Monday, June 15, 2009

time to try an iphone, yet?

Two years ago I wrote about the I-phone, noting that Apple is a smartly run business and while they could have included more features in the original I-phones that were already standard in other smart phones but they opted to hold off – and milk more money off of the market before releasing ‘new’ features. 2009 and the I-phone finally includes copy and paste and a2dp bluetooth wireless music – two features that I really take advantage of and am glad to see have made their way into I-phone’s OS v 3.0.

So what other features of my k790a have I grown to love and would find it hard to live without?
#1) Sync with Google Calendar / native calendar application
#2) Yahoo Mail / Contact sync
#3) Google Maps
#4) RSS feed reader
#5) Java Applications / Opera browser / Shozu Flickr uploader

I believe I should be able to do most of these things with the I-phone, although if I will be able to do it on T-mobile’s network paying only 5.99$ per month remains a question to be answered. I also believe the I-phones camera to be sub-par to my two year old Sony Cybershot camera phone, but perhaps the fact that pictures are geo-tagged with gps data may be fun to play with. I do wirelessly tether my laptop, and enjoy speeds fast enough for web-browsing and email, and I think that should be posssible with a jailbroken device. I like that the I-phone accepts a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, although still wish it would have a now near-standard mini-usb jack for data connectivity and charging.

I would like to wirelessly stream music from my collection at home, a feat which was barely successful through the k790a with MFRadio and SlimServer. I would like to run on T-mobiles network, and any GSM network while overseas travelling. I find it hard to believe that MMS picture messages were not supported in earlier I-phone OS versions. It also seems strange that Bluetooth or WiFi file-transfers are not supported out of box, but require hacks to perform. Lastly non-removable batteries, and non-expandable memory card slots are also features which I would like to have seen – but back to my first point, that limitation is just a business decision of planned obsolescence and forcing you the lucky Apple customer to get the latest and greatest device within a few years time.

So, is it time to at least give it a try? For 99$ or maybe even less used -- it's a compelling question.