In which a smartworker begins his relationship…
In my plan to reduce the amount of devices I have to carry around and to rationalise my use of technology I am now the owner of a new iPhone 3G. Now, please believe me, I am not one of those early adopters who have to have the latest tech stuff just because it’s rare or cool. My existing contract with O2 was up so I decided that the iPhone might be an ideal way to reduce the amount of electronic kit I carry about in my ‘mobile office’ (my old but reliable black leather case). The primary elimination target was my Dell Axim PDA which although an excellent mobile device was overkill for my contacts and task lists.
So, what’s the iPhone like? Well it’s unlike any other phone out there (at the time of writing anyway) – even those recent touch screen copycats like the LG Viewty. It does take a little while to get used to the ‘touchy-feely' interface but once you do using a phone with buttons will seem like chiselling words into stone. OK, I know that most teenage girls will struggle to text as fast on the iPhone’s QWERTY screen keyboard as they do on a normal phone’s key pad but for me texting is suddenly so much more pleasurable (and the threaded messages feature make the experience even more satisfying). The touch screen is actually a pleasure to use – it really responds well to touch and feel – by feel I mean that many functions are controlled by ‘stroking’ the display. Sounds a bit weird I know but where as you might expect to scroll around a map by dragging your finger, setting a meeting time by stroking a rolodex type wheel adds a whole new interface dimension!
So what does an iPhone do that contributes to improved productivity? Here are my top 10 productivity features:
- Contact and calendar synchronisation with Outlook
- AppStore (more on this later)
- A browser on a small screen that is just about usable (the zoom in to read stuff function works really well)
- Threaded texts (you get to see all texts in a related ‘conversation’)
- Push e-mail (move over Blackberry here comes Appleberry)
- Remote synchronisation via MobileMe
- A really usable calendar
- Full contact database
- Photo browser
- WiFi (free at all ‘The Cloud’ and ‘Openzone’ hotspots)
And here are my top five cool features - these have little effect on smartworker productivity but they are great to show the phone off to admiring friends and co-workers:
- Google satellite mapping with GPS
- YouTube integration
- AppStore (yes it has cool software as well as productive software)
- Music (you get a iPod into the bargain)
- Photos
And the bad bits:
- The camera (it’s only 2M pixels)
- Web browsing is still a lethargic affair unless you are on WiFi (at least on O2 3G)
- No task manager or synchronisation with Outlook Tasks
- It’s a very slippery shape (very droppable)
- The camera (there is no zoom and no flash)
- It’s quite heavy (but it does feel well made)
- The camera (there are no exposure modes, no panorama feature, and no simple editing functions)
OK, I know I’ve gone on a bit about the poor camera functions but my last mobile phone was a SonyEricsson CyberShot 850i so it hurts to lose all that capability. It also means that where the space in my briefcase that was occupied by the Dell PDA is now taken up by my Olympus Mju.
So that’s about it for first impressions. I need a case. I need a car kit. I need to get it to play music in the car. I need to deepen the relationship…