one giant media

So I've heard the praise, made my fair share of bar-side pitches to people asking, and it is an AMAZING device, don't get me wrong, but the truth is the iPhone is far from perfect.  Once you become a steady user, you will begin to notice a lot of little areas where aesthetic design superseded functional design, which directly contradicts the pure nature of truly good design in the first place.  Allow me to play Captain Obvious of QA for Apple...

1. There's No Call / End Call Button(s)

   The main thing I have been annoyed with since day 1 is the fact that there is no physical Call / End Call button(s) on the phone itself.  Every cell phone since they came in carry-bags has had this feature for one good reason - ITS THE MAIN FUNCTION OF A TELEPHONE.  I can hear Apple designers saying now - yes but there is a big red one in the screen UI - there is the screen lock button that hangs up on the call - does it though?  I've had this phone a long time now and I still can't figure out why that button does some things sometimes, and other times does other things..
   
   YEAH Great- there is an on-screen button - so what if the screen has been touched and isn't displaying that anymore?  What if I'm riding my bike and can't look at the screen?  What if the screen is frozen (which seems to be happening a lot lately - getting to that...)?  What if there is a sticky situation and I just plain and simple need to hang up on someone FAST - here I am FAR too often thinking to myself "stop! hang up! do it!  come on you stupid thing!" pawing repeatedly with different creative thumb techniques (attempting to figure out what detection it is using that can't seem to grasp my 50 taps in the same spot) at the red end call button on the screen which doesn't seem to be reacting. 
   
   Bottom line - I want my thumb or finger to be able to feel for, find, and click hang up without me having to look at the screen or wait or verify anything, or worry about shutting the phone off all together.  This is the sole reason I might have to go back to a BlackBerry.

2. The Mysterious Battery

   There is no way to open this phone casing, and if you do, I'm pretty sure you void the warranty.  In other words, there's no way to get at the battery or sim card or any of that kind of stuff.  On one hand, this is nice, because it looks even more super slick.  The problem is, I didn't buy the phone to look at it and say "OOoooh" - OK fine maybe I did.  But it eventually became a real utility for me, and thus I rely on it's usability to do daily tasks.  One of these daily tasks that happen with any phone, is resetting it.  Sometimes this amazing gadget freezes up and even the power button can't cycle it.  This happens on lots of phones and is where you typically pop that back panel open, pull out the battery for a few seconds, pop it back in and WHA-LAH, back in business.  With the iPhone, though, you are at the mercy of the buttons themselves, no override to be found- and if your not careful and start holding down lots of buttons at once, you might just reset it all together and have to restore it via iTunes.  BUMMER.
   
   Second, the life of the battery was GREAT for months, it would last just as long, if not longer than my iPod!  All-day listening to music, and still last all night no problem so that the alarm can wake me up in the morning.  Well, a few months later the battery could barely hold a charge, lasting max 4 hours, and I was back to a regular alarm clock.  What happened!?  Can I swap it out myslef? (nope).  So I was forced to go to the Apple store, where the next available appointment with the Genius Bar was 2 days later. SUPER - can't you just let me buy and swap the battery?  I'm a big boy!  I can handle it!
   
   What caused this battery death?  Who knows?  Smart Lithium Ion or whatever the who these batteries are these days frequently have a memory to them, to help them remember what "full" feels like.  Messing that up can cause the phone to not charge right and have really bad life.  Is this one of these batteries?  Is there a certain strategy to docking / charging it?  I frequently dock it all day at work.  Could there be some 2 sentence tip for charging it correctly on the obvious outside of the phone on a sticker or something?  I mean really, nobody reads support documentation these days, but quick tips on how it should be cared for should be right up front.
   
   To save some face, though, I will say that once I did make my genius bar appt and did get a BRAND new iPhone, though a fade mark on the screen played a part.  Still, it was nice to get a brand new device with little hassle.

3. F-r-......eezing.

   Reminiscent of my frustrations with Windows, I now have similar frustrating circumstances with Apple's iPhone.  Being a big fan of the performance of Mac Computers and their seldom-freezing OS's, I am fairly shocked at how much my iPhone lags and locks up completely frozen.  FREQUENTLY I press a button, and nothing happens... for about 3 seconds.. and then it goes through.  This didn't happen at first, and seems to be happening more often when the phone is filled with music / media closer to it's capacity.  IF performance is an issue without a certain amount of hard drive space- RESERVE IT FOR THE O/S - don't just advertise 8 gigs when it's really 7.02 and filling up 7 of it means the whole slick UI becomes clunky and slow- that's not very Mac of you, Apple!

