iPhone: Big Dummy Among Smart Phones

Let's just come out with it: The iPhone is still terrible.

Despite improvements in the new 3GS model of Apple's(AAPL Quote) flagship toy, the iPhone's nagging flaws have kept it a slow learner among smart phones. Blame Apple for refusing to let users change batteries or take flash photos. Blame AT&T(T Quote) for soaking users in more than $1,000 of annual data-plan costs to use a network so flimsy that, in parts of New York, shouting is a more reliable form of communication.

But, before doing so, turn the mirror on yourself and your love of silhouetted indie-pop commercials and time-sucking applications that are the technological equivalent of shiny, jangling keys.

"The phone is OK, but it's a secondary feature to the other things," says Mike Gikas, senior editor for electronics at Consumer Reports. "There are other drivers besides voice quality and dialing issues when buying a smart phone, and the iPhone happens to be attached to the world's greatest multimedia player -- it's an iPod."

It's that love of iTunes and the apps store that have saved the iPhone from the same fate as the Samsung Instinct, the scrappy little feature phone being pulled beneath the waves by its ties to Sprint Nextel(S Quote). Never mind that the Instinct has turn-by-turn GPS and GPS-activated search features (nearest White Castle, please), while the iPhone relies on a newly released TomTom app. Or that the iPhone's "upgraded" camera is only 3 megapixels when the low-end Nokia(NOK Quote) N85 touch screen has five. Or that, while it finally can send multimedia messages, AT&T won't be ready to help it actually do so until later this year.