The iPhone's Greatest Flaw

Photo: Attempting to revive the iPhone

I woke up at 8 AM on Labor Day to go to Bear Mountain, NY to relax with the family with my all-in-one iPhone. I was able to keep entertained on the way there with some games, browse the internet, check on my Facebook and TweetDeck app, and take plenty of pictures [photos from the iPhone 3GS here] & record videos of the things we did there. OH! And I went hiking up a mountain for the first time. By the time I got up the mountain at 5 PM, my iPhone reached zero battery and shut down on me. It's no surprise that the battery doesn't last that long simply because the iPhone does a lot more than your typical phone. I was prepared and brought my charger (which made no sense because there was going to be no outlets anyway). So why'd I get upset and what's the big deal?

Well, we kind of got lost at the end of our trail. We could either climb back down our steep trail, and hope not to get injured or we could have walked along the highway at the top of the mountain. What I planned on doing was pulling out my iPhone and by using Maps, find out location and even send a picture of the map for someone to come pick us up. (Battery dead, remember?) It was pretty embarrassing to show off and promote what a great phone the iPhone is, and then have to resort to Erica's Blackberry 8320 since my iPhone was deemed useless at that point.

Like every phone that has a flaw, the iPhone's main gripe is the battery capacity for such a powerful device. Every time I leave the house, I know to bring my charger and plug in the iPhone every chance I get because by the middle of the day, I'm going to get that 20% BATTERY LOW warning.On my way back, I thought about switching to my Nokia E71 because it was reliable and I knew that battery would not be a problem. The E71 was going to be charged and the iPhone would have been turned into an iPod Touch. But is it really worth it to downgrade? I thought long and hard about it and my answer ended up as no. I could switch back, but it seems pointless to have to carry two phones--one of which is non-functional as a phone. I relied too heavily on the features available on my iPhone.

Photo: Erica and I at the top of the mountain.