So I’ve decided that the iPhone is a device that will change my life. Sure I haven’t even had it a week, but now that the initial “I have an iPhone!” buzz has worn off I think I can make an accurate assessment. now before people start telling me “well my blackberry can do that”, keep in mind up until this point, I’ve avoided the blackberries, the t-mobile dash, treos, etc for the most part. I’m looked at them a bit but I’ve always been turned off by their inability to browse the web easily. So I’ve put together a list of pros and cons for why I love my iPhone.
Pros
Interface
The interface on the iPhone is slick. I can bounce from program to program showing someone my phone swiftly, and it looks cool as well, watching things slide off the screen like deleted emails, or rotating the phone to show someone my albums in the iPod portion of the phone. Browsing uses a real browser, sure I don’t have flash yet, but that’ll come eventually. I can login to my wordpress panel, myspace, or search weather.com fairly quick. The keyboard is also pretty quick once you get going on it. I’m by no means typing like I do on a keyboard, but faster than on any other phone I’ve had.
Google Maps
Living in Minneapolis, I get to deal with traffic during my commute. Now the current traffic status is just 3 clicks away while I’m on the road. Best of all it’s been very accurate thus far. Sure lack of GPS kind of sucks but I know how to read a map. If I want to find something, I type the zip code and what I’m looking for. For example “55416 go karts” and it shows me all of the go karting places on the map. Tap on one shows the address and phone number, 1 more tap and I’m calling them.
Syncing is easy
It took me about 5 minutes to move my contacts from my Motorola RIZR to the iPhone and that included installing the Motorola Phone tools. I synced to the Windows Contacts, then synced those to the iPhone and I was done. This was a bigger pain in the ass when I went from my RZR to my RIZR. On top of this you get the standard fairly reliable syncing you have with the iPhone. Your pictures directory syncs fine, just like videos, music, and podcasts.
The Calendar rocks
The calendar on my previous phones sucked. With the iPhone I can list a radio show, then edit each one individually. It’s a simple feature lots of phones miss out on. I just wish they had an option pre-installed to text or email the calendar date somewhere else. THat was as I book someone for something, I can email them a reminder right from the phone.
Cons
Lack of multimedia MMS support
Why can’t I send or receive pictures easily via MMS? I’m able to email pictures. For that matter where is my video support?
Where is iChat or a similar IM client
Sure, I can use something like meebo, or there’s TinyBuddy IM which was written by a aol programmer for the iPhone, but I can’t leave my phone on. I honestly can’t wait until 3rd party applications have hit. Things like Pownce or Twitter will truely take off. Can you imagine a world where you can send an mp3 via Pownce on your phone? Then access it the same on your pc or mac?
Ringtones?
There are a bunch of rumors going around that Apple is going to charge $0.99 for a ringtone to put on your phone. Sure it’s cheap compared to others, but seriously, why would you bill me for it? My theory is that Apple will let you create a ringtone from any mp3 you own, or from the iTunes store for $0.99.
These are just a few things that are the tip of the iceberg, but I really haven’t seen many other people talk about. The iPhone doesn’t have 1 awesome feature, it has several and in the end, all the cons can be fixed via software. (except lack of GPS) If this is a first gen model, I can’t wait for the second or third.
I also picked up the Apple Bluetooth headset and was impressed by that. The headset comes with a dual dock that allows you to charge your phone and headset at the same time and while charging, the headset’s battery status is displayed on the phone’s screen. The wind resistance in the jeep isn’t really cut down at all and I can’t be heard at all so I’m deciding if I want to exchange it for a jawbone, or perhaps keep the Apple headset and buy a jawbone for the jeep.
The crazy thing is the iPhone is almost enough to make me an Apple fan boy, in fact I started wondering about picking up an older mac laptop. I’ll cover that up by using it to know the most I can about the IT market, but after owning an iPhone, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t intrigued at what Apple does with an entire OS.
