justin-shepard.net

I finally managed to get ahold of a 3G iPhone a couple of weeks ago (those of you following me on Twitter have heard about it already). When it was announced, I was hyped up about the thing for weeks ahead of time. And then . . . I couldn’t get one. I didn’t really want to wait in line, which made it difficult to acquire one in a timely manner. And then of course, I’m also lazy, so a month-and-a-half had passed before I finally managed to get in and buy an iPhone.

My biggest concern at first was that all that time waiting had cooled my desire to the point where I wouldn’t be really excited about having the iPhone. Fortunately, that turned out to not be the case and I proceeded to spend Saturday afternoon and much of Sunday just playing around with the iPhone. I downloaded a few apps (and discovered that typing my Apple Store password is an interesting challenge on the iPhone keyboard), used said apps, surfed the web, and so on. All in all, the iPhone held up very well to my initial expectations.

After the initial “ZOMG WOW!!” phase wore off (mostly), my iPhone and I settled into a more normal user-gadget relationship. The biggest and most immediate change was the reduction of the number of things in my pockets. I used to carry both my old cell phone and my iPod in my pocket, which ran the danger of one scratching the other in addition to space issues. The iPhone was therefore a nice reduction in things crammed into my pockets, and is in very little danger of scratching itself. The one interesting side-effect of replacing my iPod with my iPhone is that I’ve gone back to listening to the radio when I’m driving (most of the time). This is mostly because I’m worried that the FM adaptor I was using with my iPod is partly responsible for its degraded battery capacity, and not anything specifically wrong with the iPod feature of the iPhone. I have an old cassette adaptor I will be trying once I find it.

As far as being a phone goes, the iPhone works great. I haven’t had any problems with dropped calls (though I don’t make a huge number of calls in the first place). The form factor is quite nice, and I haven’t had any issues with being heard that I know of, which was a concern (due to the non-flip nature of the iPhone, the mic is further from my mouth than it was on my Razr). Most of the problems I have had have been my own fault. The one thing that is an issue is the volume of the speakerphone isn’t enough to carry more than a foot or so. This makes hearing people calling into our daily standups a bit difficult. I did a bit of experimenting, and it seemed that going into speakerphone mode bypasses the headset jack, so plugging a speaker into that jack for increased volume doesn’t look to be an option either. While this is a daily nuisance, knowing about it ahead of time certainly wouldn’t have stopped me from getting the iPhone.

Battery life on the phone is decent. I’m currently charging it every other night (my uncle, who does a fair bit more calling on his iPhone, said he charges his every night). I could probably get more out of the battery, but that would involve having less fun with the phone, so every other night will have to do. =)

I’ve downloaded around a dozen apps for the iPhone now, ranging from from free to cheap (no $999.99 purchases here). The download and upgrade process goes quite smoothly. My only early complaint was that upgraded apps moved to the end of the app list, though the 2.1 update seems to have fixed that issue. I also had an issue where none of the apps would start, which took multiple syncs to fix (removing and then readding the apps to the phone). Most of the apps I’ve downloaded have been of the leisure/entertainment sort, which in conjunction with airplane mode has given me things to do on plane flights. I’ve been trying a few productivity apps, with the idea of making the iPhone a well-rounded PDA.

Overall, I have been extremely pleased with my iPhone it fills the role of phone quite well, and does enough other things that I don’t feel the need to try and add more devices to my pockets. I would definitely recommend the iPhone to anyone who’s looking for a device that can fill a multitude of roles without sacrificing being a phone.