iPhone Wishlist

I’ve been an iPhone user since the first weekend the 3G came out, and so far I love it. Prior to the iPhone, I was a Blackberry user for a while. My reasons for waiting to change were:

1. My contract with Verizon conveniently ended the same month the 3G came out.
2. AT&T had lousy coverage at my home and office. However, for some reason AT&T and Verizon swapped in the months leading up to the 3G coming out. Verizon started to have lousy coverage in my home, and I changed job locations. The new location had lousy Verizon coverage.
3. The price drop made it a great time to upgrade my wife as well. There was no way I was going to get away with a 1st gen iPhone without my wife getting one as well. With penalties, that would have been $1550 instead of $400. I like Apple stuff, but I’m not that big a fan boy.

Fast forward several months, and I’m not looking back to my Blackberry (ever), but there are a few minor issues with the iPhone that I wish Apple would fix. It’s been long enough now that I’m starting to wonder when/if these may happen.

No Indicators on the Locked Page

Why make me slide the bar and enter my code just to see whether I have voicemail or email? It doesn’t seem to be that hard to have a couple of indicators on the locked page to let me know. This would be a great time saver and a good compromise away from that annoying blinking LED on the Blackberries.

No Sound Presets

To change any of the sound settings, I have to go in and update each separately. Having something like Night, Office, Silent, etc. would be great. The silent switch is good, but sometimes I really want silence, and others I want the phone to still vibrate.

Related to this, I want different sound settings for each email account as well. For example, I have error emails from my site(s) sent to me. I want those to complain loudly regardless of what I have setup for other volumes.

The Blackberry does this well.

Signatures for Each Email Account

I have three email accounts configured on my iPhone. I prefer to separate my email signatures between work and personal. Again, I could do this on a Blackberry.

One Global Inbox

It would be a lot easier to read my email if there was a single Inbox where all three of my accounts show up. This is what Apple Mail does on my desktop, and I use it all the time. Right now, I have to go through the follow set of interactions for each account:

1. Tap Personal account
2. Tap Inbox
3. Read/Process inbox
4. Tap Personal to go back
5. Tap Accounts to go back
6. Tap Work
7. Tap Inbox
8. Read/Process inbox
9. Tap Work to go back
10. Tap Accounts to go back
11. etc.

Lot of tapping going on here! Give me a consolidated inbox, and life would be a lot easier for those of us with multiple email accounts. Did I mention I could do this on my Blackberry?

Notice I did not say copy/paste. In seven months, I think I could have used it twice. I can see Apple making the correct decision to cater to the 80% of users out there and not the reviewers.

Don’t get me wrong, I will not go back to a Blackberry without a fight, but give me the above, and I will be an even happier camper.

Excuse me, I have to take a call now…