My Thoughts on the iPhone 3G after 10 days

*Update (7/25/08): I had my first dropped call yesterday on the iPhone after which, it rebooted itself.

*Update (7/30/08): Apps are definitely buggy. I had 5 apps that needed to be updated. After the update, 3 out of 5 stopped working. After multiple deletes and reinstalls, only 1 is working again.

*Update #1 (7/31/08): My friend, Ben, brought up a key missing feature that I didn't have on my list: the ability to tether the iPhone to a computer to get 3G broadband connection. I'm not the first to complain about it. Clearly this smells of AT&T trying to protect their existing wireless broadband revenue. How beautiful would be if you can open your MacBook anywhere with an iPhone and voila! you got broadband wireless.

*Update #2 (7/31/08): My Google Mobile application stopped working this morning. Worked fine last time and no update was done on it. It just launches and closes itself. Pretty annoying.

I was in Chicago the weekend iPhone 3G came out. My cousin just happens to live a few blocks from the Apple store. I got in line at 10am on Sunday, store opened at 11am and I left the store with my 16gb black iPhone around 11:45am. I won't bore you with the details about my issues with activation.

First of all, the in-store activation was not executed well. AT&T store can handle all types of accounts (business, family, upgrades new activation, etc) but they didn't have any phones. Apple stores had all the phones but they were not equipped to handle all accounts. Pretty screwy.

After 10 days off use, the iPhone is a nice device with a pretty innovative UI. Is it the best phone out there? No, I don't think that exists yet. I think they all suck but iPhone just sucks less. As I use it more, the iPhone is still a bleeding edge device but I give Apple credit for actually make usable bleeding edge device through great design and marketing.

I generally like the iPhone. Enough so that I'm selling my Blackberry. Like my MacBook, I want to make this my primary device.

But I do have a number of issues with the iPhone for those of you reading this blog entry:

1. Battery life is disappointing. I know it does a lot more than standard handsets but I think all of us expected Apple would pull of a miracle. I have to pretty much turn off all unnecessary features like Wi-Fi, GPS, Push, 3G to use the device 1 day without recharging. And they way they have all the settings spread around, it's a little pain to peck around and turn them off and on.
2. No copy/cut & paste. Incredible they didn't get this in with the 3G release
3. Slow application response. Most noticeable in the address book. I have to wait about 5 sec before I can scroll to find a contact.
   
4. No MMS. Decent camera on the device but can't do MMS?
5. No Video. It can play video so why can't it take video?
6. No digital zoom on the camera.
   
7. No easy way to transfer files like PDF to the iPhone for later reading, etc. Right now, I have to e-mail it myself as an attachment.
8. No way to search mail. The mail client is very basic. No threading, no search and no quick sorting.
9. Can't compose mail with attachment. You can e-mail photos from the photo application. I think if they fix #7, they'll fix this problem.
   
10. Doesn't recognize phone numbers in calendar entry so you can't call someone directly from calendar. And since there's no copy & paste, you better have pencil/paper handy. Not sure why this is the case since they alreadymake phone numbers and e-mail addesses active in e-mail and SMS.
11. No support for Flash but I think Jobs is holding back this one and will be release soon. See my prior blog entry.
    
12. Touch keyboard takes getting used to especially for those us used to real QWERTY keyboard on a Blackberry.
13. Compared to a Blackberry, iPhone does not compare as a messaging device. iPhone fanatics may disagree but that probably means they never tried a Blackberry.
    
14. MobileMe is very underwhelming even after they fixed some of the issues. Instead of creating another sync point, I wish they partnered with Google for Address Book and Calendar. Now my Address Book and Calendar is sync'd between MobileMe, iCal, Mac AddressBook, Outlook, Google Calendar and Plaxo. Even though it seems to be working, I'm still not 100% confident.
15. I'm still not a big fan of carrier locked phones. Especially if they take advantage of the consumer by raising rates and making the process harder than it has to be.
    

Most of the shortcomings on the device can be addressed via software updates so I'm confident that many of them will be resolved because they are such obvious holes in the product.

On the positive side:

1. Solid, quality build. A bit heavier than I'd like but feels solid in the hand. It's too bad you feel compelled to put a case on it because it looks so sleek bare.
   
2. The multi touch interface works surprisingly well better than Nokia n800 which I've owned before.
3. Accelerometer also works well and is fairly accurate.
   
4. The 1 button, while a bit limiting, is a smart idea. I think another button could be useful to make the device more functional.
   
5. The Airplane mode is useful if you travel often. I wish I could bring feature to my main application page.
6. The browser with Wi-Fi is definitely handy. 3G is faster than Edge but it's not Wi-Fi speed.
7. The App Store is useful and definitely worth watching to see how it grows as a distribution channel. No one, not even Nokia, has been able to pull off anything similar.
   
8. It makes you want to be single because it definitely is a conversation starter. :-)

So should you get one? If you are heavy Blackberry user who does lots of e-mails, stick with the Blackberry. If you still want an iPhone, get it as a 2nd phone or just get the iTouch and pretend to talk into it when you feel the need to impress someone. If you like gadgets and can live with the shortcomings, welcome to the Brotherhood.