The iPhone comes very close to fulfilling our SciFi fantasies. Even so, some of the design decisions of the iPhone are already dated, according to Robert Fabricant, Creative Director of frog design on Monday.

There are five elements cited as design factors that seem to already date the iPhone.

1. Icons. "...this will probably turn out to be one of the most dated elements of the design, as the iPhone takes nostalgia to a new level with the YouTube TV icon, the shutter representation within the camera app, and the extremely annoying legal pad metaphor for the note-taking app." Mr. Fabricant observed.

2. Lists. The author felt that the hierarchical list usage in the Clock -> Timer function is superior and should have been more universally used. There is a disconnect between that kind of selection process and that used in the contacts list.

3. SMS. The arrival of an e-mail is no longer a personal "event." However, the arrival of an SMS message is. Apple seemed to put too much empahsis on e-mail.

4. Contacts. Rather than letting the user first select the contact, then decide how to contact them, the contacts list is only accessible via the Phone icon. It was deemed an odd, dated design decision.

5. RSS. People need to stay up with their blogs, and that means a superb RSS enable device. Mr. Fabricant thinks the Google gPhone will get this one right.

The Creative Director at frog design suspected that Apple may already be working on some of these issues, and change could come fast to the device thanks to its software update mechanism. Even so, the device seems to reflect Apple’s "inability to grasp of some of the key trends shaping communications," Mr. Fabricant concluded.