Thoughts on the Apple iPhone 3GS
I got a new iPhone 3G S, and in the process sold my soul to my cellphone carrier for 3 years.
Why now? Well, my carrier was offering a promotional pricing for data plans, that is $30 for 6GM per month, until the end of the July.
Still, why? To replace both my iPod, cellphone and portable computer (the Nokia N810). The 32GB size is now large enough to hold my podcasts and music collection. I still use the N810 from time to time, especially since it works well with the iPhone’s tethering (Internet sharing) feature.
So, how is it?
The battery life is OK. It usually lasts about 25-30 hours, with about 4-5 hours of it being heavy use. I suspect using it only as a “phone” it could last about two days. So, still not as great as the 3 days I was getting from my earlier phone (Motorola RIZR Z8) or the N810.
Overall though, it does feel like a fast, clean and tweaked 4th-generation update. It’s honestly the first time that I’ve used a cell phone that doesn’t require me to get used to its glitches. I know, some are complaining all the time that the touch screen keyboard is difficult to use or “slow”, but having used text input with the numeric keypad for 3 years I can assure you that the touch screen keys are quite fine. I still need to create the habit of using more the tip of my thumbs when typing rather than the thumbs sideways, but other than that even using my index typing is pretty fast.
It’s also a “lifestyle” change for me. With many applications like Remember The Milk and Evernote, both being connected to the Internet all the time, I effectively use the iPhone as an always-connected external brain interface of some kind. Need to remember something? Type it up or record a message, they both get synchronized on the Internet for future reference, with GPS tagging. Browse almost any web site on the Internet? Yes, from anywhere, using a browser that doesn’t suck and is quite fast. Email, calendar and contacts? Yes, all the time with push notification. Got lost? GPS and Google Maps included. Even twitter, which used to be a total pain by typing SMS on a numeric keypad, not works great using TweetDeck.
True, it’s not an unlocked Linux machine like the N810, nor does it has a large hard drive like my 80GB iPod. But it’s still effectively a quite capable super-portable computer with always-on Internet access. Viewed this way, the total price of about $3000 (with the 3-year voice and data contract) seems reasonable.
I’ll keep posting some of the cool tricks I do with it over time. For now, I’ll just relax, since, as you would expect, it just works.
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