After years of using a variety of different smart phones (most recently the AT&T Tilt) I have moved to an iPhone. I resisted for quite a while for several reasons, not the least of which is that it is a very closed system both hardware and software wise. I picked up the phone yesterday as this was the first day that my contract allowed me to move to phone for an outrageous price and not an egregious one.
I have the iPhone 3GS 32 GB model. I openly admit that I have underestimated the interface. I am very happy with the way it works and the apps that came with it and the few that I have downloaded so far seem to do exactly what I expect them to do and they do it very well.
My reservations had a bit of reinforcement this morning when I went to install the Skype app for the iPhone and found that it had been pulled from the app store. All of a sudden we are faced with a missing piece of software from the place where you are supposed to download all apps for your phone or face the wrath of Apple/AT&T. I also had a jolt when I went to get the phone to find out that there is no insurance available from AT&T – Best Buy has a plan that runs $15 per month (this price is specifically for the iPhone and is the only phone that cost more than $10 including the Droids) and this does not cover theft or loss. I felt compelled to get the 32GB since there is no means of adding memory – a micro card slot would have been nice (the Droids seem to think so).
I am reserving judgement on the non-replaceable battery in the iPhone – I have picked up a small rechargeable black box that will recharge the phone or extend its life while on planes etc. so I will see if this takes the place of the spare batteries that I carried for other phones.
I will be looking over a number of apps for the phone and seeing which make sense for me. I am not much of a game player so many of the 100,000 apps available will go untouched – I will report on those that I like – one that hit home quickly was Fluent News – this is a compilation of news ala Google but it seems to be deeper and much easier to get to the news than Google. I am also a Big Oven recipe user and there is an app for that, however, I am awaiting the extension that has the shopping cart.