So I’ve had my iPhone for a little while now, having never owned or used an iPhone or Blackberry before. These are my thoughts:
The Great:
- REAL web browser. This is just such a killer app. Whether a website has been “optimised” for the iPhone or not, it looks awesome, can be navigated easily, and is pretty damn quick! I use this extensively.
- App Store: infinite possibilities. I love the potential that’s wrapped up in the Apple App Store. Right now I’ve downloaded a bunch of different applications, though I only use a few regularly. (New York Times reader… awesome when it works!) As the iPhone ecosystem expands, there will likely be more and more very valuable apps here that will make the iPhone much more powerful.
- Push e-mail. While I have it turned off most of the time (I prefer to get e-mail on MY terms, not on a timer), it is fantastic when I’m expecting something important to land in my inbox. With this, who needs a Blackberry?
- GPS. This is awesome, especially when I’m out and about in London and need to figure out a) where the hell I am, and b) how to get home or wherever else I’m looking to go. The integration with Google Maps is fantastic.
The Horrible:
- SMS. Ouch, this is bad. I mean, yes you can text. You can even text multiple people. But you CAN’T save a draft text, you CAN’T setup standard template texts, and if a phone number is wrong, you CAN’T tell the status of a message after it’s been sent. (Or if you send it to one person with a correct number and a different person with an incorrect number, it will throw up an error, but won’t tell you if anything got sent at all.)
- This is really pretty damn bad. They are all features that I used a lot on my old phone, which was a Motorola RAZR I bought nearly THREE YEARS ago. I really hope this gets sorted out soon.
- MobileMe. I signed up with .Mac when it was still free so I could get the username that I wanted. I’ve paid for it since then, with decreasing value every year. I was initially really excited about MobileMe… push e-mail/calendar/contacts to the cloud, etc. But Apple’s roll-out has been AWFUL. I couldn’t access e-mail at all for the first 24/36 hours after MobileMe went live, it still acts up at times so reliability is still a problem. And then one day most of the phone numbers and a good chunk of my iPhone contacts just disappeared! They were still in the cloud, but no longer on my iPhone!
- Luckily this has since been solved, but I’m still very wary of MobileMe. I hope they actually get it to a point where it’s reliable enough for me to depend on day-to-day.
- Copy-and-paste. Everyone has been complaining about the lack of copy-and-paste on the iPhone since it came out. I don’t think it’s a horrible issue, but there are times (such as when I can’t forward a text) when I really wish I could do this.
- GPS. Yep, I listed it as one of the best things, but it’s also one of the worst. When it works, it’s awesome. But there are too many times where it just can’t seem to pick up a GPS signal worth a damn, even when I’m not near tall buildings or other signal blockers. I don’t know what the hell is going on with this, but I don’t like it very much.
So those are my opinions about the iPhone. Overall, a fantastic phone with a LOT of potential. (I can’t wait for the next software update to get rid of the 2.0 system bugs, though.)
What do you think?
Jed Christiansen 