After careful consideration, I have decided my Iphone is not a smartphone, as much as it is actually an idiot savant phone.  While it does somethings incredibly well, there are others it does marginally, and some it flat out doesn’t do at all.

It looks like the release next month of the 3g Iphone will not completely resolve my meager list of needs for the Iphone, so I’d say this is probably really the beta release, whereas v1Iphone would be more properly regarded as an alpha release.  After all, it’s hard to consider a mobile phone today without gps built in as a truly functional phone.

The announcement of the new v2 3g Iphone, which was covered ad nauseum last week in virtually every media form imaginable, even print, gives us a view into a product that Apple feels is already fairly mature.  There are no major updates, save the actual 3g network (remember, most of us, me included, won’t have access to one) and the gps (again, how the heck did they not have that at first launch?).

Stuff that’s still missing:

• Real GPS Street by Street apps (not allowed per SDK user agreement).
• Cut and Paste – uh, hello, Apple?
• Video via the camera
• An ear phone plug that fits a standard Ipod head jack, so I can plug it into the stereo (Hint: do that in airline mode so you don’t broadcast your phone calls to the entire party).
• Uh, hello, how about voice recording.  I like to make a note to myself once in a while and I haven’t found it.

All in all the experience is good, I really can’t imagine not having my Iphone, in that not so nice way a a junkie can’t imagine not having junk.  Still the thing has already been replaced once in 3 months due to a bad battery, and I’ve got to say, if the battery life doesn’t dramatically improve in the new phone, they’ve got an issue.  Currently, owning an Iphone means pretty much you’ll be looking for an outlet every couple of hours.

I may actually upgrade to the new one to get access to my Exchange server at work though…