Am I the only one who was disappointed by Apples iPhone announcement yesterday ??

Look – don’t get me wrong – I really want to love the iPhone. It’s cool, its sexy, its hip – it’s got an app store with some really good stuff but why does it have to be such a crap phone. For months now I’ve been wanting to ditch my old Windows Mobile device but every time I asked whether the iPhone did something the answer was always “no” to even some of the most basic stuff. No cut and paste!!  No sms forwarding !! No MMS!! No video!! No Voice-dial (kind of important for the Bluetooth brigade who want to stay legal when driving)  etc etc  …. Even the lowest cost HTC winmo devices could do that

So I waited with bated breath for the new iPhone announcement. Surely not only would all those deficiencies that Apple lovers happily overlook be rectified but we’d also see a new ground breaking device taking smart phones to the next level and throwing down the gauntlet to Google’s Android upstart.

Well actually no. What we got was the iPhone 3G S (…a sort of iPhone 3G with go faster stripes)

• something that’s a bit faster than something that went so slowly Apple had to put disclaimers on their TV ads
• something that has a bit more battery life than something that could barely last a day in average use
• and loads of so called “new features” like Cut, Copy and Paste, MMS* and a landscape keyboard alongside a new camera (that’s still underpowered compared to market norms),  voice command (yep seen that before), a compass app (woohoo) etc

So no new form factor, no new call handling, no improved screen resolution (it stays at  320 x 480 pixels), no front mounted camera for video calls, no expansion slots or removable battery, no camera flash.

Saying all that, now that it’s the phone it should have been when it was launched, it’s actually quite an attractive proposition ….. until Google put android on some new hardware (the impending Samsung i7500 springs to mind) and slap down a new challenge.

Suddenly the mobile market is getting interesting again…. so what will I buy ?