How I Fell In Love With The iPhone

I had the chance to purchase an iPhone over the summer. I instead purchased a Palm Treo 750 with a Windows Mobile Professional OS. Windows OS, yea I know, scary! I like the WM OS because of its seamless integration with software I use all the time, such as PowerPoint, Word, Excel etc. It comes in handy when my laptop dies or I want to study on the way to a test. The OS itself was very unstable and had memory leaks galore, but I lived with it and was rather happy.  I felt that Windows Mobile was pretty neat.  I felt it was ‘enough’ to do what I needed it to do.  I found Chris Pirillo’s Ustream recording about the exact transition I took from Windows Mobile OS to the iPhone.  It’s 10 minutes long but highly recommended!

I finally decided to take the iPhone plunge and see what the hype was all about. I do state that it is over-hyped to a degree, but what makes the iPhone so desirable is customization and its scalability.

When you purchase a ‘traditional phone’, it comes pre-installed with applications that the manufacturer feels its demographic will find useful. On some handsets, there is some room for customization by downloading a few scarce add-on applications that will eat up your handsets resources pretty heavy. Not to mention the very small amount of space most devices have when compared to the iPhone.

The iPhone plays to our societies desire for customization. It comes pre-installed with your ‘usual’ bells and whistles like: Calendar, Contacts, Call History etc. That’s merely the front cover to the book known as the iPhone. From there users can login to the iTunes app store and begin searching a database of thousands of applications from A to Z, doing stuff you wouldn’t believe could be done on a handset. It can range from something as simple as an application known as the ‘iFlashlight’ which increases your screen brightness all the way and whites out your screen, to an application that can tell you today’s cheapest gas in town or 3D virtual mapping of a mobile social network.

When I dive into the app store, I’m making my iPhone essentially ‘mine’. I am adding applications that I will find useful and making it do what I WANT IT TO DO and it is unique and unlike anyone else.

As more people start purchasing iPhones, the app store has more users rating and reviewing applications, more developers will be apt to design applications as use increases, and the apps and tools that connect iPhone users together will be stronger because more people will be using them. The long term popularity of the iPhone will heavily fall on Apple and their 4G and 5G handsets that will be coming down the line. But knowing their track record, I’m not fearing they will make a ‘Vista’ and really screw up.

Even though you purchase the iPhone, your phone really keeps evolving as more apps are released. What your handset ‘can do’ is constantly evolving and new possibilities are realized literally every day.

The 4G iPhone is rumored to be on tap this summer with a dual-core processor.

There are some user interface things I would change with the handset, it is by no means perfect. But overall I would give the user interface a 4 out of 5. One of the biggest disadvantages of the handset is battery life when you start using data intense applications. But you can’t be slim and sleek with major battery life, at least not yet with current technology. There are some really cool iPhone covers that will trickle charge your battery and 3X your battery life while protecting your handset, pretty neat.

The biggest draw for me minus being a gadget geek; the iPhone and its applications looks to solves life’s everyday problems. Marking your GPS location on map where you parked your car. (Dan, Matt, Anyone) We’ve all been there walking around some downtown metro for an hour looking for a parking garage named Lot 4454. Tip calculator for those Denny’s runs, turn-by-turn GPS navigation to help you around in places your unfamiliar. We’ve all heard that song where we just cant remember who it was by and it drives you INSANE. With the iPhone, just hit a button, and within 10 seconds it will tell you what song it is, the artist and where you can download it from. In a new city and have NO IDEA where a good place to strap on the feed bag is located? Grab you iPhone and great reviews from other users just like you on the best places to eat. You don’t even need to type in your location, the GPS will automatically know the exact street corner your standing on. Find a review you like, click ‘Let’s go there’ and the iPhone will give you walking directions to the location with a map. Or maybe you just want to kill some time on a flight playing the guitar, drums, piano, maybe even a beat box. You can do all that on the iPhone.

While not perfect, I’m now sold on the iPhone ….

iPhone, solves life’s dilemmas, one problem at a time while delivering a quality handset.