iPhone after 1 day

I've had a few people email me to find out what I think about the iPhone after seeing that I purchased one on tuesday. Overall, I really like it a lot. You have to keep in mind that I'm usually very picky about my phones and buy only the phones that I think are the best for what I want/need in a phone. My last 3 phones have been Sony Ericsson's and I'm pretty convinced that they make the best phones outside of the 'smartphone' world.

So, when I go comparing the iPhone to 'phones I know' - it's a tough sell.

My most recent phone was a Sony Ericsson K790A. I bought it for multiple reasons, but one of the main reasons was it's 3.2 megapixel camera that was integrated into it. That phone has an incredible battery life. I could go for days without a charge AND when it came time to charge it - it would go from dead to totally charged in less than an hour. It has a screen that people would comment about. Overall - a great phone AND Sony Ericsson has good customer service.

So, now to the iPhone. I'll give you the negatives first.
1. No MMS.. (Multimedia Message Service). What this means is that I can't "text message" a photo. I can send text messages - but not a photo. (I can email a photo). This only matters when it comes to my blog. This is the way that you send photos to a blog from a phone. Rumors is that this will be updated.

2. No user accessible sim card. The sim card in the iPhone is sealed into the unit - just like the battery. In the past, I've moved my sim card from phone-to-phone as needed. When I was in California City, I used to put my sim card into a 'less valuable' phone when I was building - so I'd stand less chance of damage. I think I see the reason for this with the iPhone. There's a lot of information on the iPhone that doesn't apply to a regular 'sim card' phone. It could create data problems if you changed out sim cards. Still, I'd like to be able to move my card to another phone if I wanted to.

3.Camera. As I'd pointed out - it's a tough comparison to compare ANY phones camera to my Sony E. This one does just fine at 2.0 megapixels, but I don't feel I have quite the exposure control that I had with the Sony E. Also, the location of the shutter trigger on the iPhone is a little funky with it being a 'soft' key on the screen. It'll just take a little getting used to. The photo at the top of this post is from the iPhone..

What I DO like
1. Very easy to use interface. Things work as you'd expect and there's no big surprises in the flow of the work. Easy to learn and get used to.

2. The keyboards. Apple made variable keyboard for whichever screen you are in. They are all still QWERTY layout, but some of them have other options that make sense for the application. For example, if you're in the web browser, there's a ".com" button so that you don't have to make 3 extra keystrokes - because they know you likely want to put .com on the end of the web address you're typing in. It's a well thought out software for the layout of keyboard.
If you've been paying attention with the 'hype' about the iPhone, you may have heard that the keyboard's "soft" keys are very small and easy to make a mistake. I think this is true HOWEVER; Apple has created some amazing software that 'fixes' your spelling mistakes and even corrects major misstrokes. It's amazing how much it's 'on the money' with what I MEANT to type as opposed to what I DID type. It nearly magic.

3. Full fledged email. There's nothing short on features here and any email I've done on a phone was with a regular numeric keyboard so it was a pain in the butt. Anyone coming from another 'smart' phone won't see this as a big leap, but I certainly do. I am aware however; that having email with you at all times can be detrimental. I have friends with other 'smart' phones who have their email setting on "push". That's where the email is sent to you phone at the moment it's sent to you. I've seen how this affects their life (I don't even think THEY see how it affects their life) and I want to make sure it doesn't happen to me. I won't set mine on 'push' - this way, I'll have to take an action to get my email. Hopefully I'll use the tool and not let the tool use me.

4. Full browser. Just like the ads for the iPhone say - it has a full browser that's very easy to use. I even did some banking from it. It's the whole internet on your phone. THAT is a big deal to me. I use the internet for a lot of things. I really like looking up facts and just finding out the answer to general questions as they come to me and having the whole whole world on my belt is extremely appealing and probably the number one reason that I was drawn to the iPhone (other than it's just plain COOL

5. Maps. I didn't really think much about this feature until I started playing with it. It's really just cool. Google maps has written a special application for the iPhone. I can put in any town and it'll show me a scaleable map of that town - down to street level. I can also see satellite photos of the same areas. I can find directions between 2 places as well. Now, all of that isn't super special - since you can do it on the internet the same way. The difference is that this app is really fast AND while in a certain map area, I can put in a topic - like PIZZA - and it'll show me all the pizza places on the map using little 'push pin' type graphics. Then, I can touch that 'pin' and all the info about that pizza restaurant will pop up and all I have to do is touch the phone number and it will dial it. That's an example that uses pizza, but you can do the same with any subject: taxi, restaraunt, hotel, car repair - anything. Now that's a handy deal.

I have only used the iPhone for a little over a day and so far I like it alot other than the items mentioned. It's not the perfect device, but if we waited on the perfect device to come out - we'd be waiting forever.

One really cool thing about the iPhone is that Apple released it's programming information to developers about a month ago and so I sure that hundreds of other uses for the iPhone are just around the corner.

Yeah, I'm a gadget person. This gadget is not needed by everyone, but it sure is cool.