Will the iPhone change my life? - 2

Ok so it's 4 and a half days since I started using the iPhone. I use my phone quite a bit and this is definitely a change from my Samsung Black Jack II with Windows Mobile 6. I had that phone for over 2 years and I'm very proficient with it. I'm Alice in Wonderland with a Mac...everything is strange and doesn't make sense and Chris Pirillo is the grinning Chesire Cat trying to give me directions, but it sounds like riddles and rhymes. I was some what concerned that this would be the same for the iPhone, but the iPhone is not as foreign. However, contrary to what most tell me, it's not extremely intuitive either. I've had to gather tips and tricks from other iPhone users and look things up on the web. However, the implementation is usually pretty cool. I have yet to say "WTF were they thinking?" Which, if you know me, is pretty good. Still, my tester brain sees the tradeoffs and the decisions the designers made and I think that within the box they had to play in, they made good choices. So, onto the specifics.

Since some people call me (in a fun teasing way) a Mac hater, let me lead with likes.

Touch - I knew I my next phone would have touch. iPhone touch is very nice. I still make mistakes typing or pressing the wrong button or my touch doesn't register for some reason. This will probably improve, but it's much slower than I'm used to. Typing without looking is pretty impossible. I guess it's good because I really shouldn't text in the car, but I'm slower on the touch keyboard. iPhone touch might just keep me on the iPhone if nothing else comes close
Shazam - I <3 this app. I hear Midomo is better, but it's not free.
Emoji - Cute!
YouTube - LOVE how it expands to fill the screen
photos - LOVE how they also expand to fill the screen
Tweetdeck - especially now that the API limit is raised
it's pretty - this is good in some places, not so much in others
quick silence/vibration switch - quicker than I could do it on Windows Mobile
voicemail list - love how I can choose which one to play
customization - cute cases and the right apps for me (when I find them)...this is where iPhone is winning...definitely. Easy to download...just need to make it easier to filter.

So, to what I don't like or am still trying to figure out.

How do I set speed dial numbers? I really, really, really miss this feature and I can't use all the features of my earbud without it.
How do I change the search engine on Safari? This is likely more of a political issue between companies, but still...
battery life - yes I know I can buy a battery pack, but it makes the phone clunky
Notes font - is that comic sans? ARGH How do I change that?
performance on the 3G could use an improvement...I hear 3GS improves this
touch is great...possibly the best out there right now (I haven't tried all the others) , but suffers from two issues...1) apps are not consistent. Sometimes swiping sideways works, sometimes it doesn't. Some text activates with touch, others don't. This can be a bit confusing and is more stuff I need to store in my brain. 2) It doesn't always work. Maybe it's my fingers? Maybe this will improve as I learn to use it better. We'll see.
cost...why does it cost me $10/month more for less than I had with my Windows Mobile phone? - that's a question for AT&T
no multimedia texting - coming, but will AT&T charge more for it? I also had this before

So, what's the ruling on iPhone changing my life? Here's how my life has changed so far...I can't easily use my phone while driving (I know, I know, I shouldn't use it anyway) and I can't use my earbud the way I was using it. I use the phone less due to battery life...only until I solve this. I'm looking forward to trying out some apps I've downloaded and looking for ways to do use them. I haven't connected up to work email because it costs more so I'm not constantly looking at that...definitely an improvement. Maybe not so much for work, but good for me. :)

So my experience is improving. Until next time....

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Comment by Dean on July 27, 2009 at 2:47am: Can you give us an update? How you feel about the phone now, in general and in comparison to your old phone...

Comment by Michelle Gamboa on July 6, 2009 at 12:41am: Thanks Debbie, I'll look into your suggestion.

Comment by Michelle Gamboa on July 6, 2009 at 12:40am: I saw one free app for speed dial, but it only speed dials 1 number. :) - Favorites is ok...but not exactly what I want. I'm getting used to it though.
The emoji in notepad didn't fix my font issue. :( If anyone learns how to fix this please...please let me know.
Midomi used to be free it is now $4.99. :( But I really like Shazam so I'm ok with that.
For battery, I'm trying out the Mophie this week. I'll let you know how it goes.
$10/mo more because they expect that people will use their data more on the iPhone? I'm a heavy data user to begin with. I had unlimited data with my BJ II and I have unlimited data now...I'm not getting better throughput with the $10 more so I think it's AT&T gouging me.
Yeah, the whole Enterprise story...not a big fan of that either. But I guess I get it. I get a LOT more email on my work account. - on a side note, not having constant access to my work mail is very liberating.

Comment by Debbie Chong on July 4, 2009 at 10:51am: I use an external battery pack when I am unable to charge during the day. I went with the Case-Mate Fuel. You have to search Fuel on their site to find it. Doubles the weight but it has more power than the Richard Solo battery pack and if you Twitter Case-Mate, you may get a discount. I bought it during one of their sales and it was 20% off. Case-Mate has great selection of cases and often on discount or sale. More reasonably priced than other manufacturers.

