I had a chance to take the iPhone from work and use it over the past weekend and I felt that I should write about it.

The process was very simple: Just switch SIM cards and sync my contacts, email settings using iTunes.

It was so seamless. Pretty jaw dropping if you have a Mac with a well formatted address book.

By only supporting two hardware platforms (iPhone and iPod Touch), Apple really has the software integration down pact. You hearing this Nokia? None of the Nokia Software Update (NSU) garbage that I have to go through (different product codes, localizations). I still can’t figure out why my e61i can’t get the latest product update from Nokia (dated July 2008).

Other Impressions

3G is a lot faster than EDGE – it’s like comparing a 56Kbps modem to my first high-speed cable modem. That’s how fast it felt. I also love how WIFI and 3G seamlessly switches between each other. My Nokia requires me to set a specific access point for each application or set it to search each time; very clunky. Consequently, I have set all my applications to access data via my wireless data plan. Even though S60 v3 has Access Point Groups, none of my applications use it (AUTHOR’S NOTE: This apparently was fixed in S60 v3, Feature Pack 2 – seriously, WTF?! That doesn’t help me, or any other owners of the Nokia E-series devices, with the exception of AT&T’s e71x—which isn’t even released yet). What’s the point of even having WIFI at all?

True to what many reviewers have said, the iPhone’s web browsing experience is second-to-none (although it does have some problems, see below). It blows my Nokia N800 Web Tablet out of the water (even when I turn Ad Blocking off). Rendering is faster, navigation is faster. It’s just plain better as a Full-Internet access device.

In terms of stability, I echo the sentiment that Apple can do better. Even with the latest 2.2.1 OS update, the iPhone bricked (white screen of death) in the first hour that I had it. Fortunately, I was able to do a hard reset to reboot the phone. That never happens on my Nokia smartphones.

My Wife’s Experience

I’m a pretty gung-ho Apple proponent, but my wife was less impressed with the phone. It broke down under the following three use cases (all in about 30 minutes).

1. Typing: Jen couldn’t get the hang of typing—she hated the keyboard. Her hit zones were off, and her timing was frequently off (depressed too long, too short).
2. No Flash plug-in: This is a real killer for Jen. She’s a big fan of figure skating and frequents many skating blogs. She wanted to watch videos from this weekend’s World Figure Skating Championships, but was puzzled as to why none of the videos were showing up. She really lost it when I told her in an offhand manner, “Oh, the iPhone doesn’t support Flash.”
3. No Video: Probably the biggest kicker for her and myself is that there is no video camera application. We record videos of my daughter using my Nokia phone — it’s okay quality, but capturing that stuff is awesome. She said, “WTF?! What do you mean that it doesn’t take video?” To be honest, I don’t quite understand why Apple hasn’t included this feature yet. It’s a potential deal breaker for me.

Conclusion

Overall, a fun time using the phone. Apple is so far ahead of the game. I am doubtful that RIM, MS, Nokia and Google can catch up simply because they all have too many different models to support.

Still, I’m a huge Nokia fan, but I long for a phone with software as evocative as the iPhone’s.

-T