8 Things the iPhone 5 Still Can't Do

[BigMeatballDave]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/8-thin...-can-t-do.html

In terms of specs, performance, and features, the iPhone 5 is Apple's best to date. This doesn't mean it's as good as it could be, however.

There were a few egregious omissions from the keynote presentation – features that we not only want in our iPhone, but that we feel are overdue.


NFC for mobile payments

Instead of building NFC into the iPhone, Apple would rather have you use its Passbook system, which lets lets users store tickets, gift cards, boarding passes, and the like.

It can handle some (but definitely not all) of the tasks that you might use NFC for. For example, you can't use Passbook to wirelessly send money to a friend via PayPal.

NFC also lets you beam content between devices just by tapping them together. Samsung's Galaxy S III takes advantage of this feature.


Swype
An improved texting solution on the keyboard, like Swype

Swype is something of a mainstay on Android phones. Instead of tapping out your texts letter by letter, you can drag your finger over them without lifting it. The end result is that you get your message out much more quickly.



SD card support for extra storage

We'd like to be able to extend our device's storage capability beyond the 64 GB maximum. History suggests that external SD card support isn't going to be in a mobile Apple device any time soon.



A 128 GB option

The iPod Classic offered users 160 GB of music and video capacity. Many people (ourselves included) had no problem filling it right up.

Now that the iPhone is an easy replacement for your old iPod, we'd love to be able to carry the same amount of content around with us without having to pick and choose what stays at home.


Non-proprietary dock connection

We've never understood why our iPhones can't use a standard USB port and a standard USB cable to sync. Now the iPhone 5 introduces a new micro-dock connection requiring the use of its own special cable.

If you want to use your old sync cables, you have to buy this $29 adapter.



A micro-HDMI port

Once again, if you want to get video off of your phone, it requires the use of a special adapter. (Unless you buy a $99 Apple TV.) The Kindle Fire HD and several Android phones use a micro-HDMI port, letting you run a cable straight from your tablet to the television.

This makes it easier, better, and more affordable for the user.



Replaceable battery

The battery life on the iPhone 5 has seen some nice improvements, but for the power users who are glued to their phones all day, it won't suffice.

We'd love to be able to carry an additional fully-charged iPhone battery that we could pop in whenever the first one bites the dust.


While we're at it, better battery life!

The iPhone 5's battery life is about the same as the iPhone 4S'. Yes, it has a bigger battery, but the new 4G LTE radio and bigger screen use up a lot of that extra power. We wish Apple had included a better battery in the iPhone 5 like the one on Motorola's Droid Razr Maxx. The Razr Maxx can last several hours longer than the iPhone 5.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by KC Fish

Yeah sure. There's lots of ways to do that. Depending on your NAS, you may be able to do that directly from the web browser. Put the IP of you NAS in the web browser.

A better solution, that would offer ease of transferring files to and from, would be an app like Filebrowser. That will let you save to and from the iPad easily. I use this app on occasion, and it's pretty handy. It has templates for connecting to different devices like WinPC, OSX, Linux, NAS, etc.

It also lets you attach any file and send it as an attachment from the iPad. Which is a really handy feature since you can't do that natively. Select any file from the iPad's Home folder, or from your NAS once that's connected, click on the file where it has a little (>) arrow, and a dropdown appears where you can attach that file in an e-mail.

You can even forward a port through your router, and have that available away from home. So you could access your home NAS from work and such.

I did find FileBrowser but I have a philosophical aversion to paying for apps. I guess I may have to break down and buy it.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by ZepSinger

Awesome sarcastic slams on the features(or lack thereof) on the iPhone5...

10 Ways Android still beats the iPhone5

SOURCE

Apple may be patting itself on the back over its move from a 3.5-inch to a 4-inch display, but in the smartphone size race, the iPhone 5 trails the field by a wide margin.

Congratulations iPhone 5 users! You now get an extra row of icons that you didn't have with the iPhone 4 and 4S. That means you can see your TweetDeck icon and tap on it without scrolling over. The Times Square billboard writes itself: "iPhone 5: Now with More Icons!"

Apple doesn't gamble on immature technologies so perhaps its understandable that the company has yet to include this new-fangled thing called "email attachments" on its iPhone 5.

Instead of MasterCard's Tap and Pay, you'll be using tap and pray as you rap your fingers on a table and hope that Apple provides NFC support on the iPhone 6 in 2013.

So what happens when you plug the iPhone 5 into your PC? You get access the digital camera (DCIM) folder only so all you can do is drag and drop pictures. Yes, you can iTunes to transfer media files back and forth, but you still can't go directly into file system because Apple just doesn't trust you enough to let you see the folders on the iPhone 5 that you bought from them. Whose phone is it anyway?

With the iPhone 5, you can have any keyboard you want as long as its the stock iOS 6 keyboard.

Why not just use micro USB like every other company? Then you couldn't make a mint selling proprietary wires and making every iPhone 4S owner that upgrades buy new accessories, because older iPhones had an even larger proprietary dock connector.

