What the iPhone 2 Must Do

I’ve been a smartphone user since 2002. In that time I’ve used BlackBerries, TyTNs and almost everything in between. I’ve also been a Mac user since 1986, so you’d think that Apple’s iPhone would be a perfect fit for me.

Not so. While flicking, pinching and spreading your fingers on it is certainly impressive, in my mind the iPhone won’t be a true smartphone until native 3rd-party applications become available through official channels on version 2 of the device — and that’s all but guaranteed to be announced at this year’s WWDC.

For the past year I’ve been a very happy user of a Nokia handset running S60. It doesn’t have the email ease of a your typical BlackBerry but it packs all the power of a Windows Mobile device with a surprisingly Mac-like look and feel. So what would it take for this new iPhone to win over a smartphone power user like yours truly? I’m glad you asked..

Unlimited, Uncapped Data

Granted, this isn’t so much about the iPhone itself but rather a test of Apple’s marketing muscle. Word has it that Rogers Wireless, the GSM monopoly in Canada thanks to their acquisition of my carrier Fido (and a generally clueless CRTC), will announce availability of the new iPhone here alongside Apple’s WWDC launch.

Also rumoured is a 1GB cap on mobile data. Currently, 1 GB/month is the most data you can currently buy on either Rogers or Fido, and at $65 is even more expensive than my $54.95/month cable internet connection at home. That connection is also capped, but with no extra charge for the first 95 GB I’m only paying $1.50/GB — and it’s not like I’m downloading BitTorrents on my smartphone, at least not yet…

If Apple can strong-arm Rogers into offering a truly unlimited mobile data experience on their new handset I would probably buy one on principal alone.

Video Capture

With high end feature phones now sporting 5 megapixel autofocus cameras the very least Apple can do is offer video recording on their new device. And they probably will.

A Better QWERTY

Countless people have sung to me the praises of the iPhone’s predictive on-screen keypad. I’m sure that coming from your standard numberpad the iPhone’s virtual QWERTY is quite an improvement. But yours truly has been spoiled by the best QWERTY keypads in the business, and every time someone lets me play with their iPhone or iPod touch I come away with the same conclusion — that Apple’s keypad is crap.

It could definitely be made better with real keys, perhaps on a slide-out board like the HTC TyTN. Or at the very least keys themselves could be made larger. But something clearly has to be done; there’s little if any learning curve to typing on a BlackBerry — why should the iPhone be any different?

SMS Archiving

Since giving up my BlackBerry I’ve come to appreciate the value of text messaging over push email, and wrote about it in a previous post. One of the first apps I would need to see on the iPhone store is something that can back up texts on the iPhone to my Mac, preferably in an open document format.

iWork On-Board

I’ve been editing Office docs on the go since I got my first-gen colour Treo in 2002. There’s no excuse for Apple not building some kind of Office functionality into the new iPhone — and if they wanted to be all sneaky about it they could make it compatible only with their own iWork suite. As a recent iWork convert, I wouldn’t complain.

Mac-friendly Solution to MS Exchange

Yet another of the many rumours floating around is a revamp of Apple’s .Mac service into an online PIM. I actually wrote about this idea when the first iPhone was announced over a year and a half ago, and I maintain that this would be the killer app for Apple’s nascent smartphone — at least for anyone syncing it to a Mac.

I’ve studied many options for online PIMs and my two Macs, and none of them even comes close to the utility of the Fido hiptop (or T-Mobile Sidekick) web portal. Apple has indicated upcoming support for Microsoft Exchange, but the two problems with Exchange are (1) it’s hideous, and (2) it only really works with Internet Explorer for Windows.

If Apple can provide a solution where my contacts, calendars and to-dos are synchronized instantaneously over the air between iPhone and multiple Macs for no additional cost — or at least something more reasonable than $15+ CAD/month they’re currently charging for multiple users — then they just might have another iPhone customer.

… Provided that the new iPhone also meets the previous five criteria, of course. My current Nokia can’t do much about the cost of Canadian mobile data, but it trumps iPhone 1.0 in every other respect. Still, I’ll be paying very close attention to news from the WWDC tomorrow, just like you…