Initial thoughts on the iPhone 3G
I’ve been using the iPhone 3G for a couple of weeks and thought now would be a good time to share my initial thoughts on this device.
First impressions are very good. I’ve been using smartphones for a number of years, first starting on Windows Mobile devices and then falling in love with Blackberry’s. The interface on the iPhone is very intuitive, as you would expect from Apple. However you really do forget it’s a phone and feel like you are using a PDA, all be it a very powerful one. Is this as close as you will come to having laptop type functionality in the palm of your hand?
The new functionality such as 3G and GPS work really well although are pretty battery hungry, more on that later. The keyboard is responsive and the intelligent software which tracks what you type and suggests corrections does work really well and gets better with time. It is possible to type with two thumbs, as you will see from the video demonstration on the Apple website, however for people me with large thumbs this can be problematic.
There are a couple of things I miss from my Blackberry. The first is the concept of an Outbox for SMS. As you will see from the blog I do a lot of mountain based sports and as such can be out of network signal for long periods of times. Its useful to be able to respond to texts knowing that your phone will store and send it when it next gets signal, even when its buried in your pack. The iPhone doesn’t do this and although it stores the SMS it requires the user to select to try a resend. This led to a very frustrated hour when in Wales last week, stopping every 5 mins to check for signal :(
The second is the ability to snooze reminders on calendar events. This is something I use regularly but is impossible on the iPhone. May not sound major but to me this is quite frustrating.
Another potential issue is power. As an iPod its great and will play for hours but as soon as you run up the 3G, GPS or WiFi and start using it heavily expect the power to drain. I’m not talking about minutes here but expect something in the region of 2-3 hours, which although not great is still pretty good when compared to a laptop. Just be prepared to take your charger with you when you are out all day and expect to use the phone heavily, as I found out on a recent rail trip to Northumberland.
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