2 months of legal iPhone 3G use in Romania review

There are two months since I now use iPhone on a daily basis. I was thinking maybe it's of good use for somebody else who wants to learn about iPhone or to find some other ideas about it.

I will explore several dimensions of using such a tool in my review. Conclusions at the end.


--- Interface ---

First time it seems strange because it's "something else". But very quick you realize that with your iPhone either you do something with few clicks - or you don't do it at all.

The UI is optimized for mobile - but it's great.

I now really expect to use a laptop with a touch screen and interface designed for this. The iPhone interface I hope will change the way we browse our laptops at OS/app level ...


--- Phone ---

It is more than 10 years since I have mobile phones. This tool is among the worst mobile phones I had. It loose "sometimes" the signal but not so often. As a phone - I will rate this to be similar or less in functionality versus a $10 cheap phone. It look really nice - but it miss big functionality.

Update (10-feb-2009): after google releasing the iSync google app for iPhone (MS Exchange like sync for contacts, calendar and email) -- editing the contacts in your gmail account and synchronizing the data against your iPhone is now really easy and useful. But do a backup before :-)

[ Update: based on Iulian's comment - you can deny a call by pressing twice the power-off button (at the top of the phone) ]

The contacts are very easy to be imported from your .CSV (google?) contacts by sending an attachment via email.


--- Battery ---

It's basically a nightmare. You need several chargers around you all the time: in your car, at your office, at your home.

Update: now you can buy car-charger in Bucharest - but the provider is not Apple. It looks very very "not-iPhone" ...

But if you don't use the device at all - the stand-by time is pretty good (more than 1 day). Wow :-)

But hey - the device is so small and nice - that I'm still ok with always charging the device :-)


--- Email ---

I have used for some time the buit-in app against my gmail account and another "Exchange" account. It works great, the usage is simply.

I like the fact that it recognize "some numbers" as potential phone numbers such that if I click on them - I can call them.

Too bad that it don't recognize all shapes of phone numbers.

I can easily reply to an email, write a short one, or forward a link (something that Nokia likes to say "share a vision"). That's working great.

Update: the fetch auto retrieve of email is very cool. You can set between 15 minutes to 1 hour - the phone will make a small noise when you receive an email. Nice.


--- GPS / Mapping ---

Google Maps and the so called 'gps' is practically unusable. Bucharest nor any other city is not mapped yet. Trying to read Yahoo Maps is also unusable unless you already have built your trip on a laptop/desktop and you send your link to be loaded to your iPhone.


--- Web Browsing ---

Compared to my previous Mitac MIO A701 device running Windows Mobile 5.0 with a stick - it's simply heaven :-)

Hmm - I can't use against mobile banking sites like ING nor UniCredit ... hmm.

Some very slow pages generate predictive crash in the browser too. But the number of such sites seems small.

Mobile optimized pages are a dream :-)

Update: Flash for iPhone is still not release. Long story on net about this.

Let's not forget: browsing with your finger really works. I have big fingers and a small natural tremor. It's amazing. Because now I can't browse with the stick on my old Windows Mobile MIO device ... I have a feeling of "broken".

Did I mention that as of 2.2.1 version - you can't open more than 8 browser windows on your iPhone ? Hmm ... I hope this gets increased ... ;-)


--- iTunes app ---

It happened to me that I lost my legal copy of Windows Vista. Of course I installed Windows XP as a replacement ...

Then surprise - I lost my few-days work of ripping some 80+ original music CD's I own. Because the new installation of iTunes don't recognize the existing phone. There are several hacks - but I decided to simply buy TouchCopy to recover my old 3+ GB of music for the new installation of iTunes. Shame ...


--- iTunes Store ---

It simply don't work in Romania. I simply can't understand why. Why on earth the price is the same (or bigger) when buying the device - but trying to buy a song is prohibited if you're from Romania.

A friend use USA credit card for his iPhone to able to rent/buy movies/music. Was this scenario in the mind of PM's at Apple ? :-)


--- App Store ---

There's no single app for Romanians in this store. Only translators.

But why on earth I can't install Amazon App or Google Mobile Search App because it's unavailable in Romanian App Store ? And the list is pretty big ... :-)

But otherwise I can spend money to buy some 'other' apps which I did and it works great.

It's good to see that I receive an email from apple every several days if I install new apps - in chunks. So they don't wait for a full month cycle of billing. Something to keep in mind because the feeling is good.

