Is the new 3G iPhone the be-all and end-all of smartphones? Not according to Forbes' Brian Caulfield.
...imperfections still lurk, in spite of Chairman Steve Jobs' maniacal attention to detail. Even before its release, there are some niggling issues--some minor, others major--that make the iPhone a mere gadget, just like any other. Just ask those pesky bloggers:
The Cost
Those crafty phone companies! Yes, at $199, the new iPhone is cheaper up-front than the original, which first went on sale starting at $499 last year. It is not, however, less expensive to own. Do the math you find out and the iPhone will cost $160 more over two years than the original iPhone because AT&T put together a pricier data plan for the phone to help it subsidize the up-front cost of the handset. The gadget fiends at Gizmodo called that "a small price to play," but Bits, the technology blog at The New York Times, called it "a step backwards for consumers"...No Voice Dialing
No blogger we've seen has complained about this yet. Maybe that's because all the geeks who might whine about how tough it is to dial the iPhone died in fiery auto wrecks first, seeing as the iPhone doesn't have the voice-recognition smarts to let users dial verbally--the one feature makes the BlackBerry, with its nubby little plastic keyboard, usable on the road...
The battery replacement issue -- basically, you can't replace batteries -- still exists and is a significant problem in my view.
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