BradPace.com

As anyone who know me knows by now I purchased an iphone about a month ago. Now I am not an Apple zombie (never even used a Mac) but I have been a long time iTunes user and have loved my Ipod video. But as I tell my wife almost everyday, “I LOVE MY IPHONE!”. Here are a few thoughts now that I have used it for a while now:

What I love about the iPhone

1. It looks great. I love the UI and the design of the device. The first thing I did was purchase the super protective cover from Shield Zone. I hate cases and like to just have things in my pockets. This has kept it looking like new. Well worth the money. I also love the touch screen. You can do so much with it.
2. The internet rocks on the iphone. I saw a stat that iphone users use the web 3x more than on any other phone. That’s because it works! The safari browser goes to any website and it has worked on all of them. The only sites it does not work on are some video streaming sites. Like hulu.com and the streaming feature from Netflix. More on this on the salvation part!
3. I love the map, integrated youtube, weather, clock (I had to install a world clock on my treo), and the rest.
4. Email works! I was never able to get my treo to work with email very well other than webmail clients. I tried several programs and hated them. But the email is slick on the iphone. I setup 3 accounts (yahoo, gmail, and my familylink account) in less than 5 minutes and they all worked great. Yahoo has a great push feature for the iphone that is nice (but I since have turned off to save battery). Gmail also works very well.
5. iTunes integration is very nice. You can download music via a wi-fi connection and select which music, videos, and podcasts you want on your phone. I listen to many podcasts regularly and it works great.
6. Business can get done. With the great email and safari support I have been able to do a lot of business on my iPhone. I can access and respond to email. I can get to all our sites and use them. I can even use our facebook app on my phone. I have been able to get work done in the off hour and while traveling.
7. Wi-fi access. I always thought that my Treo should have just come with wi-fi built in. The iPhone easily connects to a wireless network and provides faster access to the web and to email.
8. Lastly is the upgradability of the iphone. They released a new version of the software a few weeks ago and added some great new features. This is what is going to make the iphone rule the world. No other phone I have ever had has actually added features. As Apple opens up the iPhone to 3rd party developers it will only be more popular. When that happens many of the things I don’t like will be fixed by Apple or 3rd party apps.

What I don’t like

1. Battery life is just OK. My Treo had a great battery life and often I did not even charge it for days. The Iphone I have to charge every day or it is dead. If you watch a movie and really use it for several hours the battery goes fast.
2. The headphone jack has a little indent. This makes it so you have to use their headphones or get an adapter. Even though the size is standard the headphone jack hole is set in the phone. This just bugs me and seems like a ploy to force people to buy accessories from them. I bought a $6 adapter and it works fine.
3. Chat is missing. There is no instant messenger client with the iphone. It just seems crazy to me! I am hoping this is fixed when 3rd party developers can get their apps on the iphone. But I have been using meebo.com and it works great. They have an iphone specific version and allows me to chat on all the different IM networks through the safari web browser. But if the browser is not open you cant get chats.
4. Every time I plug the iPhone into its cradle to charge it or to sync, I get a windows popup asking me what I want to do with the photos and files on the phone. I’m sure there is a way to get around this but it just bugs me.
5. iTunes non-music stuff is poor. With my Treo I had the Palm software on my PC. This allowed me to work with my contacts, calendar, and notes on my PC and sync them back to my Treo. No such thing in iTunes. Notes and contacts are kind of an after thought. I have had a hard time importing my contacts into my iphone because there is no feature to do this. The iPhone will do it via the web and a yahoo account. But I want to see them on my PC as well. This also makes the notes app on the phone almost useless. I have started using yahoo notepad and it works pretty well. I hope that Apple fixes this soon.
6. The ring tone scam! The iphone comes with a dozen or so ring tones built in. But there is no way to get a custom ring tone into the phone. You can make clips from many itunes songs into ring tones for $1. Even if you have already paid for the song you have to pay again for the 10 seconds of the song for the ring tone. And I hate ringtones from songs! But I would like more choices of just sounds for funny clips. They don’t even sell anything like this in iTunes.

Salvation through the iPhone

The coolest thing I have found so far is the phone’s ability to access LDS.org via safari. The LDS Church has a great site with tons of great info. They have recently been adding a bunch of audio and video to the site. All this is available via the iphone. The other day I watched a CES fireside video streamed directly to the phone. I also can watch or listen to general conference talks. Read the lesson materials and do searches. Just access to all the info on this one site makes the phone worth it for me.