An IPhone Revisit

“Call Harold Fox home,” I’ll say. “Subway State Street work,” the phone will reply.

It’s been about a year since I got my iPhone. That’s long enough to form an opinion, right?

I love/hate the phone! No middle ground. Some things are spectacular while others leave me scratching my head.

Recently a friend told me he was shying away from a touchscreen phone because he was scared he wouldn’t be able to hit the keys correctly. That fear, which I shared before getting the iPhone, is overblown. You get used to touching correctly to achieve your goal in a hurry. Even when you miss the auto-correction is mostly good–not always!

There’s so much the phone does… so many reasons to use it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at dinner with co-workers or even talking to a friend and pulled out the phone to find the answer to a question. That’s powerful!

I don’t own a GPS unit for my car, but the iPhone is a more than passable stand-in using free software from MapQuest.

It’s beautifully built. The iPhone is Swiss watchlike in its fit and finish.

What irks me is what the phone won’t do. I can’t sync to my laptop without getting a cable and plugging the phone in. Is the phone capable of syncing wirelessly? Yes, because apps exist to do just that with a jailbroken&#185 phone. Apple just won’t allow it!

The same goes for streaming audio. If I listen to NPR’s streaming programs Apple says they must go through the iPhone’s tiny speaker which is hardly audible in my car. I know I can stream to my Bluetooth earpiece because I have a program which does that, but only on phones which are jailbroken.

Some of Apple’s moves are unexplainable. Others are to protect its revenue stream. That seems stingy considering I’ve already bought the phone.

I like to use the handsfree dialing capability. With my earpiece in one it’s just one press of a button away. It is by far the least dependable part of the phone!

“Call Harold Fox home,” I’ll say.

“Subway State Street work,” the phone will reply.

Then I have to scramble to cancel the call before it goes through.

Once when calling my parents it couldn’t figure out which phone.

“Harold Fox, home or mobile?” it asked.

“Home,” I replied.

“Mobile,” the phone confirmed and off it went to ring up my parent’s cellphone.

I guess the true test of any product is if you’d buy another?

Yes, I would.

&#185 – Jailbreaking refers to unlocking the phone so software which hasn’t been approved by Apple can be installed.

5 thoughts on “An IPhone Revisit”

  1. You do seem like more of the ‘Wild West’ Android type of guy. I bet you’re sporting a Droid XI as soon as your contracts up 🙂

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