iPhone Update and Impressions

July 14, 2007

About a week after I wrote my last note about the iPhone, my father offered to buy one for me "for services rendered" (Dad often stokes me some cash after I've resolved some issue on his computer). Anyway, after debating it for a day, I knew I couldn't resist that offer. Of course, I despaired of getting one because there is no Apple Store in South Carolina, and by all accounts the AT&T stores were sold out.

On a whim, and with 1/2 hour to kill, I swung by the AT&T store near Town Centre in Mt. Pleasant, SC, to see if they might have a phone or two. They had just gotten a whole shipment. 15 minutes later, I walked out with my 8Gb iPhone. Of course, I had an extra long appointment right after that, so the shrink-wrap didn't come off for another 4 hours.

I've had it now for a little over three days. It's great, but has definite room for improvement. Everyone is blogging about their iPhone now, so I'll keep my impressions short.

First, Wi-fi rules. Edge is Ok, and certainly tolerable on normal web pages in a pinch, but no match for Wi-fi. For the built-in services, such as SMS, Stocks, Maps, and Weather, Edge is just fine-- fast even.

Second, Safari is great on this thing. Apple has made the small screen highly usable for this. No Flash is a bit of a drawback. But then, I'm not a Flash fan, tending to develop using open standards, so that part of me actually cheers this decision. Form data-entry needs a bit of work, though.

As a phone, it is great. This is the first phone I've had where I could actually decipher and use the call handling features. I used to drop people all the time, and now I don't.

Visual voice mail is almost how it should be. Voice mails are actually downloaded to your device, so no connection is necessary to review voice mails. The downside is that you cannot do anything else while listening to voicemail-- not even take notes. That is a problem for me.

Mail is usable. But it needs to be able to rotate so you can use the larger keyboard. I assume that will come in an update.

Maps rock. I'm sure Treo users will think it old-hat, but Apple's implementation is stunning, and it works great over Edge.

Lastly, the keyboard is hard to use at first. Everyone says this, and they also say after a week you are cruising. I'm already light-years better with it than day-one, but with a ways to go. The technology behind the keyboard is nothing short of astonishing. Check out the keyboard video.