It almost makes me sick to see iPhone 3G news all over the Internet and how people are dying to get their hands on one.

But being a long time gadget player (new top of line smart phone per 3- 5 months average), and a former iPhone owner, here I give you tons of great reasons why you shouldn’t buy an iPhone 3G anytime soon. No I’m not anti-apple, in fact, I’m writing this post from an Apple Mac book Pro, and I always tell people this is one of the best laptops I’ve had.

Anyways, just to be fair, let me repeat the few cool things about the iPhone 3G…

1. 3G, obviously, you get faster Internet speed.
2. Works with Microsoft exchange (finally…), and now paired with the mobile me thing, which works just like exchange.
3. Open to 3rd party apps (finally)
4. The multi-touch high-resolution screen
5. Oh and the very nice Internet browser

After all, I really can’t find anything significant about the iPhone 3G other than the multi-touch screen which no one else has, yet.

Now for the reasons why you should NOT buy the iPhone 3g.

1. 3G? Finally? You’re late to the game. You’re like the very last high-end phone maker to enter the 3G thing? Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Motorola, RIM Blackberry, you name it. Everyone has 3G already while iPhone was still running on EDGE. Too late
2. Microsoft exchange, same as above, TOO LATE
3. Open to 3rd party apps…. who doesn’t these days? Then again, too late!
4. Lack of MMS, Bluetooth file transfer. If I recall, I think my Sony Ericsson back in 2003 had all these, yet the 2nd generation iPhone still doesn’t have these, OH APPLE what are you genius thinking?!
5. Touch screen virtual keyboard is definitely not smart, being a former iPhone owner, I would say it’s definitely not slow to type on it when you get used to it. But I had to form my two hands in a weird shape to get the best out of it, and it hurts after typing for a while. And if you’re trying to kill yourself, you can use an iPhone to type text messages when you drive, it’s almost impossible. (I still prefer the Blackberry’s keyboard)
6. Very stupid built in camera. Anyone ever took a good shot of yourself without trying at least 5 times?
7. Tied to iTunes. This is one of the things I hated the most about iPhone. Heck, why do we HAVE to use iTunes to put music, photo, video, even ringtones in iPhone. Apple really thinks every single computer has iTunes installed? That’s not all, you can only sync from ONE iTunes library from ONE computer, if you want songs from another computer, sorry, you must erase all the songs in your phone in order to do that.
Imagine when you’re on the run and need to sync contacts or calendars from a computer within 2 minutes, and you figured it doesn’t have iTunes installed. Yup iPhone has great potential of leading to business failure.
8. Let’s see how do you make a simple phone call on iPhone. Slide to unlock–> Press to open phone app –> press contacts –> scroll up and down to find the contact –> press on the contact –> select one of the phone numbers to call. That’s 6 steps to just make a phone call, and it’s not possible to do this while you need to concentrate on driving cause there’s no keys giving you feed backs and you don’t know why you’re doing without looking. IPhone is convenient! Yea………. Right
9. Activation is a hassle, you can no longer activate your phone from iTunes, you have to do it locally at the apple or AT&T store, and they do panelize you for jailbreaking your phone, which means, no hope for using your iPhone with other carriers, and if you’re going out of your country, your iPhone just has to stay, cause it just won’t work with other carriers!
10. Oh and the $199 price tag don’t be tricked! Aside from that, you’re bind to a 2 years contract, activation fee, and paying $30 extra per month just for the Internet data.

There are a lot more to say about the iPhone. I definitely don’t love it although I don’t hate.

It’s nothing more than a regular phone with a very nice screen and browser. Apple just made it look good. But there are just too many basic but essential features that it just doesn’t have, and we just shouldn’t make do with it.

For people out there who are planning to get a nice new smart phone. Here are my suggestions.

If you’re after music, movies, regular phone features, and you don’t type a lot. - Nokia N96

If you’re business oriented, e-mail allot on phone, and use your phone for professional use - Blackberry Bold is around the corner and I strongly recommend this phone, not that I’m a Blackberry fan boy, actually I never really owned a Blackberry before, but after checking out the Blackberry Bold, it should be the best smart phone out there for business. (and it’s WAY faster than the iPhone, if you believe time is money, you know what to do)

And there are plenty new smart phones out there for the rest of you, choose wisely.

Being a businessperson myself, I just don’t feel like using the same phone every single high school kid out there uses. Simply unprofessional, it puts a shame on me (that’s why my iPhone is in someone else’s’ hand right now)

And last words to Apple iPhone fan boys
For iPhone to kill other smart phones out there? Dream on
Not till it equips all the basic features any phone should have…… and a real keyboard
Oh and….. be more like a tool, not a toy.