I had a blackberry since 2006. Then I bought an iPhone in september 2007. I had it shipped from the US and hacked it. Almost immediately I went back to blackberry. The same thing happened to some of my friends who were blackberry users.
There was no push notifications back then, no app store, no copy-paste, not even a contacts applications (contacts were stored in the phone app). So it’s easy to understand why I went back immediately. Now the iphone is different. There is push mail, push notifications, copy paste and an app store which to me is a big difference.
So I tried again in December, and it’s now nearly 2 months already so I decided to do a little write-up, a couple of pro’s and con’s and a list of apps that currently keep me going on (very well) with the iphone.
Pro’s
It’s a computer. Which means I can do relatively anything on it. Well, 80/90% of the things I do on my computer I can do here. Read news, view pictures, the social web (twitter, facebook, tumblr, ecc), get organized, view movie times, shopping list, take notes, view my box.net (or dropbox), look for a house, book a train, take wine notes, find the best restaurants near me, play nice games, view my google reader, chat with any IM and also skype, even tell my pay-tv decoder to record tv shows when I’m not home. Oh yes, and make phone calls and take pictures. And listen to my music (like an ipod not like a cellphone).
And most of these things the iphone not only does much much better than a blackberry, it does better than an actual computer. First of all I don’t have to be sitting in front of a desk, i can do them sitting on a sofa and secondly, at the end the voices on the street were true… Finger is actually better than mouse…!
So to be fair, the iphone is not a phone but a real computer with a tiny screen, studied to be used with your fingers and whilst Blackberry is a dedicated device for a specific task iPhone has been made to do many things in the best way possible, and for many it does.
Con’s
So the blackberry is a dedicated device for writing and reading emails, and for many reasons it’s better in doing so, for example: physical keyboard, no annoying dictionaries (and the iphone’s could be better, especially international); unified mailbox, which unless you keep only one account, the lack of it on the iPhone will soon start to get on your nerves; Real push. What does that mean? Without getting technical, BB has partnered with phone companies so that every handset is connected in a unique way between you and them, this way emails work exactly like text/sms messages. Therefore no extra battery consumption when push notifications are on. As a matter of fact the blackberry doesn’t have an “off ” switch for push. It doesn’t even have a “check mail” button. Emails just arrive instantly, and this is the amount of self confidence you get from a blackberry…
iPhone battery sucks. And by sucks I mean if I use it exactly like I used to use the blackberry (push mails, IM always on, bb messenger, some web surfing during the day, 1h of music) it lasts 8 hours. Add to this the fact that I actually use an iphone to do alot more, I easily end up dead after 6/7 hours. Not very good. If I use it as a normal phone instead, disabling push, forget web and music and apps it can last even 2 full days. Sometimes I need to plan to get back to office only to charge the phone a bit. For this reason iphone brings me back to when I had a Motorola Star Tac and had to buy the ugly fat add-on battery.
Anyway, to sum up, after 2 months I still have an iPhone and the pros still beat the cons so I’m keeping it for now.
But applications make the iphone good so below I listed my best (excluding the default apps), the ones I have installed in my phone and that I use very much. In order, best on top.
Simplenote
To me, this the best application of all. It’s a note pad. As in Apple’s default one, notes get titles from the first line and are sorted by most recently modified. And this alone is very useful. No additional fields for tags or other time consuming stuff. It has a search field so i can find anything and it has 2 additional things on top of apples’s default notes. 1: it has a simple white background and normal font. 2: it stores notes online. And I can access notes from any browser or even a desktop client for my computer. So anything I write on the phone is immediately available on any other computer. No sync. No mobile me. But they are also stored on the phone, so if there’s no internet connection I can still read and write notes. And when the connection comes back simplenote updates the online version too. So now this app has become my moleskine, my bookmarks, my thoughts, my lists, my reminders. Everything personal, I write here. As I said in the beginning, to me this is the best application of all. And it’s free.
Boxcar
This little application gives me instant on-screen notification for emails, twitter and rss feeds. The cool thing is that I can decide from which emails I get notified, down to a single person, so I don’t get notifications for spam, newsletters or not interesting emails. Sweet! It gave me a secret email account to which I can forward all or specific emails. This way I don’t even have to activate push email in the phone. Boxcar can also notify me about growl notifications in my mac. And as I mentioned before, also twitter updates such as mentions or private messages.
Google Reader
This is a web app so I have to go to the reader website from safari and then add the bookmark icon to the home screen. The iPhone version is amazing. Fast, easy and has nearly all the features of the regular version. And it’s synced with internet so what I read on the phone is marked as read everywhere. If you don’t like webb apps, or you prefer something that also works offline there’s a proper application for google reader which is very nice: Byline.
Ping!
Ping is for the iPhone what the Blackberry messenger is for the bb. It adds direct phone-to-phone messaging. It works exactly like sms or chat but it’s free and does not require constant login as IM apps do. You install it, choose a username the first time and voilà. If you consider that sms messages are a real ripoff this app should help us spend a lot less money. There’s a free and a paid ad-less version.
Beejive
This is my favourite IM chat application. At 9,99 it’s not cheap, but I think it’s money well spent. The best things of this app are: speed, it is very very fast so you can go in and out very quckly. It’s compatible with all major systems, from aim to jabber to google to facebook, and it has tons of preferences so you can customize it as you like. I’d also like to mention Meebo which just came out and it’s free. Not so customizable nor fast but promises very well, and it’s free.
Tweetie 2
There are many twitter clients out there for iphone and some have nice features too, but overall I think this one is the best. It hasn’t got the best interface, it’s not so clear and simple as some other twitter clients out there but it has the most features, and it’s very fast. And at 2 dollars it’s not so expensive. I hear people moaning about prices of apps on the iphone but songs cost sometimes more so I don’t think this is a big problem.
Facebook
Ok this one is obvious. But it’s actually one of the apps I use most, and a very good example of an application that I think is actually better on the iPhone than on the computer. The interface makes perfect use of my fingers, unlike many apps. I don’t use facebook very much on my computer but as I said in this specific case the app makes me want to use the service more. As a classic “sofa” application I guess the iPad version will be amazing.
Ristoranti D’Italia
Ok this app works only in Italy and it costs 9,99. But there’s a reason I want to talk about it. The app is the official “L’Espresso” restaurant guide, similar to the Michelin guide, a famous established guide of the best restaurants in Italy. The app is an example of how a valid editorial and influential product can make a great use of the iphone features (in this case gps location, email sharing and camera) to find for example good restaurants near to me. And I think this is what makes the iphone so great, and better than all the rest of it’s competitors.
Other apps of this kind are “Now Playing” movie guide, ”Immoobiliare” an italian app that uses gps location connected to a huge online database so I can find houses for sale or rent (I guess there are similar ones in other coutries too).
There are also apps like Yelp, Foursquare or Gowalla, and although they probably work better in US (for now) they feature social networking based around the geolocation feature of the phone.
Other good apps/games I use are Box.net, GroceryZen, Outside, Skype, NotifyMe, Tumblr (this will be another great one on the iPad I guess…), Remote, Shazam, Wine Notes, Traffic Rush, Flight Control, Rolando and Kapowie.
To finish, this is the best app to find other apps. It’s called Chomp and I prefer it over the official Apple store one.
