Ok, so the techno-nerd that lives deep inside me reared it’s ugly head and forced me to buy an iphone over the weekend. I was in Tulsa for some fun Oral Roberts style and lucked out on grabbing one of the few remaining units left in the city (thanks to my personal concierge for picking it up for me). The design is great, functionality is in check, BUT I’m considering taking it back for a refund.
Here are my reasons why:
I dropped my 8g ipod once, the screen cracked open and now it’s useless. I could take it back to the store and have it repaired for $200, but I haven’t. The iphone is one huge screen. I’m sure it’s been drop tested, but It’s not fool proof. I drop my cell phone all the time. Sometimes I drop it when im picking it up after I’ve already dropped it. I’m a dropper damnit, and I’m not confident the iphone can coexist with me as a result.
The battery life myth Apple has perpetuated has already proven itself not to be true. I spent several hours yesterday on a plane and watched the battery indicator half itself before my eyes.
There is no “new email/message” light that alerts you from across the room. My blackberry blinks at me and I know I’ve got a new message. I have to activate the iphone, go into mail and see if there’s a new message. A simple led blinker would have been nice Mr. Jobs.
No Voice activated dialing. I use that feature on my blackberry all the time and it’s probably saved my life several times while im driving. The iphone requires full concentration and using it while driving is really not an option.
The unit itself is bigger than my blackberry and heavier. It’s an odd size, I just can’t get used to holing it in my hand and using the phone features especially.
Keyboard. The touch keyboard is small and it often mistakes the keys your hunting for. Supposedly it “learns” your typing patterns and finger radius and knows that even when your fat finger slightly touches the J key, you’re really meaning to tap the K key. I can’t imagine how it does this, I’ve mistyped many letters on the thing and it hasn’t learned a damn thing yet.
Outlook/ work server configuration is very different from blackberry. Even my company has had a slightly difficult time getting us set up on it and were rooted in technology. I can’t imagine what the less techno-savvy folks are doing about it.
Internal Battery: The battery is internal, you can get to it. If it runs down, that’s it. I like having 2 rechargeable batteries at my discretion so I can keep one charged at all time, keeps my phone uptime at 100%.
The phone/ipod combo isn’t really practical for me. I use my ipod to go running almost exclusively and carrying this $600 toy around the lake isn’t an option. Even if I just used the ipod functionality when traveling, I’m still draining valuable phone battery time in the process.
It’s expensive. I could probably save a village of children in Malawi for what it cost me to buy this thing and that would make Madonna proud.
3 comments:
It seems that in the tech world it is better not to be first in line. Was there a "beta" iPhone, or did the secrecy surrounding it preclude this option.
Your concerns seem real. Maybe you should send your comments to Apple. You really don't like the iPhone at all, do you. Feel foolish for falling for all the hype?
If you can't return it, and you can't sell it, swallow your pride and go back to your old Blackberry and come up with $175 for the 2 GB iPod or $200 to get the 8 GB repaired. (Who needs 8 GB of anything on a portable personal entertainment thingamajig?)
Uhh, Ditto to everything you said in your post. One addition:
No matter what you do, you can't have the thing check of email more than once every 15 minutes. Oh, and someone at my office adds something to my calendar, it won't sync with my iPhone until I get it back to the office, plug it in, and manually sync it.
On top of that - the combinez size of my 8MB iPod nano and my blackberry is SMALLER than the iphone...
So what you're telling me is that John Herrington was right.....
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