Saturday, September 22, 2007

My wishlist for the new iPhone

I have been playing with my iPhone for almost three months now, enough to be able to suggest a few things to Apple for the next release. All pretty much obvious, but...

HARDWARE
  1. A 3G chip. I know, I am not the first to ask it, but everywhere I have wi-fi, I also have a laptop or a PC... I need high bandwidth on the run. Wi-fi is nice to have. 3G is a must.
  2. A GPS chip. Same as before. Google Maps would take up a complete new dimension. And it would be good for mobile advertising too ;-)
  3. A phone that would not make my radio in the car and the speakers on my PC rattle once every 10 minutes. It is really annoying.
  4. A camera that makes picture that you want to keep.
  5. A keyboard and a self-cleaning screen. Just kidding...

SOFTWARE
  1. Just an open phone, everything the iPhone is missing today would be (and it is) developed by the community out there. Please do it soon. Today is not soon enough. If you do it, all the items below will be disappearing from your feature list. Wouldn't it be great?
  2. Push email beside Yahoo (we are working on it, but we need #1 to make it mainstream)
  3. Contacts, Calendar, Task and Notes synchronization over-the-air (same as #2, but we need also #4)
  4. Tasks. I just can't remember a single thing if I do not write it down. Not having task support on-the-go could be dangerous for my health, because I might forget to take medications without it. It is just like e911. It should be mandatory, by the government (just for me ;-)
  5. Support for something more than just the English dictionary. I know autocorrect is cool, but if you type in Italian and every single word gets changed by the device... it gets you to a point where you want to throw the beautiful device and hit an Apple employee.
  6. The landscape mode working in many other apps, beside the browser. For example, in the Mail application. It makes typing much easier.
  7. The ability to sort cities in Weather. You have to delete them to re-sort them today. Who forgot this feature (bug)? Where was QA?
  8. Search in contacts. We have a person in our free myFUNAMBOL site with over 9,000 contacts. Believe me, s/he can't call anybody without a search tool.
  9. Support for a bunch more attachments, like audio (I get my landline voicemail forwarded via email and I can't listen to it). Powerpoint would be nice too.
  10. Copy and Paste. People get really surprised when I tell them the iPhone does not have copy and paste, but I have the feeling it will be very hard to figure out how to do it (right), considering the current user interface. Double-tap and drag? I do not know... I just have the need to be able to copy something from the web into an email...
That's it. Not that much, I know. The iPhone is a heck of a device, with a few additional touches I would even carry it around as my main device (I am not doing it today).