I thought it might be of use for others searching and reading on the interwebs to record my thoughts after living with an iPhone for three weeks - enough time to really get used to it, find things I don’t like, things I do like, and so on. Rather than waffle on, I’ll do this as bullet points…

Things I like about the iPhone

• The iPhone operating system and interface make everything else look rubbish - and so they should, because the likes of Nokia, RIM, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Motorolla have been making people put up with rubbish for far too long. You only notice just how good the iPhone interface is when you try to use something else (such as a Palm organiser) - and find yourself trying to do things you cannot.
• MobileMe is fantastic. The ability to sync the iPhone’s address book, calendar and email with the Mac on my desk, and receive push email (a la Blackberry) from my “jonbeckett73@me.com” email account is wonderful. Perhaps I should explain “push” a bit more. As soon as you add or edit a contact, or calendar entry on the mac, it will happen almost instantaneously on the phone - and vice versa - without the phone having to connect to the internet. As soon as an email arrives at the “me.com” account, the iPhone tells me.
• Safari (the web browser) on the iPhone is the best web browser on a mobile device - end of story. The multi-touch and multi-tap zoom interface is wonderful - and is sorely missed when you see any other device.
• The built in Mail app on the iPhone is very, very good. It understands IMAP, and apparently Exchange although I have not tried it. IMAP alone lets me check five different email accounts all day, every day without corporate network security getting in my way.
• Watching movies on the iPhone is absolutely fantastic. The screen is a perfect blend between form and function - and is bright, sharp, and has great colour saturation.
• 3G is good. Not great - just good. Using O2 in the UK, I get a signal consistently between home and London, and am able to check email easily and quickly.
• The application store is great - and probably the biggest selling point of the phone. I can do everything on the phone from connecting to servers via an SSH terminal, to playing pool in 3D, or uploading photos directly into social networks.

Things I don’t like about the iPhone

• I’m not sure if I was an exception to the rule, but there were no “getting started” instructions with the phone at all. I discovered most of it’s functionality by trial and error. I can imagine most people (who are not pro software developers) would not have realised half the things the iPhone can do.
• I don’t like the fact that there is no cut and paste. A couple of days ago I wanted to copy the text of a phone number from a text message body, and put it on a contact - and there was no way to do it.
• I don’t like the fact that the battery struggles to last through a busy day. Granted - I am not a normal user; when commuting into and out of London the iPod functionality gets heavily used for 4 hours on the train… and video podcasts for perhaps an hour. That kind of use says goodbye to at least half of a full charge. Add a few lengthy calls during the day, and perhaps five or six checks of email, and it’s warning you it’s nearly flat.

My biggest problem with the iPhone…

• By far my biggest problem with the iPhone is that because it does so many things so well, and has such an enormous wow factor, the smallest problems become magnified (such as the contact list taking a second to open). When something doesn’t happen instantaneously, you notice - because usually it’s a rocketship at everything it does.

It’s worth pointing out that I have had no crashes of the iPhone at all. I had a syncing problem, but that was totally down to me repeatedly adding and removing the MobileMe account while playing with the phone when I first got it. I am now running version 2.1 of the operating system and it has addressed the one bug I discovered (contacts loaded very slowly sometimes).

It’s also worth pointing out that typing on the touch screen is nowhere near as bad as I had anticipated it might be. Sure, it takes a little while to get used to, but you can hunt/peck with a finger pretty quickly. It is a shame that Safari is the only out-of-the-box app supporting a rotated keyboard (holding the iPhone landscape instead of portrait).

p.s. the iPhone is actually a very good phone too. Easy to forget that.

I went out yesterday afternoon and bought an iPhone at last. I walked into the store, told them that I knew all about it, and all about the tarrifs, and please could I just buy one please on the tarrif I instructed.

Ten minutes later I walked out of the store, iPhone in hand.

Simple.

What was not so simple was (having never monkeyed with an iPhone before) figuring out where the SIM card went. No insertion tool. No instructions in the documentation. I finally found out about the tiny hole and the hidden panel after rummaging around on the internet for a while.

A few minutes later I saw and waited for iTunes on my macbook to download and install the latest version of the iPhone firmware. Then came the task of figuring out how the new bit in iTunes worked - how to sync specific bits and bobs to the phone.

Two minor things tripped me up in the first few minutes finding my way around the iPhone interface…

1. I couldn’t figure out how to “get back” to the menu at first. It was only after a good few seconds scratching my head that I pressed the big button at the bottom of the display.

2. I couldn’t figure out how to show albums in the iPod app in coverflow mode - it was only by accident that I tipped it on it’s side, and voila - up came the 3D album covers.

So what do I think so far?

• MobileMe - despite its flaws - is push email. It’s good at it too. I know blackberry have been doing this for eons, but it’s nice to have email arrivals trumpeted to you without the phone being connected to the net.
• The SMS interface is great - looking very much like iChat. I forsee myself using all of my text allocation (I have the £35 plan, which allows something in the region of 600 sms messages a month).
• Typing on the on-screen keyboard is nowhere near as difficult as I feared. I guess I am a software developer though, so am more careful than most when typing…
• The Camera is not very fast - meaning low light shots are always going to be a problem for it. Quality wise though, it’s fine for a mobile phone camera.
• The built in Mail application is far better than I had hoped - I have it talking to 4 different email accounts via IMAP.
• Syncing with the Mac is painless, simple and flexible. I hate to say it, but Mac users who have embraced iCal, Contacts, iPhoto, and so on are going to get much more use from the iPhone than windows users (although this has been addressed somewhat by MobileMe).
• Movie playback is spectacular. I downloaded Godzilla from iTunes just to try it out (and to try plugging the Mac into the TV via HDMI, which we have never done before). This could of course be the end of us renting movies from LoveFilm if it works well enough…
• The App Store is without doubt the biggest ace Apple have put into the iPhone. I have downloaded five or six apps so far - all of which have been fantastic. I have installed all of them from iTunes given the early adopter stories about downloading them to the phone directly.
• Safari on the iPhone is spectacular too. By far the best browsing experience I have ever seen on a mobile device. The multi-touch interface, on-screen keyboard, and rotating display make using the web very easy indeed.
• GPS is fun - but I’m not sure I have an application for it yet. If an app arrives in the App Store that integrates the Google Local business data into the built-in map application, it would be wonderful. As it stands, it’s a gimmick. Geotagging photos works spectactularly well though.