I purchased an iPhone about a month ago and thought I would write about my opinions of the phone to date. Hands down this is the best “smart phone” I have ever owned. My recent phone history: Palm Treo 650, Palm Treo 750, HTC Tilt, and now the iPhone. I have no experience with any of the Blackberry devices so I cannot make a comparision. I have 6 pages of apps so far. Lots of free and lots of pay ones….
What I like:
- Safari browser – The best browser available for any phone. Why Microsoft has lagged so far behind I just don’t know. Opera and Skyfire for Windows Mobile are good but still don’t compare.
- Overall UI (User Interface) It is just plain easy to use.
- Availability of Apps. While there is no shortage of stuff available for the Windows Mobile platform there are 30,000 plus apps for the iPhone with lots of aviation related apps.
- Games get rid of your DS. Graphics are really good on the iPhone. Check out 2XL Super Cross as an example.
- Wifi – Works great, seems to have pretty good range and is easy to use.
What I Don’t Like:
- Can’t run apps in the background. Dumb… Yes you can have resource issues when multiple apps are running. Just warn users and let them do it. For example, you have a chat application running but want to check your email. Well you have to shut down the chat app. I use Skype on the road and it would be nice to be able to listen for Skype calls while doing other things. If you Jailbreak your phone it is possible to run some apps in the background.
- Can’t cut and paste. Uh I would never want to do that.. It has only been around for 15 years on the pc. (This will be solved with 3.0 software update)
- Apps never “crash” they just go blank and you are taken to the Springboard (home screen) Might be nice to find out what happened to see if you could fix it.
- When checking email you get no status messages. I like to see that I was able to connect to the server, see # of messages being downloaded, etc.
- Battery life – If you are a heavy user you better have access to an external battery or be prepared to be “that guy” at the airport looking to plug in anywhere. Using it while flying all day is generally ok since the phone is off for long periods of time.
- GPS appears to be a bit less accurate that what I have used with my Windows Mobile device. More testing needed.
- No sim card – Just put a slot of a sim card like every other smart phone. Then I can add all the music or other cr@p that I want.
- Can’t tether “use phone as a modem” This is very easy to do on Windows Mobile devices. I use this a lot when there is no free or reliable wifi.If you jailbreak your phone you can tether. This feature will be available with the 3.0 OS but who knows if it will be for free.
No phone is perfect. This is why new versions come out each year. I look forward to the 3.0 version of the software and new hardware. Rumors are a 32gb version of the phone may come out.
I have more negatives listed than positives. However, some of these will be solved with the new software update and many of the strengths simply outweigh the negatives. The iPhone is a very good phone and I would recommend it highly to all users.
Two of my concerns which are aviation/road warrior related have been mitigated. I use LogbookPro and used APDL. There is no APDL version for the iPhone “yet”. I may retire before it comes out. LogTen is a good alternative and you can import to Logbook Pro. I have jailbroken my phone so I can tether. I hope this becomes seamless with the 3.0 upgrade. I understand most people won’t want to go through the trouble of jailbreaking their phone. I use weather applications a lot more on my iphone. I recommend Aeroweather (free), FAAWait $.99, Weather Undergound (free) and the Weather Channel App (free). So for $1.00 you can get 4 powerfull applications. It’s 12am in MCI and time to end this review.