At the dawn of the smart phone era, I considered purchasing a phone with Internet access, but quickly shied away from that idea when I realized how painful mobile web browsers were at the time. I made up my mind to wait until a smart phone with a true web browser was available.
Enter the first generation iPhone. Finally, a mobile phone with a true web browser—not to mention an amazing interface—and a standards compliant one at that! The downside was that the first iPhone was tied to the abysmally slow EDGE network and I swore I would never go back to dial-up speed again. Well that and the $600 price tag. The first iPhones hadn’t been unboxed yet and rumors were already swirling that Apple would release a better 3G capable iPhone in a year. So I (reluctantly) waited.
I stood in line at the Apple store the day after the new iPhone 3G was released—with all of the other nutJobs—to fork over $300 and sign a $85/month, two-year contract with AT&T. After using my phone for just under a year, I can say with conviction, it was totally worth every penny.
I don’t think it’s possible for me to quantify just how convenient it is to have Internet access everywhere I go, all of the time. On an almost daily basis, I find myself saying “I can check that with my iPhone.” Movie times? Check. The weather forecast? Done. Closest ATM? Got it. These are very basic examples. I can catch up on the news or blogs when I have some unexpected downtime wherever I am. Want to watch some YouTube clips? Sure!
When I get tired of reading/writing email or surfing the Internet, I can play one of the thousands of games available in the App Store. The iPhone is great without any third-party apps, but the availability of 50,000+ apps (most for free or less than $10) is just mind bending. Like the Apple commercial says, “there’s an app for that,” no matter what you want to do. Not to mention the bliss of having maps, GPS, calendar, iPod, camera, stock charts, memo pad, and voice recorder in my pocket when I need them.
With all that I’ve written above, you may think I don’t have any complaints. Had I written this a month ago, before Apple released iPhone OS 3.0, my biggest complaints would be that there was no copy and paste and no horizontal keyboard in most applications. But in actuality, those weren’t huge things to me; mostly just an infrequent annoyance. The fact that Apple continually updates the phone’s software is such a huge benefit. Rather than getting more obsolete with age, my iPhone keeps getting better. The only real gripe I have at this point is that the iPhone’s Safari browser can’t handle Flash. My conspiracy theory is that Apple wants people to download movies and TV shows from it’s iTunes store rather than watch them on Hulu and it’s cousins, which rely on the ubiquity of Flash-enabled browsers.
So there you have it: an in-depth review of my first year with the iPhone 3G. While it may not be for everyone, I haven’t met anyone with an iPhone who doesn’t absolutely love it.
This WordPress post was written and posted to this blog using the WordPress app on my iPhone.