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.

Testing the iPhone 3G

So I bought an iPhone 3G. It is a test to see if it is good enough to replace the Treos and BlackBerrys we use. That the iPhone was way cool was obvious from the start, but we did not consider it until the latest generation for a couple of reasons.

The first was that it didn't work well with Exchange. Until they got that working, there was no way. The second reason is that AT&T is the only choice. In our experience AT&T and its predecessor, Cingular, simply has lousy coverage compared with Verizon. Also, the slow wireless network made the cooler features of the iPhone not very cool.

I will update as I go along on this test, but I will post some initial reactions. I had a Treo with the Palm OS, which was great for phone and email but weak on anything else. And the Treos with Windows have been just terribly buggy.

The phone part of the iPhone is very good. Better than the BlackBerrys. I haven't had a chance to test the coverage very well, but it works well as a phone where you have coverage.

Email is going to take some getting used to. It was much faster to send and receive emails on my Treo. Part of that is that I have not yet mastered the keyboard, but a good bit of it was design. On the Treo, I can be in the email part with two clicks. It is a minimum of three and often more, depending on what you were last doing, on the iPhone. With the Treo, I could do a lot with one hand, which made clearing out the inbox easy when I had a little downtime. Can't do that with the iPhone. It needs some keyboard shortcuts or something. And, it also needs the ability to delete multiple messages at a time.

Setting the iPhone up to work with our Exchange server was a breeze. Much simpler than configuring a new Treo with Good or a BlackBerry. And everything syncs well, although it doesn't sync all messages.

Battery life has been good. It was horrible when I first got it, but after a few cycles, it is fine without using a lot of the battery saving tips.

So far, I like it and will probably keep it, but I am not entirely convinced. Not enough to roll it out for everyone else yet. I'll keep you posted.