keep it or dump it?

Today marks one week with my new iPhone 3G. It's a nifty device, but it has some things i don't like. I did have a list of "makes me want to throw it across the room" annoyances, but after the latest software update yesterday, most of those have gone from "throws it across the room" to "cures it with irritation".

To begin, i REALLY miss the red flashing light on my blackberry, which indicated an unread message- be it email, sms, mms, or otherwise. With just a quick look at my blackberry i could see if i had a new message. I didn't even have to touch it. No unlocking. Nothing. Just a quick look.

I also miss the ringer profiles. Maybe the iPhone has them, and I just haven't looked hard enough... but there seems to be a silent mode, and an not silent mode. That's it. What about, really loud rings, but vibe on message. And I know you can go toggle on and off the alerts (at least, i think you can), but that would get tedious.

No voice dial. I really miss this. I used to get in my car in the morning, put on the head set, push the voice dial button, and be off... I'd be starting my car and driving away while placing a call to my mom. Not so this week. I have to get in, put on the headset, PICK UP the phone, slide to unlock, touch the phone button, go to favorites, touch my mom's name and then, after all of that... i'm calling mom and then starting the car and driving away. I'm not going to go on about how this is such a basic feature and it is unbelievable that Apple, which resides in a "no non-hands free phone while driving" state, has not fixed this massive, glaring problem- not lack of feature... but problem.

The mail delivery has much to be desired. On my blackberry, I sorta used it as a new message alerting system for gmail. My blackberry would alert me to a new gmail message via sound and red flashing light upon the arrival of a gmail message before the gmail web app even picked up on the new message. that was awesome. Not so with the iPhone... It checks every few minutes to see if there are any new messages. And if i don't hear it's quiet announcement of new email, i won't know until i pick it up and unlock it.

Before the update yesterday, i was going to say that the iPhone is absurdly slow. However, after the update, it is now only laughably slow. The boy tried to tell me it was just a matter of waiting a few seconds (4 by his count) between then time you touch the SMS button until you can see your SMSs. Okay, yeah... 4 seconds is not that long in the grand scheme of things. But think about it. If you have to stand there and wait for 1..... 2..... 3..... 4..... seconds before your phone responds to you. that's bad. Same with the contacts. I want to see the contacts and scroll to the name i'm looking for. I don't expect to have to wait for the app to load up, then go. So, i just killed three birds with one single stone: slow phone, slow SMS, slow contacts.

The paradigm shift from blackberry to iphone was slight annoying at first, but i seem to have gotten through that. On the blackberry, everything is driven by these nifty little menus. See a name? "click" on it and you get a menu... what do you want to do? Message, email, sms, call, etc... iPhone... see a name, touch it, it calls. like, now. I made so many calls by mistake due to this. It took a little bit of hand slapping "if you touch that, it will call" thoughts to break me of this.

The email app is okay. I do find all the sub menus and lack of unified inbox to be annoying. All i want to do is read my unread messages, but i have to dig in three levels into the hierarchy to see the message. And let's say i just read my one message in one account, but have another message in another account... many taps of the back button, then again drilling down into the other account.

but, the mail app does render nicely, for the most part. so i thought. there were a few emails i received which contained some pictures. I'm not sure if they were attachments or in-line, never the less... i couldn't see the pictures on the iPhone and it gave me no indication i was missing out on something. It wasn't until i looked at the email in the gmail web app (on my laptop) that i saw the iPhone was withholding. Additionally, I can't seem to attach pictures to an email. I can email a picture- originating from the photos app, but i can't attach a pic to an email already in progress. easy to work around, you'd think... just copy/paste the original email contents into the new email with the picture (from the photo app) and you're done. right? but... ah ha... no copy/paste.

Okay, so i can't include my pics in an email. Fine, i'll send the link to my picasa photo album. But damn, that's a long URL to type out on this non-tactile keyboard. Hmm... if only there was an auto text feature... or, i could go to a bookmark and copy/paste the URL from the Safari web browser. but shit. i can't do any of that! How am I going to get my pics to the trick?? he won't meet for a quick fuck without a picture first!

So... what, you may ask, is the iPhone good for? Well, it does have a nifty web browser. It seems to work quite well in most all cases so far. There's been a few annoyances, but that was mostly due to some interestingly architected websites. And, it can't do flash, but what mobile browser can. So it gets a mark above the rest of them for the web browser.

