After six months of iPhone these are my reflections, in the form of “The iPhone is a …”
Time saver
The only thing to complete your daily todo list is to wait for an email and redirect it to someonelse? Go to the beach, play volley and in the pause between one set and the other check the email and reply/redirect accordingly.
Angryness preventer
You have to go to pick your girlfriend up. You’d really like to check some more news or finish reading a blog post, but you agreed to be at her place at 9 pm. You are on time, she is late. With no iPhone you’d probably feel angry. Grab your iphone out of the pocket and finish checking news. Stumbled upon something interesting? Use Read It Later.
Boredom preventer
Bored to wait at the bus stop? Nobody to talk to and the bus is late? Open one of the tons of applications and play with it. Side effect: might loose the bus.
Good guide
Looking for a bank around you? a bar? Open up Around Me and find what you need.
Got lost. Open the Maps application and follow the path to get to your destination.
Cool to program
Tired of virtual machined/garbage collected languages? Looking for some new development platform to expand your knowledge and your business? Have a look at the iPhone. I bought it because of development purposed (top secret at the moment) and I ended up with the iPhone as my daily technological companion. There is plenty of tutorials, books, forums and open source code to learn from.
Probably everything I described above can be experienced with some other 3G enabled phone, except the cool-to-programness, which is what I appreciate mostly at the moment.
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Conclusion: the iPhone helps you connect to the Internet (but at a high cost).
@thai I had other internet capable phones before, but none of them allowed me to live the scenarios described above. I was able just to quickly reply to *some* email, and after 10 minutes of usage I felt frustrated by something (network slow, low readability, etc.). Now I can work for even 2 hours without feeling the need of a computer.
I almost got an iphone, but when I realised that I’d have to buy a mac to write programs for it, that idea went out the window. Now I have a HTC Hero android phone and I’ve very happy with it. I can write for it from any desktop machine, install apps to it over USB or wifi, it can run apps in the background, and with the native SDK you can escape the VM. Also having a trackball, and being able to change the battery and microSD card is nice :)
@Spacebat I had a mac before buying an iPhone. So for me probably it has been “natural”, or at least I did have the issue of changing machine. As for memory I did not feel the need of a card slot. Probably battery substitution will be an issue, but I hope to have sold the iphone before that happens :)
@Cesare, definitely there are some aspects in which the iphone is the better device. Like you, if I had a mac I’d probably have an iphone now. I’m just glad that there is finally some credible competition coming on to keep things moving.
I’ve found the same things to be true of my android, its a time sink but for time that would otherwise be wasted, waiting for other things to happen.
@Spabat I think I can say it brings the office out of the office. As for competition I think it is essential. That’s why I am investigating also Android and Palm SDK.
If you’re joined at the hip with the internet…I suppose it’s a good thing.
Personally, I can survive quite nicely without it.
My email will still be there when I return home as will the blog post I was going to make…on my 26″ monitor.
@Rod I survived as well when I had no iPhone. The point is that now I can do “some” of the tasks I usually did on my home computer on the iphone. For example if a client needs confirmation about a meeting I can directly send a quick confirmation via the iPhone. No need to go home just for that.
If I have an inspiration for a blog post I take a quick note and create a draft by means of the iphone (using the wordpress application). Of course I’ll finish the post on my home computer, which is equipped with a 24”, 2” less than yours :(
I had the original iPhone, but ultimately replaced it with the BlackBerry/iPod Touch combo because of battery life, and T-Mobile’s cheaper rates. The itouch is my favorite gadget, but now I don’t have to sacrifice entertainment to conserve my battery ^_^
@tamahome Onestly I didn’t have any issue with the battery so far. I don’t play much on the iphone, though some games are really addicting :)
hi cesare,
Seems like everyone I know has an iphone now. Me, I’ll just stick with my voice-only cell phone. I think the iphone is a “time saver” just like the internet at work is a “time saver”… not.
I’m sure the iphone is cool and has its advantages, but sometimes we should just unplug from the net and email, and enjoy the peace and quiet of everyday life…
steve :D
@Steve that is true. When you have the iPhone with you each break can become a non break. There are spans of my time I need to be notified as soon as possible about something which has to do with my job, and in those cases the “Internet in your pocket” is invaluable. In all the other cases the iPhone is just a phone for me.
Ever since the introduction of iPhone by Apple, cellular phone became much much more than a mere communication device. This phone brought about a big change within the way individuals stay connected towards the world.
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