1. You Must Have an iTunes Account. Not the hugest deal considering that most people use iTunes anyway, but it would be nice to have some other options for purchasing and managing your music.
2. No Direct-to-Phone Downloads. There's nothing like hearing a song you like (or thinking of a song you want) and downloading it right then and there, directly into your phone (or audio player). Sure, you can't do this with your iPod, either, but the feature is increasingly the norm on music-capable phones from Verizon and Sprint. Now, given that Apple has said that the iPhone will feature a full version of iTunes, it's perfectly possible that, come Friday, over-the-air downloads via Wi-Fi could well be a reality on the iPhone.
3. No built-in GPS. Like over-the-air downloads, built-in GPS is increasingly the norm on many lower cost phones from Sprint and Verizon. Sure, the iPhone has built-in Google Maps that give you directions from point A to point B, but good luck if you deviate from the route or get lost, since the lack of real-time GPS won't recalculate routes automatically based on your actual location (which you probably won't know anyway, since you'll be lost). To be fair, many of the other smart phones competing with the iPhone don't have GPS built-in either – case in point, the otherwise very satisfying BlackBerry Curve – but the feature is increasingly commonplace on many new phones from Verizon and Sprint.
4. Even 8-gigabytes (GB) of memory is not enough . If you watch a lot of TV, or are going on a long trip that involves even just one ten-hour-or-more flight, you'll quickly run out of video entertainment with just an iPhone. And since it has no expandable memory option, the iPhone can only hold a Nano's worth of media and that's it. Now, each movie takes up about 1-gigabyte of space or approximately 250 songs. This means that if you have, say, three movies and 1,000 or so songs, you've pretty much tapped out the larger iPhone's memory.
5. It won't play nice with your work e-mail. If you wanted to use the iPhone as your work phone, you'll most likely be out of luck, since the it won't play nice with Microsoft Exchange, which is one of the most widespread work e-mail systems. Yes, it'll connect with your Outlook and transfer emails that have already been retrieved on your desktop, but don't expect real-time push work e-mail a la BlackBerry.
Okay, okay. So here are the ten reasons to buy, from Sally Walker Davies.
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