As a belated birthday gift from my wonderful husband, I am now a proud owner of an "EVE-stormtrooper-white" 16GB iPhone 3G. I absolutlely LOVE this phone (though I'm still not really all that happy having to jump ship from T-Mobile to AT&T). The 3G download capabilities are by far much faster than that horrible EDGE network. What I love though is being able to hook on to any available Wi-Fi network for ultimate streaming. We tested the GPS capabilities using the nifty Googlemaps GPS tracker Saturday while locating a church for a wedding we were attending. We compared it head to head with our Garmin Nuvi to see which device was more accurate. The iPhone surprisingly told us an alternative path that the Nuvi did not ask us to take considering the road we were asked to turn into was closed off. It also has the feature to view your map in satellite view so you could actually see a snapshot of where you are driving around. The iPhone GPS, however, still needs a little work in terms of suggested routes. If only it had turn-by-turn voice commands... The apps so far have been fair. Most of the ones I've tested out have been free with the exception of two games purchased (super monkey ball and enigmo). What I'm excited about is that epocrates is available for the iPhone FREE (with a user account of course), so that means no more having to search what all these generic vs. brand name drugs are for Pharm all over the web and in books. EReader is also available so all the books I previous had purchased for my iPaq are now viewable on the iPhone. One of the coolest apps I've used so far is Shazam. This app will tag a song that's playing within listening distance and will search for the artist, song name, and album. It's pretty accurate for most any type of music, but it could not recognize foreign or muzak tunes. I was able to tag a song during the wedding reception we attended (I'm Ready by Tevin Campbell... sheesh). The iPhone nicely synced with my contact list and calendar on Outlook. Thanks to the wedding, I'm actually organized when it comes to people's information. My music selection is also just a nice as ever. The actual phone capabilities are fair. It's not the clearest sound in the world. The speakerphone is pretty clear on both ends, but I still have a bit of a hard time hearing the other person. Talking through a bluetooth headset is fair at best. It's not as clear as when I was connected using my Samsung T629. The switching capabilities though between talking on the phone, using the speakerphone, or switching to the headset are not as complicated. My one gripe with the phone features.... no voice activated dialing! The camera picture quality, IMO is quite clear. This is coming from someone that's used a 1.3 mgpxl camera phone for quick shots for years. There's no zoom nor video recording features though. Hopefully, someone will create an app that will take advantage of some of these features. I've learned to upload my iPhone shots to my Flickr account, so now I have a way to post and blog later... speaking of which... Typing is incredibly difficult! Actually, it's slowly getting better. I will miss txting while driving (yes, I know that's a big no-no). I find that I have to concentrate while txting on this little gadget. It has autofill words, but it's not as detailed as on the samsungs or motorollas that I've used. I'm still trying to figure out an effective technique to get better in typing. I do find that using my left hand and typing with my left thumb is actually more effective than using my right. Funny how that works. What's neat about their SMS messaging is, the interface looks just like iChat, so if you regularly text the same people, you'll have the previous windows still open ready to send out messages... that is, if you don't mind having previous chat logs readily available :) The battery life is not as good as I'd like for it to be, but I can't complain. This is practically a mini-computer. Running the 3G network and talking on the same time does cause the device to run very hot, not to mention drain the battery life incredibly quick. However, keeping a car charger on hand and remembering to charge the device every night should solve this problem. One of the bad things I've had happen so far though... I've had a couple of system resets. Nothing major... just resets when trying to activate certain apps. For those that it botched, I got rid of them. This is nothing new to me considering the same thing used to happen on my iPaq. It's inevitable since Apple opened up their iPhone development software to anyone that wants to create apps for their devices. My iPhone has done a system backup every few times I've synced so I'm not too scared of losing anything crucial. Things I would like to see for the iPhone in the upcoming months: 1. Voice activated dialing
2. Video recording
3. Bluetooth file transfering (amazing that this was not even an option on this phone)
4. Bluetooth audio streaming
5. Better camera capabilities (actually, I think this could actually double as a video camera since it keeps getting recognized on my ATI control center every time I connect it. I will investigate this further.)
6. Overall bluetooth usability (how cool would it be to connect to a bluetooth keyboard... I'd be in blog heaven) Things I'd hope for the in the future with the iPhone: 1. Customizable ringers (yes, something as simple as using a song you already have as a ringer or even a cheezy mono ringer would be nice to have as an option).
2. SD card support (If memory was able to be swapped out, that would be incredible... the endless possibilities)
3. AVI read support (I have AVIs I've been able to watch on my iPaq using CORE media player. This allowed me to watch all the anime I've downloaded in better quality than YouTube could ever offer.... and I'd hate to waste time and space converting all the AVI's into MPG4 format just for the iPhone or the iPod for that matter) Overall, I am finding more and more things to love about this device... it's the little quircks (like screen flipping based on motion) that I find facinating about this device. I am sad that AT&T is now taking a chunk of my income monthly, but that's the price I will have to pay to have perpetual connectivity to the world. I guess that means there's no more excuse not to be able to contacted :P | 
