Review: The iPhone (8GB)

I started off not liking the iPhone, and I still am not 100% sold, granted this is first generation (do the bigger sizes count as hardware revisions?) none the less it’s not a perfect phone, and yet it’s features are probably one of the better ones out there that are easily available via a US GSM cell phone provider.

The community’s use of Installer really does make the product very useable, but the core OS has some things to catch-up on, as many have stated MMS support, while not a must for me, I can understand the frustration folks have in trying to send a friend a picture to their cell, only to have no option to do so - but Installer’s list of repo’s and apps have closed the gap some, including support for Flickr, Twitter, Terminal, etc. all apps which were on my “I’d like to..” list.

For me the big sell was really 3 core things, 1 - Terminal, hello SSH, 2 - Mobile Safari - even over EDGE on T-Mobile it’s great for simple terminal access, 3 - Mail - IMAP galore, even Gmail/Yahoo support, so I have a few more to add, but it’s very handy.

Things that wil need to change before I can say “Woah! Awesome, I love thee iPhone!” are:

1. The ability to make a signature per-account vs. 1 global sig.
2. Email Attachments other than Photos
3. Word/Doc editing support.
4. Supporting flash, even if it’s a “Click to Activate” like Quicktime.
5. Video Recording App - Flickr now has Video Support, so heck yeah
6. Rotation across all apps, widescreen SSH with a smaller keyboard - or external keyboard to dock onto the phone.
7. Bluetooth Sending! This would make life great, beam contacts, files, etc. the one thing I miss is being able to Bluetooth things from the Mac -> Phone.

Really those are my only major gripes, it linked up with my headset no issue, BSD backend is nice to have access to for dig/whois etc. some common tools for my business, but everything else works well enough.

I know that a new firmware is just around the corner, and there are some grumbles that it will be harder to hack/unlock - I pray folks are wrong, as Apple would probably lock out a good portion of their phone users, as I know many (like myself) are not fond of AT&T - granted I am still considering giving them a try, but I want to test it out good, both home and work, but then and only then would I consider moving my # over, and even then about 400 of my minutes a month are to customers on the 5 Favs, or on T-Mobile… so roll over better add up quick

Anywhoo - all in all I enjoy the device, hopefully it will be continually improved either by Apple or the community by use of Installer.app but I don’t think I am going to return it hoping for a 3G model, this works for me, and if I decide to stick with T-Mobile, I’ll have no worries.