Review - iPhone 3G - Part 12

Messenging

The messenging features are the low point on Apple’s cellphone. In fact, Apple has decided to implement a “chat” view on the iPhone’s SMS’s: every message that are sent and received from the same contact is saved as “conversation”, and they’re graphically represented in a “comic book” style conversation. Although the choice is innovative, it would have been better to give the user the possibility of using a more standard type of SMS organization. Another problem is the impossibility of cancelling just one message from the conversation, as the iPhone only allows the user to cancel the entire “conversation”, and not just one SMS from it.

Another big lack is the character count. In case a user decides to write a longer message, there’s a big chance that the 160-character limit will be reached and the user will send two messages without realizing it. The iPhone 3G also doesn’t support the multimedia text messages, called MMS, which is definitely surprising that such an advanced phone lacks such a common feature that most other phones have. It’s possible that this lack might change in the future with further firmware updates, but up till this point, no official information has been released on the matter.