Susan got an iPhone first. She loves it more than any gadget she’s ever had. I have to admit I was jealous – really, I am the gadget master in the family and it didn’t seem right that she’d have a new gadget than I.
But I liked my Blackberry. It did almost everything I wanted, and it was a darn good phone to boot. Still, using the iphone convinced me that for portable internet there was nothing beating it. My resistance wavered and then completely collapsed.
I’ve had the phone for more than a month now, and while everyone and their brother has reviewed the thing I can’t pass up the chance to add my input.
So, how do you like it? Is a question you hear a lot when you use your iphone in public. Here’s my answer:
It’s like having the most beautiful, sexy girlfriend in the world, with the unfortunate habit of occasionally puking in your mouth when you kiss her.
What I love:
- It’s a great little browser in your pocket. People bitch about it not having flash, but I don’t miss it.
- Even if you have a poor connection (which is most of the time, see below) it will download voicemail so you can still get it.
- It’s an iPod, albeit missing some features.
- The screen seriously rivals paper. It’s that good.
- The glass screen and overall build quality. No creaks, no fragility, just a solid gadget.
- You Tube is far more fun than I ever thought it would be.
- If you get a call while listening to music it will fade & pause the music when you answer, and unfade & restart the music when the call is over.
- Even though it has no push email, IMAP email with Gmail is actually a better solution than Gmail on BlackBerry.
What I hate:
- The iPhone hangs onto a call about as well as my 77-year old father hangs on to a greased pig. If you’re standing within site of a tower you have a chance. Otherwise, all bets are off.
- That is, if you can get the call started in the first place. ATT seems to have simplified busy signals, disconnected number signals and call drops all into one “Call Failed” error on the phone.
- The signal strength meter is more of an “estimated recent signal strength, sort of” meter. I’ve gotten and kept calls with one or even zero bars, and have also had calls drop unexpectedly with 5 bars. Go figure.
- Bluetooth is a technology to be played with, not used. The relationship between my iPhone and my Jabra headset is more erratic than Brittany Spears relationship with reality. The two will spontaneously decide not to talk to each other and will need to be re-paired.
- The glass screen provides zero tactile feedback, and is fairly picky about how hard you tap it before it considers it to be a “good” tap.
- Occasionally my iPhone will take a nap like an old man dozing off in the middle of a story. Because you can’t tell this is happening until you’ve been tapping away at the screen trying to get it to work, when it wakes up there’s no telling where the game of iPhone roulette will end.
- The iPod part of the phone doesn’t sync the skip count or last skipped data for songs. So, if you’re trying to make use of iTunes’ elaborate smart playlist feature to filter out songs you skipped through, you’re out of luck with the iPhone.
- For whatever reason, my iPhone takes forever to find and connect to my home wifi network, and will never prompt me to connect. It will often shows the signal strength as one bar, even when I’m standing next to my wireless access point. Other times it’s 5 bars on the other side of the house. This happens sometimes at other places.
- Sometimes my iPhone will repeatedly and with great urgency ask me to connect to networks I don’t want to connect to. We have wifi at work. It’s very locked-down and PDA’s are absolutely not allowed so I really don’t need my iPhone bugging me to connect. I really wish Apple would make an “ignore this network” feature, for places where there is wifi that for whatever reason will never be used.
Overall I like the device, but the relationship is love/hate. That’s why I say it’s like having a fantastic girlfriend who barfs in your mouth – most of the time things are awesome, but when they go bad it’s such startling, frustrating experience it has me emotionally gagging on the phone.
Let’s hope the new iPhone 2.0 software coming in late June (I’m expecting late July) will tip the balance a bit.