I waited until 3G to get my first one. I wish I had waited longer. Let's cut to the chase:
The Good:
I love the new form factor
Really surprised by how much I liked the keyboard
The Bad:
No copy/paste
No push email (fwding to a mobile.me account doesn’t count)
No email search
No google calendar sync
Poor battery life
No google talk or blackberry messenger
Slow software
I’ve been using a Blackberry for a bit. I got an iPhone because I thought it was ready, and I really wanted it to work. But after 3 days of running out of battery power, and maniacally tapping an unresponsive screen, I returned it -- and paid the 10% restocking fee -- so I could use my Curve again. I’m pretty sure I was the first to wait in line to return one.
The iPhone is a great first smartphone. If you’ve never used one before, this one’s easy to learn. But if you're a power user, and you’ve learned how to use every single feature on your Treo, Dash, or BlackBerry, then you're probably going to be unimpressed. In fact, you’ll be pretty pissed that so much hype has been built up around a phone that still doesn’t do some of the basics.
I use Google Apps for my work email and calendar, so I can’t live with out push email or an over-the-air calendar sync. That in itself is almost a deal closer. Add in the fact that I couldn’t search through the emails on the phone, and I couldn’t copy/paste information from the emails, and you really have a useless device.
A useless device with poor performance and the battery life. In terms of speed, I felt that the thing was always lagging. I typically had 1 or 2 seconds before I could start using the app after I turned it on.I would click on the calendar, and then click on the “+” several times before it actually worked and opened a new calendar appointment. But everything on the Blackberry is instantaneous, and it keeps up with your thought process -- and you don't have to constantly worry about running down the battery.
When I first got my Curve, I surfed the Web all day, and tested out all the features, including wifi. I downloaded all the extra add-on apps. No problems with the battery. You couldn't keep the wifi on constantly, but with heavy usage of the important features I could still make it through the whole day easily. But on my first day with the iPhone, I woke up at 8am, and I didnt even make it till 1pm before the thing was completely dead.
I understand that batteries are hard. That's why Apple didn’t do the 3G the first time around. But now I see people telling iPhone 3G owners that they best way to get reasonable battery life is to turn off all the new features. No thanks. I'll stick with my Curve.
Evan Bartlett is on the business development team at AngelSoft.net and blogs at LifeinLists.com, where the original version of this post was published.