4. A Sad Excuse for Vibrate

   Vibrate is another FUNDAMENTAL feature of any phone.  It's purpose is to alert you there is a call when it's not the best conditions to be alerted audibly.  I had an OLD old old Nokia phone that vibrated so hard, you would NEVER miss a call, and in fact, you could hear it vibrating on a table in the next room over.  That was great, I used vibrate even when I didn't need to.  The iPhone vibrates like it's beating feathers together.  I miss calls every single time I'm out at a bar or any loud situation, and I have it set to vibrate all the time.  Crank it up people!

5. iTunes (AKA crapTunes on Windows)

   Almost every time I update my firmware, iTunes crashes.  Depending on what point it crashes, it may crash in such a way that it crashes attempting to fix itself as well - with great descriptive errors like "Cannot Restore. File Not Found".
   
   A lot of times when I sync my iPhone (which is full with only 6.5 gigs of music, seemingly contradicting the advertised size available for music), iTunes crashes.
   
   Then I'm basically stuck with the option to restore it, which means I lose un-backed up numbers, music, etc.  What's worse, I lose ALL of the ratings I previously gave my thousand-plus songs to have a nice Top Rated list.  Back to the drawing board- once a month. blah!
   
   Additionally, iTunes makes it really hard to manage music files in general with restrictions, having to wipe clean one library to sync with the phone, or vice versa.  I just want to drag and drop my files anywhere I want them.  You can do this with Microsoft's Zune, can't you?  I'm pretty sure my little sister has an easier time managing her music on her Sony Mp3 Walkman and she's just barely into double digits age-wise.  (ouch)

6. Camera/Video

   How is it that my Nokia phone in 2002 took HALF AN HOUR of video and up to 700 or so GREAT PICTURES even at night?  Complete with a night-mode feature for manual extended exposure?  The iPhone camera is 2 megapixels, plenty of resolution to take some decent snaps, document a trip, or just save some memories- IF IT'S NICE AND SUNNY OUTSIDE!  This camera seriously must have been QA'd in the middle of the day in Southern California, because I have not been able to capture decent photos that I really wanted to get countless times unless it was perfect light conditions.  Further, someone released an APP that does video, but the phone didn't come with it?  Bull!  And now with 3G video messaging should be a breeze on the iPhone.  I've said it before and I'll say it again- this is supposed to be the future!  Rise to the challenge!

7. No Flash (light) Support = Weak Sauce

   Flash, if you don't know, is the driving technology behind most all sites that move or are animated or highly interactive.  Many night clubs, bars, or modern sites in general use some animated feature to spice things up a bit.  Flash was started to be integrated in web-ready phone models YEARS ago, in a somewhat watered down version of the player called Flash Light.  iPhone, with the self-proclaimed best phone web browser experience on the market (Safari), doesn't have flash light support AT ALL, and it CAN'T BE INSTALLED - though very much possible.  WEAK!  Now when I'm out and I want to check a website for my friends, we all disappointingly stare at a little blue box / question mark place holder where a website should be playing. Weak, weak, weak.

8. Way Too Nice of a Phone to Miss the Obvious

   Perhaps the one thing that annoys me to no end more than anything else, is the fact that the iPhone really is a huge leap in UI/UX for cell phones in general. Being a usability designer, I frequently consider the interfaces I navigate through the phone, and I have to say 95% of the time I love it- whisk into a menu, find my location or destination on a map, browse the web, check email, text conversation-for-conversation, type one-handed with decent correction - etc.  So why, oh why, ohhhh why were little things like what I've listed above let slide!?!?  I held out for v2 of the iPhone thinking they would surely correct these things... But no, it's just faster and has a plastic case instead of metal.  Guess what Apple- I am almost always on a wifi network, so I don't NEED 3G even though now I'm paying for it, and I LIKED THE METAL!  You totally missed the obvious and wiffed on your revision!

I guess I'll be crossing my fingers for  iPhone v3 - maybe they will look at verizon or sprint (LG) and see that even the knock off's caught on to some of these core usability issues.  This is still a new device relatively, so there's still plenty of time for some improvement.

C'mon, Apple, I still have faith in you!