Being a tech junkie, I have had a few phones over the years. I was one of the first Canadians to have an iPhone 2G, the original version. I unlocked it myself and used it on Fido. At that time the data rates in Canada, to say the least, were exorbitant. I never could utilize the iPhone to it’s fullest potential. A few months later I got 3 month unlimited data trial from Fido and started using the iPhone like it was intended to be used.
I must say that the iPhone was one of the best devices I had ever used. But it also had it’s short comings. Prior to switching to the iPhone, I was a Blackberry user and as such loved the instant push email. iPhone had none of that, you could set it to "fetch" your email every 15 minutes. And if you were brave enough, you could hack the software to fetch email every minute. But this had it’s shortcomings, most notably a decreased battery life.
However, when it came to web browsing and mutlimedia, iPhone had, and still has, no equal. By far the best device for these functions. However, lack of real push email (at the time of purchase), lack of a removable battery, inability to send SMS to multiple parties at the same time, no flash support in Safari (just ridiculous for a device that touts web browsing as one of it’s main features - it’s codename was apparently Safari Pad during initial stages) were just some of the issues that had me qualifying the use of iPhone by claiming that I don’t have to carry a cellphone and an iPod to the gym - I just take my iPhone.
In the end, I hate to say it since I am a self-admitted Apple fanboy, iPhone is just another iPod Touch that can make phone calls. The new iPhone 3G does really add much to the feature list, except a sort of push email, but you gotta have a @me.com email address, a GPS, 3G support and some other minor upgrades. After a bit of soul searching, I sold my iPhone last week and got myself the just-released Nokia E71 NAM. I have never used a Nokia Smartphone in the past, so I am still learning my way around, but so far I am liking the experience and enjoying the near instantaneous push email that was as easy as inputting my email address and password to set it up.
Look for an indepth review and a comparison of iPhone, E71 and Samsung Jack (that I would like to forget that I ever owned) in an upcoming post.
If you liked my post, feel free to subscribe to my rss feeds
