First Weekend With The iPhone

This past weekend was my first weekend with the iPhone 3G – first Apple product of any type to be exact.  I have been using the AT&T Tilt for the past few months and before that, 2 other WM devices – the Treo 750 and the Cingular 8125.  I’ve been using WM for quite a while as you can see, so the move to the iPhone was a big change for sure.

First impressions – Very nice and smooth UI.  The use of touch is amazing compared to using the touchscreen on a WM device.  Everything is just ‘made’ to touch, unlike the Windows Mobile devices.  Yes, there are programs out there to make WM more touch friendly, but out of the box, there is no comparison.

The App store is really interesting as well.  There is some controversy with the ‘Apple hosted’ application system, but on a whole it’s great to be able to click one button and have access to any application.  Installing over the air has worked wonderfully.  Cool things so far: Remote control of iTunes, Jott, Evernote and Palringo.  For fun, the PhoneSaber is a great way to live the Luke Skywalker dream :).  I haven’t paid for any applications just yet, so these are just the few free ones I have played with since I started over the weekend.

What don’t I like?  Email is a real pain!!!  First thing – There is no notification on the ‘lock’ screen (the ‘slide to unlock’ screen that is so popular).  This is kind of a pain because I have to 1. Click to turn the phone on 2. Slide to unlock the phone.  It might not sound that bad, but there is a notification if you have a missed call on that screen – why not how many e-mails you have???

The other e-mail issue – SO many steps if you have more than one Email account.  I have an Exchange account and a couple of POP accounts on the phone.  Here are the steps to get from one Inbox to another. 

1. Starting from Exchange Inbox looking at my list of Emails
2. Back to the Folder list
3. Back to the accounts screen
4. Click GottaBeMobile Account
5. Click Inbox
6. Now I can see the GottaBeMobile e-mails

It would just be nice to be able to switch between accounts quickly instead of having to press that many times to switch between accounts.

Battery for me has been OK – maybe because I am already in a habit of plugging in each night for the next day.  This was my situation yesterday:

• 3G on all day, and in a 3G area all day
• 50 e-mails on exchange push for day
• 2 Pop accounts polling every 30 mins
• WIFI on for a little while
• Downloading a few documents over e-mail
• Some surfing the web
• Installed a couple of applications

At 10 o’clock there was about 10% battery left.

So far I am happy with the move to the iPhone.  It’s only been a few days, but there are really no ‘show stoppers’ at this point.  The email stuff can get annoying, but some of the other features kind of make up for that.  I added an Invisible Shield to the screen – I wish I would have gotten the whole kit (for the back too), but I can get that later.  Well, those are a few of my thoughts, if you have any questions, just ask and I will try to answer them as best I can!!