For the past several weeks, I’ve been using an iPhone.
Anyone who knows me understands what a big deal this has been. I had access to an iPhone through work for my social initiatives that I was driving during the Cerner Health Conference (which were featured on KCTV5). I was controlling 4 Twitter accounts, a blog, a Flickr account and organizing a group of great volunteers.
My iPhone experience was predictably awesome. I spent about an hour getting used to it, downloading the apps I needed and then spending the money to download the apps I wanted.
There’s a ton to love about it.
The App Store
The user interface is slick and intuitive, but the biggest win for the iPhone is the iTunes store, which now boasts over 75,000 applications ranging from games to task managers to weather to about 500 applications for Twitter (not exaggerating). I downloaded several free apps and then with some Paypal money I had laying around (is that what cyber-money does?), I purchased a few other apps that I had either heard recommended or thought were interesting. Apple approves (or rejects) every application that is submitted and that is helpful in separating horribly designed apps (I’m looking at you, BlackBerry developers) from the pack.
One device for everything
I can’t tell you how much I hate filling my pockets with extra crap. I carry an iPod and my BlackBerry. While my Curve has the ability to handle music, the user experience of playing any sort of media takes far too many clicks and trackball movements. Imagine the difference between using a mouse with a scroll wheel to navigate web pages vs. navigating with arrows and keystrokes. It works, it’s just not very efficient.
It just…works
Everything about the iPhone is intuitive. From the gestures to the navigation…it takes about 10 seconds to get used to it and then you are multi-touching with relative ease.
Mobile browsing has no equal
Mobile Safari, the iPhone’s built in browser is so far past every other mobile browser on the market that it is almost unfair. And don’t even bring up your Opera Mini garbage. That doesn’t play here. I’ve used both. The iPhone browser is better in every possible way. It’s fast and awesome. It’s easy to switch from landscape to portrait browsing (just turn the phone). And you can make any of your favorite pages launchable like an app (which I did for Google Reader and Google Talk, since they don’t have apps).
BUT. There’s also stuff that kinda sucks.
Push Gmail is NOT Exchange
I don’t know if this is really Apple’s problem, but I really don’t like how Google decided to use the Microsoft Exchange settings to enable push Gmail. For people like me who want to have both Exchange email for work and Gmail email for home, I would need multiple Exchange accounts, which is not allowed. I ended up leaving Gmail as an IMAP account and using the Exchange account for my work. It made the most sense to me.
The network…UGGGHHHH
Much has been said about the complete suckage that is AT&T’s network. Not only are their costs ridonkulous, but they have completely under-delivered with nearly everything that they promised. MMS rollout took forever. People still can’t tether their iPhones to their computers. All these things are technologies that have been around FOREVER on other networks. Additionally, the 3G network doesn’t feel any faster than the Edge network and there are so many dead spots that you can never count on a consistent connection if you’re driving around.
Multiple calendars
I really like that the Palm Pre offers multiple calendars. With the iPhone, you only get one. If you want to check your Google calendar, you’ve got to go to the Google calendar mobile site (which is a nice experience in Mobile Safari, but still). I don’t get much use out of a calendar that doesn’t show me everything that is going on on all my calendars. I have multiple points of entry. This is one major reason why my next phone will likely be a Pre. (Well, that and I’m a loyal Sprint customer…)
What’s next
I’ve got a couple weeks before I can replace my BlackBerry. I’ve got my eye on the Pre, but the HTC Hero is on my radar as well. Unfortunately, I’ve likely ruined any semblance of a chance that they had at being happy with any non-iPhone device, but we’ll give someone a shot. It has to be a Sprint device for the time being.
Because I’m loyal to my local telecom like that…
But man…do I ever wish that Sprint had taken the opportunity to get the iPhone back when it had the chance.