So I got myself an Iphone 3G 16G black, and after working with it for a few days I thought I'd write a review.

So first thing first: this phone rocks. There is nothing like it. Working with an iphone is like working for the first time with os X: it might not be perfect, and still has some quirks but everything else just blows compared to this one. Apple gets it. It gets how a smartphone should work, and in that aspect, it reminds me a bit of palm os in the beginning, which then was also quite good. The biggest thing is that it does not try to be a computer like the one on your desktop. That is a big flaw in for example, windows mobile.

Right, first, the hardware. When it comes to hardware, there are a few things I miss on the iphone, which I would like to see on a smartphone, a good camera, and a keyboard. I actually used the camera on my old phone (nokia n80) a lot, to make pictures when I did not have my camera with me. On the other hand, I do have my nikon d200 with me alot, and the camera on any phone is so slow, that by the time it is ready to take a picture, I alreade have my nikon out of my bag and taken a picture. Furthermore, the 2 mpixel is enough for the "hey that's funny, I got to show this" kind of pictures. Even the 3.2 Mpixel camera on my nokia does not make much better pictures, and low light sensitivity on every cameraphone is useless. The other thing is a keyboard. I use a nokia E90 as a standby phone for work, and that one has a nice keyboard with which using ssh for example works very well. For sms and email the virtual keyboard is not too bad and certainly superior to t9, which I never really liked. You can not type as fast and as accurate on the iphone virtual keyboard yet (but this will improve after training), it biggest limitation is that you have to switch between alphabet and number/characters. What is very nice, and what I have not seen in any phone, is that you can very quickly switch language, as someone who sms-es and emails a lot in dutch, english and sometimes german, this is very nice.

Apart from this, I am very happy with the hardware. It feels solid, the screen is briljant and it has exactly the right amount of buttons: one for locking, one for home, one volume and one for silent. It has a headphone connector for a standard minijack. The shape is such that it fits comfortably in my pocket without people thinging that I am happy to see them.

Then the software. What stands out is that the iphone is a joy to use. Touch, tap, flick, squeeze, turn, it works so well and this show why I like apple: when it comes to ergonomics, they get it. This is how it should work. One of the critiques on the iphone is that it has no multitasking. You can however play music and have a phone call while using apps. But this simplifies the handling a lot. I remember that I very often left on an application on my n80, some of which use a lot of power, like the tomtom application. But now, I now that if I switch to another app, I do not haave to worry about open apps. Plus apps do retain their state, so they work in serial. Forexample, if I use netnewswire to read rss feeds, and I follow a link to a site, it opens in safari, but when I return to netnewswire it is on the page where I was before. The only application where I can imagine multitasking would be handy would be instant messaging.

The standard apps work very well, email, safari, photos, address book, they benefit greatly of the simplification and gesture control on the iphone. Things I do miss: no landscape keyboard for sms or email. No to do list and notes synchronisation. No cut and paste (which I never use though). No turn by turn navigation. No synchronisation over wifi or bluetooth, only over cable or mobileme. No bluetooth sharing of umts (but there is software for that). No stereo bluetooth support. No videorecording on the camera, which I used a lot on my nokia.

But all these things can, and I hope, will be addressed by firmware upgrades.

Synchronisation with my mac works very well. Iphoto for photos, itunes for music and movies (I use visual hub to convert movies). Garageband for ringtones (which automatically compresses, equalizes and normalizes your ringtone), mail.app for email, ical, addressbook etc.

Found some really cool apps, like netnewswire for rss, bloomberg for stocks, stanza for ebooks, buienradar, karejan for music training, vnc lite and telnet lite, palringo for instant messaging, RRGH (remote control for my mytghtv), exposure for flickr, myspace and facebook app. Using the itunes app store is very convenient, and updating becomes very easy.

On the other hand, I have seen a lot of crappy apps, or apps which are promising, but very unstable. Sometimes it makes my iphone crash and it reboots. Sometimes it crashes the apps in such a way that I can not open any apps, and I have to reboot. A lot of apps have updates, but need to wait for the itunes approval. And of course, you're locked into the itunes store so they will ban apps they do not like, or which the provider does not like, like voip apps and umts sharing apps.

One thing I really like about the iphone is the detail. If you are listening to itunes and you unplug the headphone, it pauses playing. Proximity sensor for when you hold your iphone to your ear, to stop accidental keypresses. Oh, and the iphone is a good phone: audio quality is good, and loud. The built in (mono) speaker is very good.

There has been a lot of critique on the iphone because it locks the user into apple and into mobileme and the itunes store for apps, music, movies and ringtones. However, it is very well possible to put content on your iphone without the itunes store and drm. Just put your mp3 music, your mp4 movies and your ringtones on it using itunes and garageband. So you only depend on the itunes store for apps, which can be annoying. Of course you can now jailbreak, but I won't do that for now. There is also the critique of lockin with certain mobile providers. For me, that is not such an issue, since I already was using t-mobile, with whom I am not unhappy, and their iphone subscription is a very good deal: 30 euro for 150 voice minutes, and unlimited data at 2048 Mbit. What can be annoying though, is the fact that they will stop you from using voip software, from sharing your umts connection to a laptop and from using a prepay gsm card when you are abroad.

In conclusion I can say that the iphone, for me, is very much worth it. There is no other phone as good as this one. It has some limitations, of which most can be solved by firmware and application upgrades. I do hope itunes store gets it's act together, just as mobile me should. But my previous experience has been quite good with apple (with some exceptions of course). Sure it is a phone which can lock you in, compared to say, an openmoko linux phone or even a nokia phone. Let them make a phone which is as good as this one. Then we'll see.

Of course you do not need an iphone. Your old phone works good enough. But it is like a macbook, or an ipod: your old laptop with windows 98 or your old tape walkman might be enough, but if you do not settle for good enough, you will be amazed by the possibilities.

Tags: apple,iphone,review,gadgets