Finally got an iPhone. I love it. Jailbroken too. It is really cool that the package management for all those non-AppStore apps is based on apt. I installed a terminal and can even do stuff like ‘apt-get update’ from the commandline. Right at home for me.

It was also a saving grace for me since my work email quit working correctly on my old Palm T|X (with VersaMail 3.5+). I had to downgrade VersaMail back to 3.1 in order to receive mail again, and that version is really bad since contacts and such doesn’t sync that way. I have to say that the contacts management is huge with the iPhone. I now have my Google Contacts, iPhone, AddessBook (in OSX), and Outlook (work) contacts all in sync. That was painful before. It apparently can sync with yahoo too, but I don’t use yahoo anymore, so I haven’t tried that.

I also received a Contour Showcase iPhone case from my wife for my birthday. It is the first hardshell case I have used for any phone / iPod. I usually prefer soft cases (usually silicone), but I was weary about getting one for the iPhone since I need to slide it in and out of my pocket. The case also comes with a snap-in holdster that I can attach to my belt which is very useful when I am at work where I need to access it more often for email.

Now for the bad things. First, the phone doesn’t have a GREAT battery life. I think it will last me pretty much a day at work, but if I decide to meet up with people for dinner or something right after work, I have to remember to charge up at work before leaving. IMO, a phone should have a battery that can last an ENTIRE day, sun-up to sun-down and in the evening, I should be able to connect the phone to my Mac to sync and charge fresh for the next morning. Second, the camera is really not that great. It is a nice high resolution, but the ’shutter speed’ is terrible. If you are not photographing a stationary object with a steady hand, then prepare for a blurred shot. Video is pretty bad too since you have to pretty much stay still to get anything that looks decent.

The GPS is nice too. Already used it once to get out of a pinch. Looking forward to maybe doing a little geocaching.

Tags: Apple, Contour Showcase, GPS, iPhone, iPhone 3G, Jailbroken, Palm, review, VersaMail

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2008 at 10:18 AM and is filed under iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.