3G iPhone

I’ve been on the market for a new phone/plan for months. And, during the iPhone frenzy a teeny tiny piece of me secretly envied all those who waited in their tent cities for a shot at getting a 3G iPhone. The envy lasted only until I got a call the next day asking if I wanted the 3G, courtesy of iStockphoto, who ordered phones but couldn’t apply them to their company plan.

In a Nutshell

It’s like the iPod Touch with added access to a phone, email, apps, and GPS. The Rogers plan can also be whittled down to something semi-affordable.

Pros

This is the first phone I’ve ever owned that allows me to do everything I need to do without having to carry around all kinds of extra cruft. On a normal day I’ll port around an iPod, GPS for running / cycling, camera, daytimer, computer, cellphone, and on a non-normal day travel documents. All of this has since been consolidated to my phone. And, it’s opened up a whole new world of tech geekiness that I didn’t know even existed! For example,

Travel: I’ve been able to successfully flight web and gate check-in, book hotels, and book plane tickets using my iPhone. There’s nothing more strangely satisfying than handing the flight attendant your phone when it’s time to get on the plane.

GPS: full-on GPS tracking / mapping / logging / positioning for running, cycling, driving, looking for restaurants / stores / people’s houses — and I get real-time stats/tips/directions in audio as I move around. I’m also becoming a geo-caching junkie. Who knew that there were whole teams of people out there hiding treasure and pinning away the world using Google maps. There’s a lot of room for improvement in many of the sport GPS apps, however.

Hardware: Video is a saving grace on long drives / plane rides for La Niña who will happily watch movies without a peep. The phone is the same quality as my blackberry and visual voicemail is a nice touch. There was one freaky moment that happened when I first got the phone and I had the iPod hooked up to the stereo in the Jeep. The music faded as dP called and his voice came in over the stereo. It took me a moment to figure out how to talk to him — but once I did it was odd. The phone is also Bluetooth enabled (there were rumours circulation that it wasn’t). The photos the camera takes are not bad:



Internet: I rarely turn on my computer now that I can access email, blog, surf, read the news, surf YouTube, check feeds, get the weather, find addresses, etc on my phone. Apps certainly make this easier: the life organizational tools / apps, digital books, calendar, social networking, GoogleTools, metric conversion, restaurant finders, all save me from having to drag out my computer periodically. There is even an app that will tell you what the name of a song is: hold the phone up so it can hear the music and within a few moments it will tell you the song and artist.

Sounds dreamy, eh? There are cons:

Cons

Like the iPod Touch the battery life sucks. I need to charge the phone daily. There are ways of minimizing battery drain (turn off WiFi, bluetooth, use only the phone, turn down brightness, etc.) and bits of hardware you can buy to help prolongue battery life. However, if Apple can create a phone of this calibre then surely they can create a battery that can maintain it.

With Roger’s plan the phone is locked; and, given the opportunity to unlock the phone I would do it in a second so I can use pre-paid SIM cards as I travel around. For now I’ve been using the Truphone App to make calls while away from Calgary; with Truphone you can make calls over WiFi for a fraction of what it would cost for roaming; think of it like Skype with a small charge. And, if the user on the other end is using Truphone, your calls are free.

The Roger’s Canadian plan isn’t super expensive. It’s comparable to what I was paying for my Blackberry with Telus. And, if you have reliable access to WiFi then there is no need to have a data plan. That said, I can see the real costs coming with data transfer (more so than with Blackberry) if you are not using WiFi. Luckily, in my travels I’ve encountered a few mesh networks and open public networks. Even in Halifax I was able to periodically connect to WiFi in coffee shops and around hotels.

Ideally

To make the phone better, an upgrade of the battery and ability to swap SIM cards would help (the phone comes with a SIM card removal tool — locking the phone must be a Rogers thing). In my own life a good fitness attachment for my bike/arm would be handy. In the future figuring out ways of further reducing cruft: IDs, swipe passes, bus tickets, etc. would be handy — and probably make identity theft really easy. If there was a keyboard attachment and photo editing app I’d never use my computer.

I’m sure there are still questions… feel free to ask away!