The Steve Jobs reality distortion field expanded at today’s Macworld and encompassed the humble mobile phone. Apple fan boys are going gaga, queuing up to sell their kidneys in order to get on Apples pre-order list.

It may be a lustly bit of kit and many will no doubt desperately want one, but I’m holding fire until a few wrinkles get ironed out. Here’s my thinking. 

$#@!! Built-in battery You’d have thought Apple would have learnt from the outcry surrounding the whole iPod battery debacle but nope. Non-user-replaceable batteries are part and parcel of the iPhone.

Is it just me or is this a monumental design blooper???  Every other cellphone on the market has a swappable battery for a very good reason. Giving the consumer the ability to swap out a flat battery in order to keep on talking is a must. Could this omission come back to haunt Apple? 

Form factor Being asked if "that’s an iPhone in your pocket or are I pleased to see me?" May excite some, but for day to day use, holding a curvy rectangular slab to your ear (I’m  assuming that like me, you don’t want to impersonate Star Trek’s Lt O’hura by wearing Apples funky Bluetooth earphone) isn’t very ergonomically satisfying. 

Capacity 8GB was a lot of memory about 5 years ago, but nowadays its pretty feeble and really only good for joggers and gym bunnies who don’t want to take their more expensive hard-disk iPod walkies. Now an iPhone with a hard drive would be too cool for school  

Ta-ta-ta touch me – I wanna be dirty! There’s no debate, the iPhones touch screen and gesture based interface is pretty way cool. Unfortunately it’s also a finger print and scratch magnet. Might a clamshell design that protected the screen have made more sense? 

Carriers Because it needs some customised stuff such as a specialised voice mail, the iPhone is sold exclusively in the US by Cingular. Should Vodafone decide they don’t want to splash out on a similar set up locally, kiwi Apple fanatics may never get the chance to own one. 

S-L-O-W It may do the web, e-mail and have widgets, but once you’re out of sight of your WiFi network (which lets face it for most us is going to be 99% of the average day), you’re back to GPRS mobile data (Vodafone New Zealand doesn’t offer the slightly faster EDGE option) which means WWW becomes the world wide wait and e-mail once again feels like snail mail.

Come on Apple – Come on Stevie J - how about some 3G goodness?



[Moderator edit (MF): split into multiple paragraphs for easier reading]
[Moderator edit (MF): moved to Mac OS... Isn't the iPhone running Mac OS X after all?]