Jon's Network

It’s been almost 3 weeks since I bought the iPhone. To say I like it is an understatement. I have a visceral attachment to it. I’ll admit it. I’m like Gollum and the Ring. The iPhone may not have all the features under the sun, but the features it does have are transparent, integrated and usable. In short, powerful. I wrote about my brief experience with the Helio Ocean. The feature set for the Ocean is amazing, but it lacks powerful usability. Let me run through some of the points from that post now that I have logged some time with the iPhone:

Video Download/Streaming: Trailers look beautiful on the well-sized screen and the YouTube widget is fun (but it doesn’t return the same search results as the normal version). Safari on the iPhone doesn’t support flash yet. Listening to mp3s on the internet rocks. The EDGE network isn’t nearly as bad as I was led to believe from all the analysts, so chalk that up to FUD. Still, faster speeds would be nice. The WiFi radio saves the day more than you would expect in that regard.

GPS/Google Maps: Before I bought the iPhone I thought I might feel the lack of this feature. Now, I don’t care if they ever add it. The Google Maps widget generates maps and directions with aplomb (even on EDGE) and has amazing integration with the address book. I’m satisfied. It would be cool to extend the iPhone via Bluetooth with a GPS device someday anyway.

Web Surfing: I’m blown away at how well the iPhone presents the web. Safari is the killer app of the iPhone in my opinion. Browsing the internet with the large touch screen is easy and enjoyable. Like Cleverboy, I have found myself many times grabbing my iPhone and surfing the web while sitting in front of my computer. Hard to believe? Believe it. It’s that natural. I miss the status bar to see where links will lead me and a quick way to del.icio.us my favorite pages. I have been using the Safari bookmarking instead. I have yet to try out many of the new iPhone web apps (other than Ta-Da Lists, BeeJive, and iChess).

Music: I have never used an iPod other than a shuffle (if you can believe that) so this is my first real experience with an iPod. I would like to have an external button iPhone to skip a song so I don’t have to pull it out of my pocket to touch the screen.

Games: There are no built in games, but games designed for the iPhone are only a web page away should I ever need them.

Messaging: I don’t feel the lack of IM, like many other reviewers. If you must have IM, then use BeeJive. It’s a web app, but you can’t tell. The implementation of SMS on the iPhone has dramatically increased the amount of text messages I send, because it is so easy. The soft-keyboard took a day to get used to, but it was a great engineering decision to develop a soft keyboard in my opinion.

Contact Sync: Contact sync via iTunes is superb.

My iPhone Gripes

The AT&T sound quality worse is than I experienced for the last 6 years with T-Mobile. The speakerphone isn’t loud enough.

My iPhone Wishlist

• Bonjour. I want to be able to stream my iPhone music, photos (and files someday?) to other computers, AppleTVs, Airports, and iPhones.
• Video capture. The iPhone camera rocks. I actually take pictures now. I want video too.
• Dictionary/Thesaurus Widget
• Right now, the iPhone opens at the Home location when you unlock it. It would be nice to have it unlock to a another user-chosen location depending on what feature is used the most. I would like to choose to have it open in the phone, email or Safari. Update: The phone will open back up to where you left it when it locked the interface, so this sort of changes things.

For You Fence-Sitters

I know there are many of you that are trying to decide between a Helio Ocean (or similar) and the iPhone. If you look at a feature matrix, the iPhone will probably lose,(Cleverboy discusses this). Don’t consider features alone. Consider how well the interface is designed. How big is the screen? Consider how the features are integrated and how each function flows into another. How easy is it to browse or share photos, webpages or notes? How easy is it to map out a new location and couple it with an existing contact? How easy is it to check your voicemail? Go to the store and try the iPhone out. Notice how the superior design and integration of “standard” features makes you feel powerful, well-equipped and savvy. Suddenly lack of GPS, IM, 3G, custom ringtones, etc. doesn’t matter.

Do you have any gripes or wishes to add?