgrade I’ve ever done (of course the directions provided by HTC and AT&T don’t actually work, and you have to find the answer buried in forum posts…).

Jeffrey Strain from TheStreet.com has wrote an interesting article that I found to be more grounded in logic for why to wait for the iPhone. Five Reasons to Wait Before Buying an iPhone, which are the premium cost; lack of current competition; bugs; hidden costs; and the inevitable collection of accessories you’ll be compelled to purchase. However, of his list, I really only count the current premium cost, lack of competition, and bugs to be reasons for holding off. Of course they’re going to charge a premium for awhile. And once competitors recover you’ll see a lot of the unique features start showing up elsewhere, but this should serve to just drive Apple’s innovation further in round two. And yes, bugs are an issue (real bugs that is) and is one of the things I’m concerned about with the first-gen device. But c’mon–hidden costs are the name of the game with any mobile phone, and I’m not sure why he thinks that when the next version comes out you won’t buy just as many sweet accessories that you don’t need. Then again his grounding is in how much you could turn your $599 iPhone investment into if it were instead in your retirement account. Meh…there’s plenty of time to save for retirement later…

So I’m taking my $600 and putting it into a 6-month CD so I’ll have a little extra interest to buy a sweet accessory for my second-gen iPhone. Or maybe I’ll just buy $600 woth of apple shares and let that ride for awhile.


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