Ciaran McNulty

A few days ago, Apple launched their much-anticipated second revision of the iPhone. Key amongst its new features are 3G (HSPDA) connectivity and a GPS unit.

As a loyal Nokia user as well as a Mac enthusiast, my loyalty was therefore pretty divided. I was saved from flocking towards the first generation iPhone's hype machine by a reflex reaction of 'if it's not got 3G it can't be any good' and a recent iPod purchase to be bitter about.

I've been happy enough with my iPod and N95 sitting next to each other in my pocket, but the question I've been mulling over the last few days is, would I be happier with one iPhone instead?

I've come to the conclusion that no, the iPhone is not yet right for me, for the following reasons:

• Apple 'approval' for third-party apps

  Apple are launching an SDK for iPhone but are insisting that they get to digitally sign every app that runs on it. The Symbian platform my N95 runs is pretty open - any hobbyist can decide to write a bit of software for it and make it available for download. This has given me access to so many quirky little applications, from Emulators to diet trackers to location sensors - I really can't see the same ecosystem flourishing around iPhone.

• No MMS

  This is a fairly bizarre omission for a modern cellphone. Admittedly I can count the number of MMS I've sent this year on one hand, but I have sent some and I've received a few as well. I can only presume that people in the US don't use the things, but seriously Apple, WTF?

• Mediocre camera

  2 Megapixels is ok, but I want my phone to be able to fill the breech when I've forgotten to bring my point-and-shoot camera out with me the way my 5Mpix Zeiss-lensed N95 does. The lack of a user-facing camera has set the cause of video calls/chat back a few years but is less vexing.

• No modem functionality

  It seems that if you own an iPhone, you have a dial-up device capable of connecting to the Internet at near-broadband speeds, but no way of using that via laptop. In short, that's retarded.

  When I go away I use my N95 with my MacBook Pro and browse the web at a pretty respectable 1.4Mbit - the idea that an Apple mobile is less capable of talking to my Mac than my Nokia phone is makes me cringe.

This might not seem like much, but I can't bring myself to take a step backwards and get an iPhone that can't do some of the things my existing setup does.

It's my fond hope that the third-party iPhone development community flourishes, however, and manages to fill in all these gaps well enough. I'm unsure how much the API exposes and whether MMS etc. are within the realms of realistic hope, but you never know.

In the meantime the N96 is out around August time, and that's what I'm pinning my hopes on. It does everything my N95 does, and does it in a neater casing and on faster hardware.