A few weeks ago I posted up a few initial thoughts about my iPhone 3G. Without reading back through the post, I think it’s fair to say that my opinions were mixed. Although I loved the device itself, the silly battery life made it hard to use as a day to day phone. Now I’ve had the iPhone for a few weeks I thought I’d jot down a few more thoughts.
So do I still like it…? Yeah, I do. It really is a great little device, and it’s really changed the way that I use my mobile. I’ve used smartphones for email, calendar and contacts for years, but mobile browsing has always been something that I’ve done only when I needed to – like checking train times or something like that. I guess at first cost was a barrier, but I’ve also realised that the general usability of the devices and the browsers played a big part.
Although the iPhone is physically bigger than something like the HTC Diamond, all that extra screen size makes it so much more usable for browsing or running applications. I now spend much more time browsing when I’m on the move.
That’s not to say all is perfect on the browser front… Although the Safari browser on the iPhone is ok, for me it’s very much a love-hate relationship. Yes it’s probably the best mobile browser so far, but it crashes faaaaaarrrrrrr to often for my liking, and the lack of support for flash etc is a real pain.
The traditional mail, calendar and contacts tools are also pretty good. For me the Calendar particularly stands out, as the interface is much better then the Windows Mobile equivalent. Although I have seen a few ‘ghost’ appointments where previously re-scheduled meetings still appear in their original times on the iPhone, but not in Outlook or on WM. Very odd, but repeatable on a number of iPhones at work.
I’ve also seen a slightly worrying security issue with the iPhone and Exchange Activesync…. I’m not going to post the details until I’ve had a chance to check it out with MS and Apple, but it’s a little weird to say the least.
Apart from that push email from exchange works very well indeed, though I’d still like to see a ‘working hours’ style option to set the hours that push email is working and when it should go to manual. I used that feature on WM to both stop myself checking work email at weekends and save a bit of battery power over night. It seems like a strange thing to leave out.
Other things I can think of… the lack of MMS doesn’t bother me too much as email or twitter do the job for me anyway… copy and paste – what were Apple thinking by leaving that out?!… I’m also puzzled why I can’t record video…
Overall I still really like the iPhone. It really has changed the way I work for the better. There are problems that Apple need to fix but I’m sticking with it… for now… :)