es notifications, which currently lack permanence and have to be dealt with one at a time. Android's pull-down status window and webOS's subtle notification bar have both found more elegant ways of dealing with these messages while avoiding the potential for information overload.

At your service

No matter how good your cell phone's hardware and software are, if you can't get good cell service, you might as well just buy an iPod touch. But presumably you bought the iPhone because you wanted a device that could connect to the Internet no matter where you go. Cell service is the iPhone's biggest vulnerability--and its biggest opportunity for improvement.

Tethering If AT&T is to be believed, tethering--the ability to share your iPhone's cellular data connection with your laptop--is still coming at some unspecified date. But this feature is key, especially for traveling business-types who sometimes need more functionality than even the smartest of smartphones allows. If nothing else, you don't want to be typing a 20-page document or reading a lengthy small-print PDF on your iPhone when you've got your laptop handy.

Built-in turn-by-turn directions Google Maps has served iPhone users well over the last couple years, but once the iPhone 3G folded in GPS capability, it quickly became apparent that turn-by-turn directions were where it's at. A number of vendors, including standalone GPS-maker TomTom, now offer apps that fill this need, but with the news that Google is adding its own freeturn-by-turn directions application to Android phones, the bar has been raised. Whether or not third parties continue to offer better features, some sort of built-in turn-by-turn direction capability would seem to be a must for Apple to keep pace with its rivals.

Better service Poll a bunch of U.S. iPhone users, and it's likely you'll get more complaints about the quality of cell service--or lack thereof--than any other single topic. AT&T has taken a lot of heat for providing sub-par service: we've all suffered from dropped calls, bad reception, and general lack of 3G coverage at some point or another. But at the same time, it doesn't seem as though there's another alternative. Regardless of whether it takes a better AT&T network or opening the iPhone up to multiple carriers (when the technology allows it), better cell service should the number one priority for the iPhone. Given the state of the cell phone industry, an entrenched industry that moves at a pace only slightly faster than your average ice floe, it also may be the last development on this list that comes to pass.

The future soon

Will all, or indeed any, of these improvements make it into an iPhone in the future? It's impossible to know what cards Apple is holding, but one t

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