Comment by Debbie Chong on July 4, 2009 at 10:48am: AT&T asks you to pay extra for Enterprise use with Outlook. However, you can connect to Outlook without this. Just set up the Outlook. It's a fee that business customers have to pay when they have iPhones but if you are on your own plan, just connect.

Comment by Chris Pirillo on July 4, 2009 at 9:52am: There's likely an app for speed dial, you can change the default search engine in your Settings, I'm using a Richard Solo battery pack (and it's not adding bulk TO the iPhone), notes font IS annoying, $10/mo more because AT&T knows people would use data more on the iPhone vs. other phones.

Comment by Joe Flood on July 4, 2009 at 5:08am: Hi Michelle! Couple of things about the downsides you mentioned!

* How do I set speed dial numbers? You add them to your favourites tab in the phone app... it's not quite the same but it's the same idea...
* How do I change the search engine on Safari? Settings app > Safari > Search Engine... you can only choose from Google or Yahoo! though, but they are the most popular i guess...
* battery life - not a lot you can do other than the horrible turn-everything-down-or-off thing... if you jailbreak you can get an app called PhoneTool, which switches your phone to airplane mode (and off again) on a schedule, so it can turn off at night to save power - i used to use that
* Notes font - its marker felt actually =P... i don't mind it but i hear similar complaints! there is a way to change it if you jailbreak i believe, but its fiddly and i wouldn't recommend that. However, i found a bug (don't know if it works still in 3.0), where you insert one emoji character into the note and the entire font changes to... helvetica i think, a more standard font anyways...
* performance on the 3G could use an improvement... totally agree, that's what the 3GS is for though - but, if you're jailbroken, make sure if you have MobileSubstrate installed, you don't have too many extensions on it, that REALLY slowed down all my apps and the menu!
* touch is great...possibly the best out there right now (I haven't tried all the others) , but suffers from two issues... the somewhat unpredictable swiping behaviour is down to the people who make the apps... on mac, there are human interface guidelines set by apple, which hope to make all apps work in a consistent way, but i don't think it's quite there with iPhone yet. With regard to ignoring your touch, perhaps you're wearing gloves of some kind or your screen has a cover that's a bit too thick (as i've not seen your iPhone i have to cover all bases xD i'm not trying to patronise!)
* cost... the cost isn't cheap here either, my friend has a winmo phone which is very similar but a lot cheaper to run monthly... it's just how it is with apple products i'm afraid!
* no multimedia texting - we have MMS here in England now with 3.0 ^_^... it works very nicely and O2 don't charge extra - i think 1 MMS works out to 3 SMSs from my allowance... don't know how AT&T will play it though!

Hope this has helped a little! I personally love my iPhone, even though it's being a bit overshadowed at the moment by my recent MacBook Pro purchase (which is also amazing!)

- Javawag

PS: You mentioned midomi... Midomi is free i think, i have it and it rocks! (...i don't remember paying for it?) It's great singing a song, it knowing what it is even though i can't sing to save my life, and then not only that but you can also get all the details on the song, buy it from iTunes etc AND my favourite, listen to other people singing it!! (although your singing isn't saved from the iPhone app... thank god!)

Comment by Michelle Gamboa on July 2, 2009 at 11:33am: Thanks for the info, Johannes S. I believe TMobile can handle the iPhone if the the iPhone is jailbroken. The problem is that, at least in the US, AT&T has the monopoly on the iPhone. This will probably change in the future, but AT&T is already setting the amount that people will pay.

Comment by Johannes S. on July 2, 2009 at 11:28am: To all of you, who can't understand why the iPhone isn't on Verizon:

Verizon is NOT a GSM based service!
The iPhone is a GSM-only phone!

Verizon is CDMA, which no other country (other than the United States of America and a few south-american countries) in the world really uses, other than for mobile internet access, which, since 3.5G GSM arrived, isn't exactly growing in market share.
Believe me, CDMA for internet is SO slow compared to the 3.5G (up to 7.2Mbps in the COUNTRYSIDE, at least where I live) speeds I get when tethering my iPhone. I can hardly get 0.5 Mbps on the CDMA service here, where I currently reside, which is 5-10 miles from a small town and 30 miles from the nearest big city.

Apple chose GSM because of the worldwide usage of it. If the iPhone was US-only, it would be a CDMA phone. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for you, the iPhone isn't a US-only phone and At&T isn't the only carrier of it worldwide. In fact, there are tens of carriers worldwide. And all of them are GSM-only carriers.

In fact, I can't even name a CDMA carrier in the part of world I live in (well, there is an internet-access-only carrier I actually use, but it doesn't count). But I can name many, MANY GSM carriers in Europe.

Comment by Cookenstein on July 2, 2009 at 10:58am: At&t is the one major negative that I have begrudgingly accepted with the Iphone. If Verizon came on board with the Iphone tomorrow, I'd pay the penalty fee to get out of my At&t contract. that is how much I dislike this service. the Iphone however serves all of my tech needs well, as well as downtime timewasters/fun.