iPhones stink. The more I use one (for work) the more I wonder why anybody uses them. First, the very limited and rigid interface is straight out of the 80's. And today my iPhone randomly decided to not show any of my widgets on the widget screen. A reboot brought them back but I thought iPhones were "so stable." Pfft!
Just some examples of why I'm "less than impressed" with iPhones:
* The iPhone "desktop" is just a group of icons... period.. like a flashback to Windows 3.1 and the interface concepts from the 1980's that led up to it -- you can't put anything actually useful on the desktop, like a weather widget, music controls, etc.
* The closest iPhone comes to supporting widgets is having a dedicated but separate "widget" screen but it's not very flexible as everything on the widget screen is forced into a simple and inefficient top-down stack of widgets.
* Similarly, the desktop icons are forced into a top-left to bottom-right "reading" layout. There is, for example, no way to move a single icon to the bottom-right corner if you want it to stand out for some reason.
* There is no native "swipe' keyboard, and though you can install one from the app store Apple doesn't allow any 3rd-party keyboard app to access the microphone which means to gain swipe-typing you give up easy access to voice-typing.
* iPhones support being mobile hotspots, which is convenient for laptops etc when travelling, but the iPhone only supports doing so on the 2.4GHz band -- using 5GHz or even selecting a specific 2.4GHz channel is not even an option.
* The interface is inconsistent -- there is no universal way of going "back", for example. Each app is left to itself to decide where the "back" option is (if it even has one) and what it's labeled. Some put it in the top-left, others in the top-right. And I've seen it called anything from back, cancel, exit, done, or even just an x or a back-pointing arrow. It's functional, but odd that an interface and phone that is touted for its ease-of-use and supposed integration and consistency lacks such basic integration and consistency.
* iPhones don't support something as simple and basic as standard Bluetooth file exchange. Of course, they make it simple for file transfer between 2 iPhones or a Mac, but if you want to direct file transfer to an Android or Windows PC you have to jump through some hoops.
* iPhones don't allow apps to directly access signal information. This means you can't easily use an iPhone to get even basic WiFi information like what channel or speed you're connected at, or get anything more than basic cell signal information. For example, to know what LTE band you're using, or to get precise dBm signal information, you have to go into Field Test Mode.
There's more, but that's the gist of what I find most glaringly perplexing and limiting to using an iPhone to do anything technically interesting.
