I feel the need to preface this list with the assertion that I really like my iPhone, and would not trade it for any other such device yet created.

This said, I cannot help but feel that the platform is missing some rather key ingredients. A loss all the more keenly felt when one surveys the tentative, agonisingly slow, baby steps that are being taken to remedy this.

1. Instant Messaging. There are two IM projects for the iPhone, MobileChat and Apollo IM. Both have not been updated at all since the 1.1.1 firmware update, despite pretty much every other iPhone app being updated since; it’s as if the developers just lost heart. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were usable, but both are buggy, crashy memory hogs at this stage, unable to stay open for extended periods and in MobileChat’s case only able to connect to one IM service at a time.

2. Video recording. Seriously, what the hell kind of camera-toting device can’t record some shitty-res video in a pinch? This strikes me as a “we just didn’t have time” kind of omission, since preliminary work has the iPhone capturing 2pmx video at 10fps, with over 30fps possible at lower resolutions. Hopefully this project will bear fruit sometime before Duke Nukem Forever’s release.

3. VoIP. This is the one feature on my wish-list that I don’t expect Apple to ever come out with, or even approve of (which could be a problem if, say, 3rd party apps are distributed by iTunes come February). Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that an iPhone Skype client would be pretty rocking, even more so when a 3G model finally appears.

4. Push email. Yes, the iPhone can actually do push email… if you happen to use Yahoo mail, that is. The rest of us are left out in the cold, despite our IMAP-idle compliant mail servers and the fact that pretty much any dumbphone you buy today has this basic functionality. There is an implementation of IMAP-idle for the iPhone, but all it does is prompt you to check the mailbox yourself, which kind of removes the main draw of the technology. Not to mention it’s about as far along as the other apps I’ve linked so far.

5. A2DP. No, it’s not a terrible sexual act, it’s a bluetooth profile for streaming high-quality music to bluetooth headphones (as opposed to low-quality voice to a handsfree kit). To be honest, there’s a bunch of bluetooth profiles the iPhone could do with, being as it only has one right now. Considering Apple were one of the first companies to start bundling bluetooth in laptops and desktops this is kind of a step backwards.