Head Tale

After contemplating it for…well, pretty much ever since the first iPhone came out…I finally broke down and bought one of the 32GB 3GS models today.  To be honest, I probably wouldn't have done it even now except I heard it through the Shea-vine that her folks wanted to put some money towards a phone for me for my birthday present so knowing that, how could I resist?  (Now if I can just find someone to pay those humongous monthly bills – one of the main reasons I've held off so long.)  

So after a day's pretty much non-stop use, what do I think so far?
– why'd I wait so long???  This thing is great!  Very intuitive, robust and lots of fun!

– I joked to Shea that it might actually save us money.  That's a bit tongue-in-cheek but really, I wanted to have a compass/temperature unit in our van since it didn't come with one and I find those extras very useful in vehicles that do have them.  But when I checked, it would've been $800 to have this type of unit installed in our van after-the-fact.  But now, our iPhone has both a compass and a weather option.  Or we could've spent a couple hundred bucks on a GPS unit but the iPhone also has that (although not as straight-forward and accurate as the dedicated GPS units I've seen.)  Er, and no jokes about why you'd need GPS in Saskatchewan – it can be handy if you're going to an address you're not familiar with – even in Regina!

– it took me a bit of time to figure out how to transfer over some music but the web is pretty amazing – you type “how to transfer music from iTunes to iPhone” and you're quickly up and running with the instructions some site has taken the time to provide.

– the camera's okay but not as good as I hoped.

– typing on the touch keypad was my biggest worry about whether I'd like the iPhone (and if I was smart, I'd have spent some time at the Rogers kiosk playing around with this to see how I liked it.)  But instead, I just kinda said “oh, if other people can get used to it, I can too.”  And luckily, that seems to have been the case so far. 

– I read somewhere that the extra screen real estate made available by having a full touchscreen rather than a smaller screen with a permanent keyboard below it makes a huge difference.  I haven't used a Blackberry or other smartphone with regular keyboards but that made sense to me. 

– for some reason, I had it in my head that you couldn't watch YouTube videos on an iPhone.  That's definitely not the case and the ones I watched looked really crisp (the smaller screen actually means things are a lot less pixelated than on a regular sized laptop or desktop screen.)

– Apps are definitely a lot of fun – I've probably downloaded a dozen so far – everything from a blackjack game to the Facebook app to a carpenter's level.  Those were all free but I did blow $0.99 for Koi Pond – worth every penny!  (Oh, and if you have an iPhone or iTouch, send me a message to let me know which Apps you can't live without!  Hmm, I put that as an e-mail link.  How 1997.  I should put my phone number so people can text me – er, is there any danger in doing that?)

– Rogers' coverage in Saskatchewan isn't great and that was another thing holding me back.  But there's good coverage in the bigger cities, along major highways and supposedly where my family cottage is and where Shea's parents camp for the summer so that should have me covered for most of what I need.  And if we go off the beaten path for camping or whatever, I'm sure I can live for a couple days without checking Reddit and MetaFilter!

– One of the best features will be having what is basically a full-featured computer/camera/etc. unit in my hand at all times.  For example, tonight we went to a park north of the city.  Pre-iPhone, I'd have had to take our digital camera with us, snap some photos, bring them home, download them to my laptop then upload them from there.  Now, with the iPhone, I can do all that from one unit right at the time and place that I take the photos (or video or whatever.)  I didn't actually do that out at Evraz Place and just uploaded this photo from my iPhone now (having quickly downloaded and installed a free  Flickr uploader App) but the point is that I could have done this two miles north of the city in a goose-poop covered family park that's attached to a steel mill! 

– there's probably a few other things I still have to figure out (and things I haven't even realised that I *have* to figure out) but as I said before, I'm very impressed with how easy-to-use and intuitive it is.  Oh, funny story – I didn't realise you could use two-finger touches to zoom.  Pace got ahold of the iPhone for a brief moment and immediately started doing that!  (I read a post by someone on a mesage board where they observed that their three year old was better on the iPhone than they were.  I don't doubt that!  I joked at the kiosk that when Pace was ready for a smartphone in a few years, it'd probably be an implant directly into his head.  I only wish I was joking when I said that! )