Hoist by my own petard: my iPhone review


I bought it, and I like it, but am I narcissistic or do I just like a nice toy?

The good news

I’m no longer carrying a phone, a PDA and an iPod when I know I need all three, but I have all three whenever I have my phone.

The big screen and its zoom feature makes web browsing practical, unlike either my old phone or PDA.

The SMS feature – making SMS appear as an IM chat – is great.

The phone and visual voicemail are superb. The iPod is great and its limited size doesn’t matter in practice.

WiFi is useful after all, if you work at Canary Wharf. Thanks Cafe Brera!

The bad news

As I said before, EDGE is second best, and not being able to connect from my laptop is sub-optimal. This is mitigated by iPhone’s great email and browsing features and the fact that WiFi is often available when I want to use my MacBook online (airports etc).

iPhone lacks two simple features: no to-do list and notes don’t sync. Doh!

The camera couldn’t be more basic.

Conclusion

What have I gained compared to my old K750i phone and Palm Tungsten T|X? Convenience.

While I have lost the two to-do lists I had, I rarely used either. Both had music facilities, but I never loaded the cards. I could use GPRS data, but it was a poor experience. I had a great hands-free kit built in to the car, but I’m usually on a bike now, and in any case, it’s a distraction I don’t want and that I was rarely using.

I’d actually stopped using my Tungsten, simply because I couldn’t be bothered to carry it. The phone feature I used apart from the phone, was its LED torch: all the rest was unusable thanks to the little screen and number-pad keyboard.

So, it turns out the iPhone is the right answer simply because of usability. Mail now includes to-do items and notes, so presumably there will be a software update shortly to sync both with the phone…

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