As I’ve mentioned previously, I intended getting the new Apple iPhone, and on Friday night I did. I’ve been waiting for a good price to come out by one of the phone providers, and finally, Virgin Mobile came to the party on Friday with the best prices in Australia.
My original plan was to purchase the phone outright, and then go onto a cheap pre-pay plan with Virgin Mobile, but when they came out with the phone on Friday, their prices meant that I could go on a plan and pay less over time than if I was to follow my original plan. So I walked into a store on Friday after work and walked out with one half an hour later.
It’s sad that some people who signed up with one of the other major telcos (on their incredibly exorbitant pricing plans) are either still waiting for their phone to be delivered, or stuck with a very expensive plan.
I’m pretty happy with what the phone does, and how it does it. If you don’t already know about the iPhone, then you probably have no interest in it, so I won’t bore you with the details. If you do already know about it, then there’s no point in going through the details, since you’re already aware of them! 🙂
However, there’s a few small things I don’t like about it, which I might talk about, and finish up with what I LOVE about it.
Dislikes
- The touchscreen interface sometimes doesn’t realise you’ve touched it, and you have to do it a few times before it notices and brings up what you’re after.
- Bluetooth. Oh My God. This is of major importance to me, as I want to use my phone hands-free while driving in the car. My new GPS unit has bluetooth hands-free functionality for phones, but the iPhone can’t be recognised by it. I found out that Apple created their bluetooth functionality only to work with a couple of hands-free headsets, produced by Apple… How freakin’ stupid is that!
- Some applications decide they want to crash in the middle of using them. I imagine that’s due to faulty coding from the developers. Still annoying though…
- No copy and paste functionality. A lot of people are annoyed about this, including me. You can’t copy phone numbers or text AT ALL!
- Unable to forward text messages. On every other phone in the world, you can forward text messages that you’ve received. Not on this one, no sirree.
Likes
- The interface is smooooth. And usually very responsive and fast. It’s great to have a touch-controlled interface that appears and disappears quickly and smoothly.
- The display is bright and clear. Easy to read.
- Web browsing is very fast, and the display of web pages is also clear. You can use finger gestures to zoom in or out on a page, so that you can see all of the page at once, or zoom in on some text or an image.
- Wireless (wifi) integration is excellent. If there is a wifi network available, it will use that for data instead of the mobile network, which saves you on your data costs.
- Email access is fast. It quickly set up my gmail account, and the interface for accessing and managing email is excellent.
- Social networking. This is the biggest reason I got the phone. I can use web-based tools or a Twitter phone application to keep up to date with friends, status reports and personal messages. I can take photos and upload them quickly to websites, so that I can show my network where I’m at and what I’m doing. And it’s all so quick and easy.
- Fast integration with the Apple laptop I have (MacBook Pro) and iTunes (for syncing everything between iPhone and computer). iTunes allows you to manage the music you want on the iPhone, as well as any Applications you download. I also enjoy the syncing of calendar functionality, as being reminded of appointments and meetings and events is important to me.
- Managing calendar events with iCal on the computer is easier and more configurable than managing them on the iPhone (limited event customization), but it’s excellent that the customization you do on the computer is transferred over to the iPhone.
There’s so much more about the iPhone that’s really cool, but those are my top likes and dislikes.
If you only need a phone, you don’t need the iPhone. But if you want a whole lot more than ‘just a phone’, then you might want to consider getting it. I recommend it. 🙂
Thanks for reading! Please add your own thoughts below.
Don't forget to subscribe for new posts sent to you by email!