Steve Jobs announced the release of the iPhone 3G today (known colloquially as the iPhone 2.0). The announcement was met with a great deal of wow and a smattering of harumph.

As with most Apple products, the new iPhone will include features that you didn’t know you needed, such as the ability to wipe your data remotely, so that the theft of your iPod won’t necessarily mean the theft of your identity.

However, some features were excluded--features that many Apple watchers were hoping to see. So what’s missing from the iPhone 3G?

- iPhone 3G users will still not have the ability to cut and paste text, a simple yet important task, especially since typing on the keyboardless iPhone is, for many, a challenge.

- Bluetooth is still extremely limited – no support for stereo or digital audio streaming to headsets supporting A2DP, never mind other Bluetooth devices like wireless keyboards.

- The iPhone still can’t act as a modem between the 3G network and another portable device, not via Bluetooth, or via Wifi. If you were hoping to get your PCMCIA-less Macbook Air onto 3G broadband, the iPhone’s not going to play go-between for you. (Here’s hoping the SDK will allow a third-party application to do it. But it should be a feature out of the box.)

And speaking of keyboards, stereo Bluetooth and A2DP would have given iPhone users the ability to use a wireless keyboard, in addition to turning the iPhone into an ad hoc modem. But the iPhone 3G only handles Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR.

- The iPhone 3G doesn’t permit voice dialing, one of those features users expect from a smart phone.

- The videocamera that comes standard with most cell phones is lacking in the iPhone 3G. So much for capturing your own Zapruder film.

- Despite rumors of a potential front-facing camera, the new technical specifications have not listed this feature. A front-facing camera would allow you film yourself, so the lack of it means that even if a videocamera were installed in the iPhone, you still couldn’t get your iPhone iChat.

- Storage capacity is limited to 16 gigabytes, a healthy amount, but with no mini- or micro-SD expansion slot, there’s no chance for expansion or upgrades. With the cell phone industry moving toward larger capacities as well as wireless storage, 16 gig may soon seem quaint.

- AT&T remains the only carrier for the iPhone. Unless you’re willing to hack your iPhone, you’re stuck with AT&T, a company that collaborated with the National Security Agency to illegally data-mine their customer’s communications.

The release of the iPhone 3G will be an important step forward in making the smart phone even smarter. But it looks as if version 2.0 needs a 2.1.