Last week’s $200 price drop was too much to bear. I’ve bought the Apple iPhone. Well, the 4GB version for the clearance price of $275 (after a friend’s 15% discount). The 4GB is good in the meantime while I wait for the 3G version of the phone to come out.

Now that I have it, here’s my review.

Hank’s Apple iPhone Review – All the Dislikes

The phone works like the the commercials and websites show it as. So I’m not going to repeat all the fancy features. I’m only going to discuss what I really like and dislike about the iPhone.

Great integration with all Apple technologies, Mail, iTunes, Safari,.. but…..

Notes – doesn’t sync into the computer at all.

Photos – iPhoto integration only with synced albums. No way to copy a JPG directly.

Music – It doesn’t transfer songs like an iPod. It only enables syncing of all music, or selected playlists.

Podcast support – quite poor. It only sync with unlistened podcasts. If you add a podcast into a playlist, it’s not in the podcast menu. It’s listed like a regular song: artist, song, album, genre = Podcast etc. The MOST annoying part, is that the song SEEK feature, is multiple clicks away, and it’s hard to seek to very specific sections (a VERY important feature if you listen to podcasts). NO video podcast support either, I would expect iTunes to magically convert it for me.

Google Map Integration is minimal. It great that it’s there, and has great navigation features. However, there’s no “login” so you can access the your Google My Maps features, nor is it integrated with the text that you have in our calendar item descriptions. For example calendar items descriptions can’t get a link to the Google Maps like how the Mail client does.

Cut, Copy and Paste. iPhone doesn’t support copy and paste operations, so you definitely can’t cut and paste address across from different areas.

Phone Favorites (like speed dial)1 page of items max. It should allow you to organize in folders like bookmarks, OR a speed dial page with single touch big #’s to dial someone. OR… assign a quick dial numbers like 6 = Shawn, 66 = Maggie, 666 = Shawn’s home number.

Voice Recorder – Almost deal breaker for allot of people. I tend to use this feature allot to record thoughts or other things when I’m driving…. Like: which how to navigate through the SFO International parking terminal, so I can park right next to entrance closest to the check-in counters or arrivals door.

Voice Dialing – Well if there’s no voice recorder, then there’s no voice dialing. OS X already has speech recognition software built into the OS for free. Why not enable it on the iPhone?

Quick Play/Pause button – My old Sony Ericcson phone had a play/pause button. It was incrediably useful when listening to music. This type of accessibility should be built into the iPhone better.

Mail SMTP server support – This feature works great. It supports SSL protected incoming and outgoing mail servers.

Strange WEP password problems – I can’t log into my WEP protected wifi network at home. All my laptops, desktop computers, Nintendo DS, and Tivos work fine. The iPhone doesn’t. Grrrr.. I can login at work fine too using WEP.

UPDATE: I also hate the lack of wireless sync. Bluetooth or WIFI should be enabled to allow contacts, calendar, syncing at all times. Larger files like videos, music should require the cable.