The default Safari browser and iOS photo gallery apps can only share to Facebook, Twitter, Email and messaging. Google, Flickr, Pinterest, Google Talk, and any of 100 other services need not apply.

There's quite a bit of inaccuracy in this to be honest.

You can receive or send just about any kind of attachment in iOS. I just outlined one method in the previous post.

NFC is somewhat debatable. And we've discussed it already. While I would have personally really liked to see NFC on iPhone5, there are lots of reasons why it's not that big of a deal right now. For one, NFC support has met resistance so far in the market. Currently there aren't many available outlets using it. AustinChief has pointed out more than I thought there were, but it's still in infancy as far as adoption. Currently, there's only a handful of locations in the KC area that support Google Wallet and Paypass:


Less than a year ago, Verizon was blocking Google Wallet from their new phones: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-1...y-concern.html

They have just recently changed their minds and said they would support it on current phones. But NFC is far from being established as a sure bet.

Regarding connecting your phone to a PC, that's also misinformed. Apple has always allowed access to the sandboxed Home folder in iOS. I posted a response above as well showing exactly how to access that, and it doesn't require jailbreak. And FYI, this is the exact same behavior as Android. Android also does not "Trust" users with the full file system. They also sandbox a Home folder in exactly the same way. You can't access the full filesystem in Android unless you root. Permissions prevent that. (Whose phone is it anyway?)

As far as the keyboard, that's another reason I jailbreak. Here's a keyboard I made for my iPad:



The question about MicroUSB connector has been hashed and argued in the Apple connector thread. This author, like so many other people other than AC, wanted the iPhone5 to use MicroUSB. But it's been shown the the MicroUSB is insufficient for several reasons. It doesn't have enough pins, and doesn't provide sufficient amperage to charge all iDevices. A newer 11pin MicroUSB3vB would have been sufficient for addressing most of that. But that still would have required the same connector change for all users, including all those other companies that currently use MicroUSB.

I'm not exactly sure what they're talking about regarding Safari and sharing to online services. You can use any service you want. Personally, I use the Chrome browser on iOS, which is infinitely better than Safari.

[DaveNull]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

You think Apple doesn't do market analytics using your cloud-stored data?

They do, but it turns out their business model is built on selling things like phones, computers, tablets and software instead of selling advertising.

Originally Posted by htismaqe

I did find FileBrowser but I have a philosophical aversion to paying for apps. I guess I may have to break down and buy it.

Oh..you think that time spent writing software has no value?

Since NFC has come up again, I suppose that one thing that the iPhone can't do is get owned via NFC.

We could then use Mercury’s capabilities to exfiltrate user data from the device to a remote listener, including dumping SMS and contact databases, or initiating a call to a premium rate number.

Source

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

I'll take the fact that the report about the economy being boosted is BS. I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about this:



In response to your comment about "all the money goes to china or corporate cash reserves."

LOL WUT.

The revenue generated absolutely does not go to the stock price. The stock price is up. So what? There is a correlation between revenue and stock price but still, nothing is contributed to the GDP. Investors would simply invest in something else.

I guess I'm missing what you're getting at.

[htismaqe]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

Oh..you think that time spent writing software has no value?

I donate money to open source projects ALL THE TIME. I prefer to invest my money in software AFTER it has proven of value.

[DaveNull]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

LOL WUT.

The revenue generated absolutely does not go to the stock price. The stock price is up. So what? There is a correlation between revenue and stock price but still, nothing is contributed to the GDP. Investors would simply invest in something else.

I guess I'm missing what you're getting at.

The implication made was that Apple doing well does nothing but benefit China and their cash reserves. I'm not saying that stock price has anything to do with GDP...in fact I think that article was crap as well.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

The implication made was that Apple doing well does nothing but benefit China and their cash reserves. I'm not saying that stock price has anything to do with GDP...in fact I think that article was crap as well.

Stock price does very little to show that other things benefit from Apples iPhone other than China and the cash reserves.

Your best bet is to point to that collassal corporate headquarters they are building and the employees in it. The economic benefit from the employment and capital expenditures do much more than the stock price.

[DaveNull]

So all these mutual funds that have invested in AAPL have seen no benefit? You're missing my point big time.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

So all these mutual funds that have invested in AAPL have seen no benefit? You're missing my point big time.

No. But they'd invest in another company if apple weren't around. Let's not pretend like they're causing people to invest that otherwise wouldn't have.

[DaveNull]

No, dumb dumb. My point is that those mutual funds have more value because of their investment than they would have if they'd invested in, lets say, RIM.

[AustinChief]

Another thing that should be on the list...

#9 Inductive Charging

[DaveNull]

The Pre did that, right?

[AustinChief]

Originally Posted by DaveNull

The Pre did that, right?

Yep, they were the first major one.. now there are a bunch.. most notably the new Nokia's do inductive charging. Could be a big win for them.

[WoodDraw]

I don't understand the purpose of inductive charging. What's the attraction to it?

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by WoodDraw

I don't understand the purpose of inductive charging. What's the attraction to it?

You don't have to plug it in to charge. That's about it.