SOCIAL: "smart phones?"

[Manish Champsee]

Some of my thoughts:

-I have had the iPhone for several months and feel the same way that Deep
does..without sounding melo-dramatic it has changed my life.  I find that
there are situations where I would have lugged my laptop somewhere, but now
only need to take my iPhone.

-I did experience the poor reception experience.  This included dropped
calls and service cutting in and cutting out even if I was just standing
there.  This has largely been solved with the latest software release.
However, lately I've been experiencing a lot more dropped calls.

-The battery life is ridiculously bad.  With the original 2.0 software, I
would frequently end the day with a dead phone.  The 2.1 release
dramatically increased battery life such that ending the day with a dead
phone is much more rare.  Further, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or
reason when the phone sucks up battery.  I charge my phone nightly, whereas
previous phones I've been able to charge every few days.  Not a big deal to
charge nightly, but I would like some kind of guarantee that the phone won't
die before I get home.  The thing that kills me is that the iPhone is half
the size of my Treo (which was my previous smartphone)..would it have killed
Apple to make the iPhone slightly bigger to accomodate more battery?

-The GPS is easily the most surprisingly useful feature.  I figured that I
would never use it, but its been useful in figuring out where I am if I'm
lost, figuring out which bus stop is the closest to where I need to go and
actually getting off the bus (and I suppose iNap could be used for this
purpose too).  It also is now integrated with Google Transit such that you
say where you want to go and the phone knows where you are and figures out
the best transit directions to get there.

-The wifi isn't all that is cracked up to be and I keep it off more often
than not.  The problem is that you can be walking along and if the phone
suddenly finds an open wifi signal, it will attach to it and all of your
data operations are routed through it.  Sometimes the signal is weak or its
a Free the Net node where you have to go to the web browser and click the
"continue" link.  What this means is that the mail client or GPS are trying
to access the internet for data and isn't getting anything back.  It would
be really nice if the iPhone upon seeing a bad wifi connection would revert
to a cellular data connection.

-Some of the apps are briliant and many are free.  However, the one
annoyance is that they won't work in the background.  For instance, if you
are using iNap and your phone rings, the application stops and won't alert
you when you hit your destination.  Apple had some legitimate issues around
lettting programmers run background processes, but I think they could have
accomodated this on a limited basis.  I.e. only app at a time could run in
the background and then only allow the core services (.e. mail, phone, gps)
to work when you have a background process running.

Manish

On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Eric Arons <ericarons at gmail.com> wrote:

> other downers that bum me out but not enough to stop me from iPhoning:
> no photo messages (sending or receiving - though you can receive pics as
> e-mail attachments)
> no video camera
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 3:01 PM, Bob Seymour <bobsey at cfmc.com> wrote:
>
>>  I've never had a "smart" phone before and I think the iPhone is
>> fantastic.  I find it elegantly and intuitively designed and very reliable,
>> the apps are great, but there are at least 3 specific things that it's
>> sorely lacking that people looking into purchasing an iPhone should be aware
>> of:
>>   - No cut and paste from within or between applications
>>   - No flash support for the web browser (LOTS of websites are unusable on
>> the iPhone because of this)
>>   - No search capabilities for email
>> There are throngs of iPhonefolk (iPholk?) hankering for the first 2, I
>> haven't heard much about the third but I've desired it on many many
>> occasions.  I expect that these will be taken care of in future software
>> updates but there's no word from Apple as to when this will be.
>>
>> As for Jen's question about costs, I'm currently paying $90/month which
>> breaks down like this:
>>   $40 - 450 anytime minutes w/rollover plus 5000 night/weekend minutes
>> (nights are 9pm to 6am)
>>   $30 - Unlimited data
>>   $5  - 200 text messages
>>   ~$15 - Tax, fees, bla, bla, bla, etc.
>> Also, if your call is to another AT&T'er, no minutes are subtracted; they
>> call this "mobile to mobile" usage. This may be standard for other companies
>> but since a lot of my friends/folks are AT&T, this is pretty handy.
>>
>> On Thu, 2008-12-04 at 10:54 -0800, Jennifer Seuferer wrote:
>>
>> Karen, thanks for bring this topic up because I too want to get a new
>> phone.
>>
>>  The thing that stops me from getting an iPhone is I keep hearing that the
>> plans are a lot more expensive then the Verizon plan I have now. If I was to
>> get a blackberry my monthly fee would go up $30 for the data package, which
>> would take me to about $100. That includes 900 anytime minutes and 1000
>> text. Can anyone say how the iPhone compairs to that? It looked to me that
>> the package that would bring me to about $100 would only be 450 anytime
>> minutes and would include no texts.
>>
>>
>>
>>  Jennifer
>>
>>
>>  On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 9:15 AM, Karen Nemsick <knemsick at yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>   Hi All,
>>
>> It seems time for me to get a new phone.  My current, very very old phone,
>> that doesn't even text or have call waiting, is dying a slow death.  So, I'm
>> looking for new technology.  A phone that lets me check email, and maybe
>> even internet, and maybe even GPS!  Is that too much for a gal to ask?  I am
>> an admitted Luddite when it comes to cell phone technology, so I'm looking
>> to the list for help.  Any recommendations?
>>
>> Karen
>>
>>
>>
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