What else... the SMS app is nice (once it FINALLY starts). Having your SMSs organized as you would an instant message is pretty cool and you almost forget you are sending text messages. The calendar app is also nice, but lacks google cal syncing. So it looses whatever "above the rest" marks it would have received because of that. Not really any fault of the app or Apple (though they could make it work if they wanted to [Mobile Me]). The boys at google need to hurry up and release a google sync for the iPhone.

The contact list (again, once it FINALLY starts) is nicely laid out, easy to use and easy to manipulate (like adding a phone number to a contact). It also works as a nice kick off point to do other things, like call, email, sms or get driving directions to/from this contact. Not that the blackberry couldn't do any of that... The iPhone does have google maps, but so do most other mobile platforms and there's nothing special about this version. It's google maps. and that's it. And no, the assisted GPS is nothing special. My blackberry pearl was just a accurate.

The voicemail app dubbed, "visual voicemail", although there's absolutely nothing visual about it, is quite nice. I like that i can see a list of voicemails (perhaps that's the "visual" part) and pick one to listen to at will. No more "press 1 to.." menus to manipulate my voicemail. so, a point for the voicemail system.

The "favorites" list is okay. It's a poor substitution to the "assigned keys" other phone have. Like, if i want to call my man, i'd press and hold the "1" key for a second. where's the "1" key on the iPhone? Oh, right. No keypad. I can't reach down and blindly push and hold the "1" key... which... umm, which does not exist.

The camera app is, again, just okay. There's no physical button to press to take picture, so if i wanted to take a pic of myself, meaning the functional side of the phone is turned away from me... where's the "take the fucking picture" button? I don't know... it all feels the same. So i have to look and place my thumb over, but not on the button, position the phone (awkwardly), push down with my thumb and just hope to hear the "picture taken" sound. Oh, cool! a picture, as i quickly turn the phone around to see the masterpiece of my hotness appearing on the screen. Wait, what is this? It's a warped picture of the wall to my right. damnit. i have to hold the phone still for another second after i push the button and hear the sound before it actually captures the image. that was a frustrating five minutes of my life i will never get back.

Once i did finally get the picture, it looked pretty good. I did, however, learn a valuable lesson. If you're going to take picture of yourself using your iPhone, do it in front of a mirror, for the love of god. this way, you can keep the functional surface toward you, so you can see the "button". You also inadvertently (or maybe not so for some people) end up taking a picture of yourself holding your cool new iPhone- yeah, that way all the hot boys you send this picture to will want to fuck you. 'cause you're so cool and the iPhone increases your hotness at least 2 notches. so now you can finally nail that hottie 8 you've had your eye on.

The App Store... fortunately, i'm finding it pretty easy to wade through the plethora of crap people have slapped together, compiled, and are calling an application. There are some good things out there. So far, my top three favorites are the Apple iTunes remote control, the AP daily news, and UrbanSpoon. The remote control allows you to control an instance of iTunes running on a computer via wifi. I got to use the feature during my b-day party to control the music in the kitchen. three shiny stars for this app.

The AP daily news is just that. AP news of the day pushed to my iPhone. Lot so of categories, lots of news stores. UrbanSpoon is a random restaurant locator. Very cool. It uses the A-GPS-ness of the iPhone to figure out where you are at and then has a lockable slot machine type of interface, activated by shake of the device, to randomly find a restaurant near you. You can lock each column: location, cuisine, and price. So, if you want only cheap Mexican food, but don't care where in the city, you could lock the cuisine wheel on Mexican, and the price wheel on cheap. Then shake and wait a few seconds, and up pops a restaurant- complete with reviews, address and phone number.

I'm sure there's other good applications out there- i've yet to spend enough time looking. But I mean, anything made by the good folks at kudit.com is top notch quality software (and no, that statement was not dripping with sarcasm).

One annoyance about the apps is Apple's reluctance to allow apps to run in the background. I know, some stupid develops may not code their apps to "sleep" properly in background mode, but you know what Apple... i'm a big boy. If i want an app which spikes my proc and drains my battery, then it's my choice. I'm smart enough to figure out the IM app is draining my battery and i should close it when i don't really need it. I don't need you dictating this to me, thank you very much.

So, i think that's my list of iPhone cheers and jeers. Some of the things i find to be annoying and have listed as dislikes could hopefully be seen as constructive criticism and not an outright dislike for the device. I'm hoping the next OS update will address many of the issues, as i know i'm not the only one saying these things. The OS update yesterday did make things much more tolerable. I was seriously considering taking it back in exchange for my money, but I will give it another week on this release and see how i feel.