7.07.2007

iPhone : Review

The Good: The phone interface is great. Dialing someone that is in your address book couldn't be easier. Choose your contact, choose the number. Sounds quality is better than I have every had on any of my four Razrs that I have had for work. And it is certainly better than either of the phones I have had for personal use in the last 3 or 4 years (motorola something and a blackberry).

The iPod is good, I like the interface almost as much as I like the scroll wheel. The only bad part about it is that I have had the iPod "crash" while using it and Safari at the same time.

Safari is also really good. I can't complain, nor do I understand any complaint, about the speed at all in a wifi network or on the edge network. It is certainly slower on Edge, but it is not as ridiculously slow as I was led to believe prior to release and the Blackberry seems slower. Being able to check movie times and such without calling movie phone is one of my favorite things so far. I also like that I can look things up on the fly if I am uncertain of the facts, this might fade in time because as of right now it is a toy to play with and its fun. Also, most of the time I can find a wifi network to jump on when I am around in the city.

Text Messaging and Email would only be better if the keyboard would rotate. It is a lot easier to use the keyboard with the device horizontal. I use the email for when I get calls and I am not in the office to email myself a note to check into the matter when I get back to the office. It has eliminated the need for me to carry a notepad with me all the time to keep notes. And I am much better at checking email that I am at looking back through my notes.

The not good and not bad: YouTube, I find this to be totally useless. I don't use You Tube on my computer that much, so using it on the phone isn't really something I care about. It isn't good and it isn't bad, but it is there.

The Bad: The interface with gmail creates an inbox message every time you send an email. This is aggravating because it makes me want to check my email on my computer and check my email on my phone. But I believe my blackberry did that too. There is a hint out there to change one of the settings to stop getting this, but when I change it, all of my old mail comes through too, meaning that something like 100,000 emails are sent to my phone. I don't like that. So I will continue to deal with this for the time being.

The screen only rotates in Safari. I like the wide keyboard in Safari, but that is the only place you get it.

The final, and most bad, terrible thing is that I will get a warning that the battery is at 20%, then ten seconds later it is at 15% and about 2 minutes later, 10%. This happens after three days off the charger, but it is still a bit aggravating when you go from 20% to almost zero in the matter of 10 minutes.

Thats it, if I didn't mention it, then I haven't really used it yet. After a couple of months I think I will put up an update.