The Apple iPhone is a hot item right now, and if you read anything about it you’ll probably notice that and people generally fall into two categories. They either love it, or they hate it. It’s certainly not without its faults, but for the most part I have been extremely pleased with mine.

After a month of use, here are my thoughts on the iPhone and comments I have about what people are saying.

Ring tones — I’ve seen numerous complaints about the cost of ring tones on the iPhone. You have to buy a song on iTunes ($0.99) and then you have to pay again to convert it to a ring tone (another $0.99). So in truth, you pay $1.98 for a ring tone. While I would love the ability to have any song in my library as a ring tone, I wouldn’t exactly expect it. After all, I couldn’t do it with any of my other phones. Is $1.98 really that bad anyway? I don’t think so. When I was purchasing ring tones for my Motorola Razr v3xx via the Cingular store, I was paying $2.49 per ring tone.

Besides with the Apple method I’m able to select what part of the song (~30 sec) to use as the ring tone.With the ring tones from the Cingular store, you get what ever they want you to have. I really don’t understand the fuss here, every way I look at it, the Apple method looks like the best way to go. - Though free ring tones would still be a huge deal for users.

MMS / SMS / Text Messaging — Out of everything, this is probably one of the iPhone’s single biggest failure. While the text message “view” looks great, it severely lacks in function. For starters, you cannot send a text message to multiple contacts. One message per person. If you want to get a message to multiple people, you can probably call them all in less time than it’ll take to send the same message multiple times.

Want to send a pic to someone (MMS)? Unless you’ve got email set up on the iPhone, you can forget sending a picture that you snapped on your iPhone’s 2.0 megapixel camera. And if someone send a picture via MMS to your phone, well that sucks even worse. Rather than receiving the picture, you’ll get a text message directing you to view the image at AT&T’s ViewMyMessage.com. It wouldn’t be so bad, if the message actually contained a direct link to the site, or better yet the actual image. But no, in all of their wisdom you get neither. You’ll have to open up the site and hopefully remember the message id and password. Good luck, cause I cannot do it.

The iPhone is also unable to send a text message to email. Again, I’m not sure what the driving logic is behind this. If I cannot reach someone one the phone at work, I’d rather send them a quick text which shows up as coming from my phone number rather than sending it from my personal email address (d3bruts1d@something) that they’ll probably not recognize. Besides, I don’t want to have to keep checking my email to see if they responded back to it.

3G vs. Edge — This is one of more voiced complaints about the iPhone. Apple decided to go with the Edge network rather than the 3G. This is one of those things that really vary from area to area. Here in Knoxville, TN I’ve not had any real issues with the Edge network. Matter of fact, the few websites I do visit from my phone, I haven’t noticed that much of a difference in speed between the iPhone w/ Edge and my Razr v3xxx w/ 3G. Surfing on a wireless connection is certainly the way to go, and if I’m not home, there are plenty of free wireless spots around Knoxville, Powell, and Oak Ridge. You never have to travel far for that quick net fix if you just have to have it.

For those that just have to have 3G (I hear you Europe!) then just hang tight until the 2nd generation iPhone comes out. Chances are pretty good that it’ll have 3G and more.

Voice Dialing — The iPhone has no voice dialing ability; Now this is a feature that I have never really liked, probably because it has never worked that great for me. Whenever I’ve gotten a new phone, I’ve tried to use this feature and it always fails me. I’m sure it’d be nice for those that can get their phone to recognize them, but I’m just as happy not having it.

Applications — Here is another area where the iPhone is lacking. Unless you want to risk bricking your iPhone, there is no way to install additional applications on to your phone. I really expected this would be something Apple would offer, and soon. Buy an application, widget, or whatever via iTunes and install it on your iPhone. Cool idea, but it’s not there. I’d kill to be able to use Opera Mini or Opera Mobile on my iPhone or even have the ability to sync my Google Calendar. But no, I’m limited to what applications Apple says I can have on my iPhone.

Apple has done some work to bring more usability to the iPhone by offering “web applications” that are optimized for the iPhone. It’s a start, and some of these are really nice, but I want a real application not a list of links cluttering up my bookmarks.

The Camera — Apple did include a nice little 2.0 megapixel camera on the phone. Though they forgot some of the functions that make them nice to have on other phones. The first missing function is zoom. As someone on a forum (don’t remember if it was the Apple forums or Neowin.net) said the iPhone has a “2 feet zoom”. If you want to zoom in on something, you’ll need to move your two feet. IMO, digital zoom pretty well sucks unless you have something to steady it. I can live without it, though it’d be nice if the iPhone had the ability to crop images inside the image viewer.

The other missing feature is the ability to snap videos. Cell phone videos are never great quality, but it’s been my experience that they can be priceless. Pets, friends, family, or co-workers doing something silly? Get them on camera! That’s how I was able catch Oskar acting silly.

Price — Even at the reduced price, the iPhone is still a costly little gadget. There was no way I would have considered it at the original price. Even reduced price, it caused me to carefully evaluate my options. But I did want a smartphone that didn’t run Windows Mobile, so my choices were pretty limited.

Cingular / AT&T — A lot of people don’t like Cingular, and they really hate AT&T. Though I was looking at Verizon, I’ve really not had a problem with Cingular. I love the rollover minutes, and you just can’t get that with anyone else. Aside from a few dead zones in Knoxville & Oak Ridge, I really don’t have anything bad to say about Cingular. Though I am a firm believer of options, and I hope Apple opens up the iPhone to other carriers down the road.

That’s pretty much my comments on everything I’ve heard people say (or complain) about the iPhone. Again, I’ve been thrilled with mine. While it’s not perfect, it has been very nice to have.

If your looking at buying an iPhone, do your research first. Find out exactly what it has to offer, what it can and cannot do, and what you really need it for. Go to your local AT&T store and play around with the phones they have on display. You might find that you like some other phone better.