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The iphone scores poorly in the email department. And its so bad that I have to continue using my Blackberry. The only commendable advantage that I can see is that it does HTML mails and that it automatically fetches your emails when you first run it. Reading simple mail attachments are fine, including office documents. Push mails are OK for Microsoft Exchange and fair for Funambol users.
One annoying thing I find unsatisfactory is the Contacts. Apple just does not allow you to type in an Alphabet search for names but forces you to scroll up and down that few hundreds contacts alphabetically sorted. That's bad.
Another worth mentioning weakness lies in her virtual keyboard. Despite the "intelligent" word correction feature built-in, just makes composing long emails or text messages frustrating. In fact, it constantly over-suggest itself, thinking its smarter than the user. Phone does not default to the dial pad, which most people expects, but stays at the last accessed menu. Notes does not allow simple categories to sort each of your notes and resides in one long list.
As many mentioned, text messages still cannot be forwarded, and it still lacks a fundamental copy and paste function. To top it all up, a simple search is absent on the device, making it a brick when information search is required.
I was a hard-core user of Maps found on my Nokia E90 Communicator but each instance was like a hit-miss affair. The map data took ages to be transferred into the device and the AGPS capability on it was a shame to mention. It was painful.
Come the iphone maps, and boy, was I impressed. No map data to transfer, took just over ten seconds to show me where I am exactly. Google has done a magnificent overhaul of maps usage in my mind. The recent updates on its firmware to 2.2 now gives me hybrid, street view of certain places and open up a whole new dimension of what maps ought to be.
GPS used to work with direct LOS (Line-Of-Sight) and fails when you enter the building or tunnel but with the iphone maps, it just blow this myth out of plain sight! Spot on regardless of where you are physically located. The snazzy flip of the digital page to drop a pin adds to the final touch of a well-conceived application.
I used to dislike iTunes. It's bloated with too many features, attempting to enrich too wide an audience. It's like an attempt to indoctrinate a new culture which turns people off. But in it lies the legendary link to the infamous ipod and iphone which is the new culture of many society today.
So when Apple decide to do the same with iphone by throwing the ipod into it, we began to accept iTunes as the next common day tool we fire up from our desktop. I use it to do primarily one thing - backup my data on the iPhone. But wait, if you are like me, a huge fan of audio books from Bill Clinton and such, you will kinda give yourself another good reason to put a higher value point on iTunes.
And of course, the iTune store empower my iphone with free apps but I would say the number of them does not exceed fifteen. The majority of them on the store are crapware. So stay clear of them until the QC team of Apple applications begin to sit up and work. Apple has her reason for the compromise and will do otherwise when the apps base hit a critical mass.
Screen resolution for one. Its beyond what our naked eyes can properly digest - beyond 200 ppi. Unlike current smartphones on the market save HTC's recent attempt, none has even come close.
Natural Touch i call it to how the Mac OS-powered icons and menu graces the large screen so dynamically and realistically.
Large 8/16GB storage for a third wow factor as closely followed by the rest of the world.
Sophisticated image color balance of the 2MP camera which surprised me with her intelligent rendering of each frame I took. I must say its good. The overall built quality is staggering, almost on par with the blackberry (e.g. 8120) who still insists that their phone be made in Canada or Hungary today.
Lastly, the OS, which makes boring tasks of calling or entering data so silky smooth.
All the above has clearly differentiates the iPhone from another off-the-mill squeaky smartphones production plant owned by giant like Nokia.
Good enough reason to get one?
Cool or not, here it comes!
