a non-techie review

I've been busy, so I apologize for the lack of blogging.

As you read from my previous post, last week Andrew and I got iPhones. Andrew's worked as promised, mine was a nightmare. From the very beginning it did not like to turn on after it had gone into sleep mode. We had to hard re-start it 5 or 6 times from Saturday morning through Monday afternoon. On Monday, Andrew took it to the Apple store twice and I took it a third time. After three visits to them in an 8 hour time period, they finally handed me a new one. And since Monday I haven't have a single problem.

I do like the iPhone, but there are some things that I wish I could change. First of all - it is only available on the AT&T network (which you probably knew). But we had Verizon and I really like the Verizon network. Despite AT&T's "more bars in more places" marketing campain, Verizon has the superior coverage, at least here in New England. But staying with Verizon wasn't an option. I'm not crazy about AT&T the coverage can be spotty and the calls aren't as clear. But they do have roll-over minutes which Verizon does not. So that's a definate check mark in the AT&T column. The biggest drawback is now calls to other Verizon phones are no longer free. Almost everyone I know has Verizon, so we are actually going to have to watch our minutes.

Also, getting to the actual phone on the iPhone is somewhat annoying. It's very easy to receive a call, but making a call isn't as easy as pushing your speed dial button. You have to get to the home page, click the phone option, and from there you can choose your favorites, contacts, or the keypad. Not a huge deal, but definately not desgined for speedy dialing.

The speaker phone is also sub-par in my opinion. There's not enough power to really speak to or hear anyone through the speaker phone. Then again, I don't really like speaker phones.

On the flip side, it's really nice having the internet at my fingertips. You can save your favorite pages as icons on your homepage, so I have CNNmobile, NPRmobile, Wikipedia, Googlemobile, and Boston.com on my homepage. My email is synced with the email function so I'm never without email contact. I have other favorites saved in Safari.

So there are definite pros and cons to the phone. I don't love it, but I also don't hate it. It's going to take some getting used to, but I'm willing to give it a shot.