It's amazing that this revolutionary device was launched a month ago and received almost no press. I think someone should say something about this thing, so here are my thoughts:
Pros
- First thing's first: the way the screens fade and transition when you interact. It's so smooth that it invites you to play with it.
- I don't know how I ever lived without high speed internet access in my pocket all the time. Some people complain that AT&T's EDGE network isn't fast enough. I don't know what pages they're trying to load, but it's been great for me. 9 times out of 10, if I'm using the internet when I'm out of the apartment, it's to quickly Google song lyrics or a store's hours, and EDGE works great for that.
- I'm totally OCD about managing my contacts and calendar, and this is the perfect device for someone like me. The phone rewards me for meticulously adding contact info to my friend's address cards, and organizing my contacts together into sensible groups.
- Having a 2 megapixel camera always handy has proven indispensable. It's also enabled me to start a second blog. I could never live without this benefit now that I've known it.
- The phone allows you to be talking to someone, and then add a second call to make it a conference. I've used this for business reasons a few times, but even though there's been a few times in my personal life when it may have been handy, I've resisted for fear of seeming like a show-off.
- Having an iPod on me is great for long walks. I walk ~15-20 minutes to and from school each day, and into and out of Harvard Square, and I didn't always bother to bring an iPod in the past. It wasn't that the Nano was too big, it was just another item in my pocket to deal with. Now I bang out books-on-tape in little pieces on these walks and feel so much more productive.
- The keyboard took some getting used to, but I've got the hang of it now. It's not always easy, but neither was the Treo's keyboard.
Cons
- Google Maps crashes all the time. Wicked annoying when you've spent a bunch time typing in a long address, and even worse when you were looking up directions so you typed in 2 addresses.
- It's entirely unacceptable that the phone has no to-do list manager. I end up using Ta-Da List, which I'm thrilled with, but it doesn't work if I'm on a plane or away from coverage.
- You can't select text and/or cut, copy or paste text. Seems like something they can add in the future.
- The keyboard auto-corrects my spelling, but only if I use the exact right number of letters for the word. If you don't know how many "P's" are in "appellate", and you get to the end of the word and realize you guessed wrong, you have to delete each letter one at a time to fix the mistake.
- The camera's exposure time is a bit too long, and most of the pictures are a little blurry if you don't work to hold the thing really still.
- The phone doesn't tell you how many characters you've typed when you're sending a text message. This is a problem in general, because SMS messages have to be <160 characters, and it's a big problem for anyone who uses Twitter, where you're restricted to 140. I'd guess they'll fix this soon.
Should you get one?
- Do you meticulously organize your contacts and calendar (because you probably wont start doing that if you haven't been already)?
- Do you have a decent sized iTunes library, and if you do, is it organized in such a way where you could easily determine which ~4 GBs you would want on your phone?
- Are you free to switch carriers (not locked into a contract)?
- Do you mind blowing a ton of money on a phone?
If you said "yes, yes, yes, and no", then go for it. It's certainly not for everyone, but I love mine.
That is one of the best reviews of the iphone that I have seen.
Posted by: Joe the Dog Lover | September 10, 2008 at 11:35 AM