he iPhone's a pretty neat device. Sure, it's not the best at being a “phone”, but it is a very handy device to have in your pocket. As advertised, there really is an “app” for just about anything you can imagine. Sure, most of those apps are silly crap, but in truth, most of what people can imagine is silly, in fact, crap.

Over the past year or so, my little black iPhone has become an integral device in my daily life. I use it for e-mail. I surf the web on it. I use it to find restaurants, look up directions, answer random trivia, it's my camera, about 90% of my tweets and Facebook posts come from my iPhone. It's also my music player of choice. (Nothing yet designed tops the design of the iPod.)

So, what could be so wrong with the iPhone that I am considering ditching it? SMS popups. They are unstoppable.


That's right, iPhone's SMS Popup can't be stopped!

When a user receives an SMS on the iPhone, it pops up. By default, this “feature” will display the message on your screen, no matter what you are doing. The iPhone will light up, even if it's locked and asleep to show that text. So, by default, your text message is shown to whomever is looking at the screen at that time.

You can imagine the obvious implications of this. In fact, there are people who've run into nightmare-like problems because of it. All you need is the wrong text coming in at the wrong time and you could lose a job, a girlfriend, or ruin someone's birthday. (Thanks iPhone!)

Apple's solution: Users can shut of the “preview” mode for texts. This setting, which is buried in the phone's settings menus, will prevent the iPhone from displaying the message in the popups. However, the popups themselves appear to be unstoppable.

So, this setting removes the content of the message. The name (or number) of the sender will still show on the screen. So, if you don't want someone you're with to know who else is might be texting you, you're shit out of luck with the iPhone.

Apple's die-hard kool-aid drinkers will tell you “Just flip the phone over and you've got no problem”. I could not agree less. I should not have to worry about which side is facing up to keep my privacy intact.

Other iPhone-o-philes will say “Just download X app and it'll handle SMS differently...” Well, I have two retorts to that. Number one: I shouldn't have to buy some third party app to properly handle a core feature (SMS) on a phone. That's just stupid. Number two: None of those apps truly handle SMS. They handle e-mail, which is not SMS. So, using those apps, you cannot receive SMS from short-code based services. Therefore they are really all just shitty email clients. (Again, why the hell would I want to buy a feature that my crappy old BlackBerry could handle??)

If this were a new problem, I'd have more patience, but this has been a problem with iPhones since their initial release. How does Apple not see this as a privacy problem?

Oh wait, it gets worse. This can also become a power/battery issue.

Consider my situation: I receive SMS messages from a server. I get a text every time a process runs, and every time it finishes to let me know that things are working OK. This process runs about a hundred times a day, sometimes more. Needless to say, this adds up to a lot of texts. Hundreds per day. With my iPhone, this means that the display lights up every time a text comes in, sucking my battery dry for no good reason. On top of that, typing an e-mail, playing a game, tweeting, or doing just about anything is constantly interrupted by popups. (Very annoying.) All I want to do is shut the popup off. Doesn't sound too earth-shattering, but it appears that the “genius” designers at Apple are dumbfounded.

In general, I'm a fan of Apple's products. My Macbook is the best laptop I've ever owned. My iPhone is, in general, the best handheld device I own. However, this one flaw may very well be unbearable. How can Apple, who spend so much on design, let this slip by? How could they have not noticed this when beta testing SMS on their devices? Worse yet, they've had several years to correct this problem and, despite a vocal outcry, have utterly ignored this obvious flaw in their otherwise well designed device.

Sure, a year or two ago, there was nothing that compared to the iPhone. However, the worm has turned. Google's Android phones have caught up in features and useful applications. This small annoyance may very well be the tipping point that drives me to Android.