Apple iPhone 3G: What it doesn't have

By Nicole Lee on 09 June 2008, 9:13pm

Our long nightmare is over. Finally Steve Jobs saw fit to announce to the world the existence of the iPhone 3G, and it does indeed have quite a few improvements over the current iteration -- 3G is huge of course, GPS is a welcome addition, and third-party applications are nothing to be sneezed at. Not to mention it's thinner at 116 by 62 by 12mm and has a flush headphone jack.

But we were expecting much more than what Jobs announced. Here's a short list of what we wanted from the second-gen iPhone, but just didn't get.

Multimedia Messaging: Almost every other phone on the market has the ability to send images to other phones via multimedia messaging, or MMS. Yes, you can still email those photos, but MMS is such a basic feature that it should've been in the iPhone from the start.

Copy and paste: Again, this is such a basic feature. Having copy and paste makes it easier to type out text messages and emails.

Video recording: In the world of mobile video, Qik and YouTube, it's a shame the iPhone doesn't have video-recording capabilities. Yes, the quality won't be that great, but it should be an option anyway.

Voice command: For a touchscreen phone, we think voice command and voice dialling would've been a great feature add-on for the iPhone. Perhaps this will be added via a third-party app, but we would really prefer this to be a native setting.

Bluetooth flexibility: Right now, all you can use Bluetooth on the iPhone for is headset voice calls, and that's it. This is sufficient for most people, sure, but we would like for Apple to open up the Bluetooth profiles for the iPhone. This means we would like stereo Bluetooth and A2DP for streaming music wirelessly, Bluetooth tethering so we can use the iPhone as a modem, and finally we would like to have Bluetooth file transfer protocol so we can transfer files to and from the iPhone.

These are just a few omissions we could think of. Did the iPhone 3G meet your expectations, or would you rather it have a few more features? Let us know in the comments and in our forum. -Nicole Lee