Ten Off-Beat Improvements for the iPhone

It’s been two weeks since the iPhone’s release and, like Dimitri Martin, I like to wait that long before I talk about anything because I enjoy using the word “fortnight.”

A great thing about the iPhone is it’s potential. It’s got some cool stuff, but what will really make this phone a key part of my life are features yet to come. Thankfully (most) of these dream goodies can be done with software.

Over the past fortnight (yes!) I’ve been reading a lot of the same requests: Physical keyboard, GPS, Outlook sync etc. A note to everyone who wants a physical keyboard: You can’t. Sorry. You’d have to make the phone significantly thicker or longer and I don’t want either, so why don’t you go something you’re good at which is chomping knob, okay?

Here are some suggestions for Apple’s iPhone that may be fresh for your eyes.

1. Cover Flow for Contacts – C’mon, Apple! This one seems obvious! I’ve done my best to give every friend of mine a picture in my contacts list. It would be AWESOME to be able to scroll through contacts in the same way you can flip through album covers. Wouldn’t you love to show of to your drooling iPhone wannahavs how hot all your friends are?
2. Shutter Button – A lot of phones have buttons on the side which trigger the taking of a picture. This is cool because it gave birth to thousands of BFF-style MySpace photos taken in nightclubs. Though this is hardware, it could be done with software. When the photo app is open, have the sleep button on the top be the shutter button. Done.
3. iTunes Music Store – This must be a tough feature to implement, because you know Apple wants to put it in. You know it was the first thing on the whiteboard and I can almost hear the staff getting chewed out for not having it ready for the launch.
4. Notes application – fucking useless. Get rid of it. The only thing I use it for is to show people how the keyboard works. I could do that just as easily with Mail, but Mail sucks in so many ways that Notes wins by default.
5. Missed Call/New Voicemail light – If you leave your iPhone alone for a while it goes to sleep. I appreciate this power-saving mentality, but it would be nice if there were some sort of low-energy LED that indicated that there was a missed call or voicemail while I was in the shower. As it stands I have to wake up the phone and check it out. That’s just annoying.
6. Video recording / voice recording – I’m lumping these together because they fall under the category of “oh, even my phone does that”. You mean that free phone you got at the rape crisis center does two major things mine does not? Are you telling me I waited in line with a bunch of douche-nozzel frat boys just to be schooled by your five year old handset?
7. 
   “delete all mail” – this button would be great. You know what would also be great? If Mail wasn’t always trying to automatically get mail when I open the app. I can’t even set it in a pref!
8. Save Downloads – You can look at pictures, listen to sounds, and watch movies that you download in Safari and Mail, but you’d better keep them loaded because you can’t save them to your iPhone for later perusal. If I listen to an mp3 I’ve downloaded from a web page, I want to be able to send that to the iPod part of the iPhone.
9. WiFi monitoring app – this could really help you get the ball rolling on all that war driving you’ve been meaning to do.
10. Drunk Dialing Prevention – Picture it: You’re at a bar. You’ve had a few and you feel the sudden need to reconnect with an ex. You fumble with your iPhone and begin to scroll through the contacts list. The motions sensors in the iPhone detect all the wobbling you’re doing and it suspects you’re drunk and in no condition to wisely choose who to call. I confirms this with a basic motor skills coordination test it pops up on the screen where you have to hit a series of moving dots. You fail and the iPhone instead calls the contact you have labeled as “Taxi,” saving you from both death and the embarrassment of a “we… we were good together, weren’t we?” speech.