Will the iPhone live up to all the hype? My vote is for yes. If you’re going to pay $500 (4GB) or $600 (8GB), you’re most likely expecting a quality product. Apple isn’t going to release an industry-altering device without doing plenty of beta testing and consumer polling. I’m sure Steve himself has burned one in for a good 2 months by now. Of course, that’s not to say that Apple hasn’t had a couple of flops.

But, the real question is… what are people going to bitch about the most? Of course there will be downsides to the gadget. Of course people will complain… but what will be the deal-breaker? Here’s a short list (and by short, I mean fairly lengthy) of the shortcomings that are to be expected:

• Battery Life (can it really hold up as long as they tout?)
• 3G integration (are people really going to be able to install their own java modules?)
• EDGE reception (has AT&T really improved the network to support the influx of devices that use this service?)
• Memory Space (is 4GB really going to be enough to hold all the new downloads slated for this music & video machine?)
• Expense (this thing is expensive… ready for the monthly phone service plan, AT&T add-ons & iTunes downloads on top of the base cost?)
• Glass-Top Surface (is it going to be easily-scratchable? what’s the chances it cracks in my pocket like my digicam screen? will scratches make the “tap,” “flick” and “pinch” process more difficult?)
• Syncing (will it connect to my PC? how about wirelessly sync to Exchange?)

I also follow quite a few tech news feeds throughout the day (Slashdot, Digg Tech, TechCrunch, etc.) and many of these have had stories about the iPhone development and features over the past weeks and months. Let’s take a look at a few of the more interesting ones:

CrunchGear’s iPhone Roundup – This one has quite a few links in it to a bunch of other spots on the popular web, outlining the goods and the bads.

HowStuffWorks.Com Tutorial - Outlines the functions and gives an overview of the product itself.

Digg Technology – There’s been 5 seperate iPhone stories (of 18 total) in the last 9 hours that were dugg. This one covers the Town Hall meeting Steve Jobs will be conducting tomorrow (the day before the launch).

Lets not kid ourselves here… there’s about 8,000 real news articles out there within the past 2 days regarding the iPhone and about another 8 million blog posts. People are going to buy this product. It’s no joke.

Of course, we’ll really have no idea how this whole thing will pan out until about 1-2 million of these things get into the hands of the general populace on iDay (Friday, June 29th @6 p.m. local). Good luck to all in getting an iPhone (financially or natural-selection-wise). There’s already bets on someone getting trampled while trying to get an iPhone… and the odds may be against you.

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