[CJSIMPSON]

Let's be clear first and foremost, I love my iphone. I love the style, the interface, the feel, the screen and the apps it comes with. There are however some major flaws that I'm hoping competition from the google phone and new blackberry and surely other manufacturers will force Apples hand in this.

With the google phone having an open platform for development it enables endless opportunities, yes I know we have the app store and through jailbreaking.

My problem with this is that I have always tampered with devices I have had and the experience is never quite what it is if it is developed properly and integrated and also why should we have to for what I class as basic features. I use my phone predominantly as a phone, I occasionally use the ipod, play games and watch the odd video, I also use it for internet when I need to but thats about it really. I know it has been mentioned a million times about what we need on the phone but I'm hoping the release of some direct competition will improve things for us.

I want picture messaging (I know you can get it through jailbreaking but read above, also you have to speak to 02 to enable it. Why should I have to do this?)

I want video recording - I have a family and occasionally when were out I wanna film a short clip.

I want to be able to forward messages, copy and paste text, send multiple pictures via email (I noticed this the other day I wanted to send 3 pictures via email so I had to send 3 emails) and be able to delete individual messages from the conversation style text message layout. If i get a joke from someone then 30 rubbish emails I have to keep them all to keep the joke.

If I had all these which Im sure these other devices offer out of the box I would be 100% happy but at the moment I feel a bit lacking. I bought a 1st gen iphone which I then upgraded to a 3g version as I read all the rumours that these features were round the corner and obviously they're still not here.

Does anyone think that this recent competition will bring any major updates or improvements in features from Apple?

[chrism_scotland]

I think the G1 and Blackberry Storm will put a rocket up Apples arse to get the updates that everyone wants on the iPhone as people will see the G1 and the next Android phones that offer MMS, Copy/paste and basically anything that gets developed and perhaps prefer a more open system,

[Paul_T]

Over the last year, it's been the touchscreen of the iphone thats set it apart from the rest but now they're all starting to catchup - soon touchscreens will be as obligatory as a camera.

The App store is the new thing to try and keep them one step ahead - but I'm glad there's some competition coming - Apple can't rest on their laurels, lack of MMS is a joke quite frankly, and I think the next-gen iPhone will get quite a lot of hardware tweaks, poss even a faster processor and a new camera - but my big wish is for a battery that lasts longer...

[amcluesent]

100% agree that competition should drive improvements.

But I wonder how many peeps experience of the crackberry is via locked-down company issued devices with just mail, calendar and web in a walled-garden. Everything else is disabled.

Loads of peeps I see have a personal iPhone and a company crackberry.

The only way the crackberry wins is on ease of typing, the user interface is a POS compared to the iPhone.

[cochese]

apple would have been stupid not to have held back some additional functionality for when these other devices are released.

i'm pretty confident that the iphone will remain ahead of the game for the foreseeable future.

[chrism_scotland]

In terms of hardware, aside from the 2MP camera the iPhone seems pretty good in comparison to the Storm and the G1, certainly in terms of memory and CPU, so should be able to cope with a lot of new features and apps.

[CJSIMPSON]

Its good to get some other peoples opinions but to cochese and chrism_scotland I am happy with the hardware on the iphone too its just the functionality thats lacking and people have been saying for ages that we will get these features but will we???