Apple iPhone Gen1

Being a Waterloo native it has always been a unwritten rule of some sort that everyone around here must carry a BlackBerry, but when the iPhone was first announced, way back in January 2007. I had second thoughts. The beautiful form factor and the revolutionary combination of multi-touch and motion sensing technology had me sold.

The Apple iPhone has been a long awaited device. With years of rumors and speculation the iPhone had to be something revolutionary. A regular mobile phone with a standard set of features and an Apple logo would simply not feed the need for thousands of Apple fanboys and fangirls.

Switching from a Blackberry 8800 to the iPhone was scary at first due to the lack of a physical and tactile keyboard. After all these years of solid QWERTY goodness, was typing on a piece of glass going to work? With practice and patience it took me a month to get used to the virtual keyboard on the iPhone. It was challenging but not as difficult as originally imagined.

The battery life is very mediocre for a mobile phone, but exceptional for a smartphone. If your phone spends most of the time glued to your face as you yap away, you might consider a car lighter adapter or an additional source of power, same applies for heavy Wi-Fi use, as the additional chipset takes away lots of battery juice.

The integrated applications are designed for the urban lifestyle, with Google Maps find your favorite restaurant and make the reservation with a few taps of the finger. Watch YouTube videos while on the go on the gorgeous 3.5" display. Check your Stocks, Mail and even Weather wherever you are. Snap and share your photo memories as they happen or browse the full internet on a miniaturized device. At the moment there is no support for third party internet plug-ins such as Adobe Flash Player and Java, but Apple is hinting towards possible availability via free software updates.

The iPhone is an outstanding smart phone that has revolutionized the smart phone industry or at the least encouraged other manufacturers to step their game up. The use of innovative technologies and the simplicity as well as the ease of use jam packed into such a compact yet accommodating device will have you wanting a slice of this Apple pie.

I got the original iPhone for Christmas in 2008 and have been extremely pleased.  Having had a blackberry before, I found the iPhone to be significantly more user friendly (important if you are technologically-challenged like me).  Text messaging became much quicker and the keyboard's ability to correct words is phenomenal (able to edit some of my most incoherent drunken text messages).  I also just find it hugely convenient for day-to-day tasks.  I use the maps function to locate restaurants and businesses all the time.  Although it is not complete GPS, you can use the "current location" function and then identify particular stores or restaurants near you, and get directions to them.  Its also nice to have when you have a friend who overconfidently insists things are true (i.e chris paul shoots 37% from the field... uhh no he doesn't, look at my iphone, he shoots 49%).  I have also dropped the hell out of my phone and it has more than held up.  There are some very tiny scratches, but I am told I can go to an Apple Store and have them fixed for free.  I tried using a case for the phone, but it made it a lot more bulky and killed the sleek build of the phone.  The two hangups I have about the phone are that the phone is only compatible with apple headphones (you can get an adapter for this if you want, but its just an annoyance) and that the internet is painfully slow. 

I was fortunate enough to have my parents gift me an IPhone for Christmas. To be honest, I wasn't that excited to receive one as I felt my razr was sufficient for what I needed, but I wasn't going to complain.

After having one for several months, It probably comes as no surprise that I think the phone is awesome. I'm constantly plugged into "the grid" and love the fact that I am always up to speed on email. Living in San Fran, Its quite nice to be able to check when the next bus (www.nextmuni.com) is coming or yelping (www.yelp.com) a good restaurant based on my current location. If I'm bored and stuck somewhere, I'll pull out my phone and check the blogs for the latest posts. I've dropped the phone a few times and its still working fine, so the durability seems to be good. I just find the phone to be surprisingly very useful and fun to use.

There are a few cons though. Pandora (www.pandora.com) + IPhone would be a killer app for me, so it is a bit annoying that flash isn't supported. I turn off the wi-fi detector at work because i can't log on to the networks and I find that the edge network is alright, but still somewhat frustrating speed wise. I use the camera a fair amount and the quality of the pictures isn't great. I wish email was pushed out to my phone...i have it set to check for new mail every 15 which I'm sure is not helping my battery situation, which, although is decent, could probably be better.