iPhone Update

Well, I have been using the iPhone 3G for about a month now and thought I would update my thoughts.

Overall, I like it, but don't love it.  There are things that I really like about it--web browsing, Google maps, cool apps, etc., but some of the things that I don't like are so bad, it colors my overall perception.

First off, as a phone it has worked well.  I have not had any issues with dropped calls, although it now appears that the problems folks are having are AT&T problems, not iPhone problems, since the same issue is cropping up no non-iPhone 3G phones with AT&T.  Different chips, same problems.  I am glad I am immune so far, but it underscores my biggest issue with trying one:  AT&T is just a bad cell phone provider.

My biggest gripes are emails.  It is a heck of a lot slower to manage email on an iPhone than on a Treo or BlackBerry.  The keyboard is slow.  The general interface is not designed for efficiency.  It is bad and needs an update with some keyboard shortcuts or something with the next version.

The thing I hate.  Absolutely hate, is the autotext.  Apple's is bad beyond description.  First off, it is random.  Frequently used words do not get suggestions, but others do.  There is no way to turn it off or edit it.  It is particularly vexing since it wants to suggest something stupid for a person's name in our organization.  Every time, I have to try to cancel the thing.  At the very least, the default should be that hitting space cancels the suggestion while you need to do something to accept it.  It is almost always wrong, so why should we have to cancel it?  Why can Treo, BlackBerry and even Microsoft do this fairly well, but Apple can't?

Apparently, you can fix this by jailbreaking the iPhone, but I am reluctant to do that.  If one of you clever apps developers will write something to fix this problem, you will have a very happy customer.