chris dalrymple - blog

The large gaping hole in my bank balance is testament to one thing - I caved (very early) and bought an iPhone.

Partly I blame my new-found Mac fandom, partly Mr Stephen Fry, and partly because it's just so gosh damn pretty.

So, I've had the thing for nearly 1 month now, and I think the best summary is from Mr Fry's blog - 'Not sensible, but, oh the joy of it!'. The thing is just so good to use. It's been said many times before, but it's a thing of beauty. Using it is easy. And despite the fact no mobile phone is worth £895 or however much it's going to end up costing me, it nearly seems worth it.

A few things that are good/bad:

• Email doesn't do the auto portrate landscape switch thingy like safari does
• Gmail isn't as good as it should be, but with Gmail IMAP support (which I'm still waiting for on my account) it should improve.
• 2.5G is slow (but you already knew that). However it is bearable.
• Safari is great. Really intuitive to use, and it's great to have the full internet on your phone.
• The camera is actually ok, and I've been happily using it to blog with.
• It's meant I've been able to leave my laptop at home when I just needed a web connection and email.
• The phone part is easy to use - in fact in some ways easier to use than my SE K800.
• The battery life is excellent, despite initial worries.
• I really love using it.
• It's a pain putting in WEP keys when you want to connect to a secure wifi network, especially without copy and paste.
• The keyboard learns very quickly, and I'm now nearly as quick as on my SE.
• It needs to be opened up to 3rd parties (but again, you already knew that).
• Ringtones are stupid. Really stupid - I can't upload my own and I can't find any to buy if I was that way inclined.
• It's great to use... etc...

Overall as a piece of hardware, the iPhone really is nothing special (shininess aside). Spec wise it's actually not that much of an improvement on my old O2 XDA IIi (Wifi - check. Touch screen - check. Not 3G - Check). But it's the software that's really special. That's what makes it such a beautiful device to use. And it's also (hopefully) what they can improve with firmware updates, and opening up to third parties (coming in Feb). Go on Apple. You know you want to.

Labels: iphone, review

I was reminded by someone this week that I actually do have a blog, so I thought it might well be a good idea to remind the interwebs too. Wait for it people, here's a long overdue blog post.

Rather excitingly, Stephen Fry has started a blog. His first post demonstrates the fanatical level of geekery he has for Smart Phones/PDAs etc, and has cast me into utter confusions as to which phone to get next - I was thinking of shunning the iPhone in favour of the far more sensible Sony Ericsson P1i but reviews don't get too much more damning than

Just bugger off Sony Ericsson, you’ve lost my respect. You’ve had thousands of pounds out of me in the past. But stick to student mobile phones called Kxxx with crap silly little jukeboxes on them, SmartPhones are out of your league.

Labels: iphone, pda, smart phone, stephen fry