Obligatory iPhone Review One Week On
I've had my iPhone 3GS for about a week now and not surprisingly, I like it. I like it a lot. Then again, I am hopelessly late to the smartphone party and anything remotely better than my old Razr is going to feel like I swapped my Commodore 64 for a MacBook Pro. The 3GS is a great phone. It's fast and for the most part just bloody works.
My old phone contract expired a couple of months ago and since then I've been pondering which phone to get next. I spent some time playing with a Palm Pre, a Blackberry Storm, and a Motorola Droid. Of those, only the Droid seemed like it was almost good enough to own. Almost.
So, my one week in "far too soon to be giving this kind of writeup, but doing it anyway", er, writeup.
The Apps
One week in doesn't give anyone enough time to compile a decent app review so I won't even try. But what I have found that I like so far, and shown on my home screen are the following:
Google Earth
Evernote (iPhone port of my fave note taking, organizing desktop app)
AroundMe (finds businesses, er, around me)
TweetDeck (iPhone port of my fave desktop Twitter client)
Flixster (movie showtimes, information, and theater locator)
Shazam (music identifier)
Wikipanion (better than navigating Wikipedia in Safari)
Reader (mobile Google Reader)
Flickit (all round mobile Flickr gadget & uploader)
Last.fm (for listening to music streams)
IMDb (for movie junkies everywhere)
Most importantly, I replaced the Apple Mail client with the mobile version of Gmail. Which you must do immediately.
The Keyboard
The keyboard really isn't that bad. I thought that my big chubby digits would be a problem and to a certain degree they are, but the auto-correction is scarily accurate and I've found myself typing emails & texting at quite a good pace.
The Camera
The cameras in phones suck. All of them. The question then becomes, how much does it suck and can you live with it? Surprisingly, for a phone, the camera is not entirely made of fail.
Obviously it's no DSLR, but it's no slouch either. So that coupled with the rather spiffy Flickit app to upload directly to Flickr makes for a rather nice 'on the go' pic taking experience.
The Games
I haven't spent much time trying out various games because I really haven't gotten much further than Orbital. I'm hopelessly addicted and it might just be the finest $0.99 I ever spent.
Check me out with a high score of 40. Ahem. I didn't say I was any good at it.
Stop Waffling
Ok, it's fast, it works, I'm happy with it. Can't really say any more than that.
<green>Jealousy attack! Oh no, the envy monster got me.</green>
Have fun with your new toy Kevin. Don't forget to try out some of the augmented reality apps - I'd really like to read your opinion on a few of those.
jonathan... I haven't tried any of the augmented reality apps yet. Seen a few interesting ones here. Will have to try a couple of them out the next time we go hiking. Oh, I did giggle at the FirePower app.
D'OH! Why'd you have to go a remind me that I have an Orbital addiction?!?
Welcome to the fold...
dave... this game takes "just one more go" to a whole different level doesn't it? Addictive doesn't quit cover it. So, you a gravity or pure mode player? Your high score?
What makes the gmailapp better than the Mail in the iPhone in YHO? :)
6ft5... I should have said, if you're using the Mail app on your iPhone to access your gmail account then switch immediately. The mobile gmail app is more like a fully functioning gmail (i.e folders, archiving, labels, starring, full conversation view) than the Apple mail app.
I use both the Mail app (for accessing gmail) and the gmail mobile interface. Both have advantages. If Google would release a push-enabled app with local cache, I'd almost certainly switch to that. Until then, I'll likely stick with my current pattern, which is to read new mail and compose mail in Mail and use gmail for looking up old mail.
Note that it seems some people have a bit of trouble managing their gmail from Mail. I don't have an issue. Delete moves to the Trash folder on the server (a configuration somewhere). For archive, I just move to the All Mail folder, and for Spam I move to the Spam folder. Labels are a different matter, but I stopped using those (except for a few that are added by rules) before I got my iPhone.
I am still with the Commodore 64, or Sony Ericsson C905 to be more accurate.
Enjoyed your review, especially 'Which you must do immediately.' Way to camp it up dude.
ren... mobile gmail is push enabled, I think they added that back in September as I recall. As a long time gmail user, I just prefer the look and feel of gmail mobile as it's close to the actual gmail. I'm subscribed to all kinds of mailing lists and have them archived into their own "folders" (well, labels but you know what I mean) so being able to access those folders is important - so is seeing the true gmail conversation view and being able to star important emails etc.
spd... camp it up? Hey, I do what I can mate.
I didn't realize you had gotten a new phone. Congrats.
The mobile Gmail is something I love. Granted, as Ren mentioned above, I would love to see a true mobile app/client that stored your Gmail messages offline like they are online (all replies are part of the same message thread instead of each one separate).
As an iPhone user (part time since it's my second phone), I can say the apps and the user interface are really good. The more improvements are made, the better.
marty... thankies. I might have misunderstood what you meant but all replies of the same message thread already appear grouped together in mobile gmail don't they? That's one of the main reasons I prefer it to just reading gmail via the native iPhone mail client. It's more like having the full gmail on your phone ;-) Oh, and couldn't agree more about the user interface.