Over the years, I’ve had many a smart phone, to the point where I can’t imagine life without one now. Having my calendar on my phone, as well as my contacts, the ability to check sports scores and Wikipedia from anywhere, and play the occasional game while standing in line is invaluable to me. But no other phone has engendered the passion for a smart phone as the iPhone.
The iPhone does so many things perfectly. Their App Store, where they sell add-on applications, is seamlessly integrated with iTunes, making it almost too easy to download and install applications. Safari, while not perfect, is still the best mobile browser that I’ve come across. The feel and interaction of the phone is perfectly intuitive – without an instruction manual you can figure out how to do whatever it is that you’re trying to do.
Listed below, in no particular order, are my 10 favorite things about my iPhone. These include built-in iPhone features as well as add-on applications.
- Safari – Having fought with the version of IE that’s built into Windows Mobile devices for years, Safari was a breath of fresh air. It’s not perfect when it comes to rendering sites, but it’s very close.
- Yelp – In case you hadn’t noticed, I travel a fair bit. Having a Yelp application on my phone makes it very easy to find new restaurants in whatever town I’m in. The new version also includes “Twitter-like” 140-character reviews that can be added from a mobile phone.
- Facebook – As if I needed to spend more time on Facebook.
- TwitterFon – By far the best Twitter application I’ve found for the iPhone. It’s what actually keeps me connected to Twitter.
- Shazam – A great little application that listens to a song and can tell you what it is. No more having to guess which 80’s hair metal band it is.
- FlightTrack – A tad delayed, but FlightTrack gives great information on flight status, including a little map of where the plane is. I can’t imagine travelling without it.
- Photo Gallery – It’s nice to be able to sync photos on the phone with my PC. And the implementation is very slick, with the ability to zoom in on photos.
- Email Client – It’s IMAP compliant, meaning that emails I delete from my GMail account on my iPhone also get clobbered on GMail, and that I can access the archives.
1 comment:
Thanks for the good overview on what you love and hate. I'm trying to have the company buy me one...but if that doesn't work, I will get my own. My goal in getting an iPhone is to consolidate the 3 devices that I carry with me everytime I travel (personal phone, work blackberry and iPod) into one, with only 1 charger to have to worry about losing.
~B
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