Installing a new app is very easy - if you can find it :-) with 10k+ apps it's useless to think that you can find an app unless you promote it on known blogs/2.0

I guess this developers-dream of working a month to build that $1 app that makes you do a fortune of millions was a good choice by Apple to build the critical mass of users. Metric: how many developers knew about this opportunity before buying an iPhone ? Now it doesn't really matter anymore - because the user-base is so huge that you just can assume the big competition for it.

Update-23-feb: see this link for an analysis regarding usage of iPhone apps. I consider completely correct their arguments ... however there is a small fix to that: there are apps that really you almost forget about - but at some point you suddenly have a specific need then you remember and open "the unused app" - for example a dictionary app for an unusual language (to your context). So yes - mostly they are unused after it - but yes - some of them are still reused at some point. Again - I consider browser-based-apps a much better alternative on the long run ;-)


--- iPod ---

Besides the issue with iTunes app - it works great. Good tool :-)

I saw a Top Gear (bbc show) related to this - at -20C the car had "some" problems but the iPod was still running. Hmm :-)

I'm not a big fun of iPod - I prefer to listen music from the Internet directly in my car instead ...


--- App Store selection review ---

In this section I will highlight some apps from the App Store (or built-in) that worth IMHO.

SMS: unusable

Weather: hmm - not reliable

Audio Rec: don't work if your ISP blocks your 25 smtp port

camera: hmm ... I had much better

YouTube: cool
Stocks: cool
Clock: cool
Settings: cool
Calculator: cool
Base Convert: ok
FreePing: ok

SunLight: super cool - you see where it's light and where not on the Earth :-)

midomi: amazing ... it recognize any song (if it's not romanian)

Currency: great ... up2date rate

Snap: cool ... find what WiFi's you have around

DecibelMeter: fantastic ... you can see how much noise you listen :-)

WorldView: easily see some images around the world ... nice

SpeedTest: test your Up/Down-link ... see that it's not as advertised :-)

VNC: not really tested yet - point is to do a VNC connection :)

AirSharing: you convert your iPhone into a shared-drive ... if you have WiFi :-)

iSSH / TouchTerm: amazing ... you do ssh against your production servers to watch them - cool and working :)

Maps: working but not in Romania I saw a demo in Portland - it's cool there :-)

Autodesk Fluid: no ...

WiFinder: you find your WiFi's around. Not working ok.

Twitterrific: twitter stuf ... not a big fun - but working

fring: messenger on several platforms. works - but crashes all the time.

Roman: convert between roman and arabic numbers. cool :-)

BigOven: food stuff ... :-)

CountriesLE: some Wikipedia like information offline. hmm :)

MyFootball: are you at a funeral but people around are asking about Chelsea score's ? Use it :-)

SpeedBox: you measure the speed you're traveling. Not tested yet.

Heat: convert Celsius and Fahrenheit. nice

BAC Calc: you want to know how much have you drunk - can you drive ? :-) try this

DrinksFree: coctails ... nice

LieDetector: not tested yet - still searching for candidates :-)

Seadragon: it's a Microsoft stuff ... nice but not sure how usable

Citysearch: not working in Romania

iTalk: record yourself or others; work but the sound is not so good

iTranslate / Translator: still waiting to test it

WhitePages: work great if you're from US - nothing in Romania

StitchMinder: want to count "something" manually ? good tool

DaysUntil: hmm

CountryCodes: maybe you can use it

myAge: in years, months, days. why not seconds ?

Stanza: I think this app is cool ... you can find some free books - but still have not used it for real; I have a safari OReilly account ... which I can use it on iPhone in Safari. It's unusable using Safari's app for iPhone. But it's much better ... since on Windows Mobile with it was impossible to use it.

iSteam: hmm

MPR Radio, MDR Sputnik, Radio 92.9, 105 Classics, RMC, Classical PH, Capital FM, RSR, WBNJ, 101 WRIF, RP, Tuner, Deezer, FlyCast, FStream: great ways to listen long tail music from the internet ... no matter your location. Works also on Edge - but not so good. For excellent listening 3G is required.

Note - the things above are IMHO - don't sue me :-)

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One final note: I don't have problems with sweating or so ... but I have observed that the back of the phone seems to generate such an issue. Interesting.

On short I'm a happy iPhone 3G customer - but I still think that all this huge list of iPhone apps don't worth on the long term.

I want a simple browser which can use light, accelerometer, input, position, internet, everything. Instead of building a big app store and a set of apps - I would be more concerned to have everything available in JavaScript or a similar framework - and I would better prefer to have everything as a web app.

I still consider that I need a Browsing System as I have posted before. iPhone is a cool browsing system - but all these Apps are moving attention for a short period of time - until your forget them :-)

Tudor - what you think about this post ?