Since I haven’t yet seen the topic arise over on blogHarrisburg, and since I’m the self-designated resident wireless expert, I’ll take it upon myself to open this can of worms: let’s talk about the iPhone.

Coming to AT&T Wireless stores near you this Friday at 6pm, the iPhone promises to revolutionize the wireless industry by combining a cell phone and a web browser. But it’s so much more than that; it also plays MP3s.

Excuse me for being a little sarcastic. Ever since Jobs announced that the iPhone would revolutionize the wireless industry, I’ve been a bit turned off. The only thing the iPhone is revolutionizing is the way handsets are sold to the public — and unfortunately, the revolution doesn’t favor the consumer.

One of the biggest problems with the iPhone is that it’s completely locked down to Apple’s whims. Apple’s somewhat dubious reasoning for this is that users installing their own applications would crash AT&T’s west coast network. So if you don’t like the built-in web browser, or the built-in media player, or the built-in email client, or the built-in contact manager, you’re stuck with it. Applications like Opera Mini, TMC, VistaMail, or whatever else you choose to install are locked out. While this may not be a major issue on a free-to-$50 PDA such as the Q or Dash, it’s a terrible limitation to place on a device that costs more than some laptops.

Worse, the device’s SIM is locked inside*. That effectively kills one of the few advantages of the GSM platform — you can’t swap out your iPhone for a cheap standby phone for a night out on the town. You also have no chance of taking your phone to another carrier. And if you need to send it in for repair (the AT&T stores will not be swapping defective iPhones), you’ll be without a phone the entire time.

Perhaps the biggest reason that I won’t be getting the device is the network. Cingular’s peak data rate on the device is going to be around 140k under idea conditions. That’s roughly 2.5x the speed of dialup. All those YouTube videos are going to take an awfully long time to load — and have you ever used Gmail over anything less than a 1.5m DSL? I find it curious that Apple and AT&T chose to hype the data end of the device more than anything else, then crippled it by latching it on to five-year-old technology. Data speed aside, AT&T’s coverage frequently ranks among the bottom of the big four national carriers. That’s right; Nextel beats AT&T. I’m not exactly pumped over the prospect of dumping my near-flawless CDMA network just for the privlidge of spending $600 on a PDA.

Still, if you need to show off your brand loyalty and want your menus to look all shiny and web-2.0, then the iPhone may be your thing. Myself, I’ll save a few thousand bucks and stick with Sprint’s SERO plan. $30 / 500 minutes, unlimited nights & weekends (starting at 7pm, of course), unlimited text, unlimited picture messaging, and unlimited picture messaging.

And no $600 phone.

* EDIT:  Looks like the SIM tray is, in fact, removable.  Scratch one flaw off the list.