Brian S. Pauls
Overland Park, KS   9-24-07

The week my friend Mark got his iPhone, he used it to call me. The first thing he said was,

"Well, it's not perfect--but you can see perfect from here."

Of course, the iPhone is an incredible piece of engineering. There's a reason Apple spent two-and-a-half years developing it. Excellence takes time.

The question is, should the average person go out and buy the current, almost-perfect version of the iPhone, or wait for the next incarnation?

The answer depends on who you are. If you are a techno-geek, an early adopter, someone who lives on the bleeding edge--and if you can afford it--then by all means, drop the money for the latest and greatest.

If you simply want the best phone you can get, at a reasonable price, then consider waiting.

What are you waiting for? In the short term--price cuts like the one announced earlier this month. In the long term--perfection we can see, but which has not yet arrived.

The iPhone has received terrific press. Still, everyone who has been paying attention knows its most significant weakness--the AT&T EDGE network. A big step toward perfect would be to move the iPhone off of EDGE and onto the AT&T 3G/HSDPA network. According to New York Times technology writer David Pogue on January 11, 2007, Steve Jobs claims a future iPhone will make the switch, "once there's enough HSDPA coverage in this country to justify it."

The iPhone had barely hit the streets when rumors started percolating about the iPhone 2--a soon-to-be-announced business-class device that will utilize 3G. It's anyone's guess whether these rumors are true, or are merely the beginning of another two-and-a-half year teaser campaign by Apple.

In the meantime, there are any number of devices that will do most of what the iPhone will do--and probably faster than the iPhone can do it, operating on the EDGE network. Of course, none of these consolation prizes have the world-class design of an Apple product. That also means you don't have to pay the Apple premium.

I have not met a single person who is unhappy with their new iPhone. That says a lot. On the other hand, no one has told me anything so amazing about the device that it would seem indispensable.

The iPhone is appears to be a major step in the evolution of portable communication. Given the price, and the drawbacks of the network it uses, I can wait for it to evolve a little further. I can wait until perfect gets here.