I love my iphone!
Ok I have been a notorious AT&T hater for years. Back in the TDMA days I loved their service. About 5 years ago we tried their GSM service and it sucked, did not work in the house, the car or even a wide open field!
I had been wanting a iPhone for some time now the only thing holding me back was AT&T. Well thanks mainly to Alltel adding roaming all over Nebraska the phone seems to work almost anywhere my CDMA phones were. Yesterday I even found some spots where EDGE was working and CDMA data was completely out of service.
The phone is truely the best piece consumer technology I have ever owned and I have owned everything.
I love my Blackberry don’t get me wrong but this thing just works and it’s fast! Doing anything on the bb is a trial of waiting….and waiting, sure it does most of what a iPhone will but how long can you wait? Also the applications on the bb never seem that refined, to start slacker on the iPhone is like a 1 click 5 second to music starting… The Blackberry is a good 45sec-1min to load then about 4 clicks to start the music.
I had REALLY tried to hold out for the Tour to get released but it just was not coming, seeing others Iphones I made the plunge.
Here are my pros and cons over my Blackberry Device…
Pros:
- Push exchange server without BES!
- There is a app for everything and they all load SUPER fast
- It’s a beautiful device you can’t ignore that
- Obviously it’s an ipod
- Video/Youtube
- Pictures are simple to take
- WiFi
- Everything I can do on my BB, Facebook, Slacker, TWC just more refined.
- IM+ does everything BB messenger did for me with my Gtalk account, something even google could not do on the BB
Cons
- This device was obviously not built for Email, unlike Blackberry I can’t get a single screen with all the email from all my accounts on it, I really like that about Blackberry.
- Getting to my email accounts is not a fun task, way too many clicks to get to the inbox.
- You can’t customize the email notification sound!
- The battery life SUCKS
- I can’t say the keyboard is a plus, but I don’t HATE it. I wrote most of this blog post on it.
- Only one app at a time can be used
- No way to know if you got a new email without the process of opening the email box (IE Notification light)
Now lets talk about that one app at a time thing, I think this is to intentionally cripple the device from all the power it COULD be.
Apple has introduced “Push” technology in this version of iPhone software so you can still receive IM’s even if you don’t have the IM software open, this helps. Personally I think the iPhone can only do one thing at a time to keep it from being EVERYTHING you need. Obviously Henry and I both started playing with SIP clients immediately after taking them out of the box, but you can’t leave it running so no softphone for you!
You can load clients like GVOICE (the google voice app) to get free SMS from Google however it only works… WHEN THE APP IS RUNNING!
The Facebook app does all kinds of toys however once again no notification of new “Posts”
It seems all the apps play well on their own but don’t have enough hooks to the OS to truely be cool, for example if you take a picture on a BB it gives the option to send to Facebook. To do this on the iPhone you will need to take the picture FROM the facebook app, or open it after you take the picture. I don’t know if this is Apple locking the developer out of the hooks to make apps work with each other, or a simple oversight on Facebooks part.
In ending I love my iPhone 3GS right now… It’s a great little device and so far has not black holed me any worse than my CDMA curve, if your thinking about picking one up give it a shot!






