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I’ve had my iPhone for about 2 weeks and I have to say that I absolutely love it! However, as capable as the iPhone is, there are a few areas where I feel Apple dropped the ball. More specifically, features that other cheaper, less technologically advanced phones provide, but are lacking on the iPhone.

MMS

When you receive what should be an MMS (picture or video) message on the iPhone, instead, you receive a text message asking you to go to viewmymessage.com and type in an alpha-numeric message ID and password. This means that you have to leave the SMS application to launch Safari and type in the address (or use a previously saved bookmark) to get to the site. Then you’d better have a really good memory or you’ll have to flip back and forth between the SMS application and Safari to type in the message ID and password (it’s different every time). Finally, after submitting your login credentials, you’re brought to a page that shows your message.

I really like the way the iPhone shows text messages in a chat format, but Apple should have figured out a better way to handle picture and video messages.

Copy, cut, or paste

The iPhone is missing these functions all together. This makes the MMS situation especially painful when you have to type in the message ID and password. If copy and paste were available, entering a random ID and password might be a little more bearable.

Ringtones

Apparently, Apple decided that they needed to squeeze another $0.99 out of their customers to create their own “custom” ringtones. Basically, you have to pay $0.99 to download a song from the iTunes Music Store, then another $0.99 to convert it to a ringtone. The interface that Apple provides to do this has been described as “Garage Band-like”.

Hey Apple, here’s an idea: How about you let people use their own mp3 files that they’ve ripped from CDs they’ve already purchased, and if they need to edit them, they can use Garage Band?! I mean, come on, I could do this with my Motorola RAZR with no problem. Isn’t the iPhone supposed to be far more advanced?

Tether using Bluetooth

Or should I say tether using any means! Again, I could do this very easily with my RAZR. The iPhone is a completely data and Internet-centric device. Why can’t I do this?

Send text messages to multiple recipients

When selecting recipients in the SMS application, the iPhone only allows you to choose one contact for each new message. I did find a pseudo-solution at iphonefaq.org, which allows you to send a message to multiple recipients and gets around the fact that you can’t send MMS message from the iPhone, but it is far from ideal. Ironically enough, this solution doesn’t work as well for iPhone users as it does others. Recipients using iPhones will still be directed to viewmymessage.com.

Multiple pictures via email

The only way to send a picture in an email is to go to the photo in your photo library, tap on the icon in the lower left corner, and select “Email Photo”. This will bring up a new email with the photo already embeded in the body. From within the mail application, there is no way to add another photo. If you return to your photo library and try to repeat the process, as soon as you select an album, it returns you to your mail message.

Third-party applications

I have to admit that I haven’t really found any applications that I can’t live without that aren’t available via Safari as a web application. However, I think that this is something that Apple should allow. There are some applications that just don’t work as well on the web as they do as a client-installed application. Hundreds of applications were created with the idea that they could be run on the iPhone, only to be broken by update 1.1.1. Once again, my RAZR would run third-party Java applications just fine.

P.S. If anyone has a solution for any of these problems that works on an unhacked iPhone, please leave me a comment.