Monday morning I received a brand new iPhone courtesy of Twelve Horses. I wasn’t ready to drop the coin needed to pick up one of these sexy devices, but since it was handed to me, you better believe I was stoked.
So far, four days in, the experience has been awesome. I always was curious about getting a Nokia 770 internet tablet for surfing around the house. While the screen is smaller, the iPhone is perfect as a internet tablet. It connected to my wifi network without a hitch and I’ve yet to find sites I can’t view with the built in Safari browser (I’m sure they exist). Sites that are built for the iphone, like Facebook’s new iPhone site, are even better.
The iPod experience is better than my 5G video iPod. While a certain part of me misses the click wheel, having the ability to switch between playlists, artists, songs and videos at a touch of a finger is awesome. I do think it’s a little odd that there is no status bar when a song or video is playing that allows you to see how far into the content you are and how much is left (there’s probably a name for this all too familiar bar that is alluding me right now).
For the rest of the experience:
- The phone is good - what you’d expect from a cell phone with a few more bells and whistles
- Texting is good - how do you really improve on that experience
- Maps rocks - it just does
- Weather app is fun
- Stocks app is worthless - I only own mutual funds
- YouTube is ok - I haven’t really had the desire to surf a ton of videos on YouTube
- Camera is ok - bad in low light, blah, blah, blah
- Photos is awesome - my kids love flicking through the photos
- Notes is ok - been using it for the grocery list and house todos
- Keyboard typing is good - I type faster on it then I ever did on my Blackjack’s tiny little keyboard
Right now I am POP3ing mail from Gmail. This is quite lame as it doesn’t mark mail read on the Gmail server, so I am basically managing two accounts. Sending mail works like a charm though. Work email isn’t there yet. It does support IMAP for Exchange and has a VPN client so I am sure this is just a matter of time.
I have very few complaints:
- No 3G. Edge is slow
- No way to find contacts by typing. You have to scroll which sucks when you have a cubic ton of contacts sync from Entourage
- Syncing Exchange to Entourage to Address Book & iCal to iPhone is slow
- Did I mention how slow Edge is
I’m definitely in love with it. It’s super fun to surf on, play my content, talk on and play with. Now if I could find a good app to blog with, I’d be set.
