My wife was after a new phone. She has an existing Nokia N73 that was deciding to crash intermittently when she was on a call. Not a great phone to have when you are trying to run a business at the same time. She also wanted access to her emails when she was away from her desk. Admittedly that this is not a huge amount of the time but it is handy to be able to respond to emails when you may be out at a client site.

We looked at a couple of plans and decided that the 8GB iphone was right for her on a vodafone plan. We chose Vodafone because of the free phone calls between her and another Vodafone mobile (her business partner is also on Vodafone).

Getting her set up was a snap but here are some of my first impressions of using the iPhone 3G in a business context:

1. The synchronisation using iTunes is broken for Calendar. I have tried to work out which one it actually syncs with but it never seems to actually pick up any new calendar entries. I believe this would be better with active sync and a proper exchange account but she doesn’t have any of this at the moment.
2. Keyboard - the keyboard sucks compared to the Blackberry. I can’t seem to get the right characters most of the time. I like to type out stuff pretty quickly on my Blackberry but can see that this is going to be a nightmare on the iPhone. Luckily she has smaller fingers than myself.
3. How do you search through your emails on the iphone? I don’t see this at all. On my blackberry it has a great search interface that allows me to look through the last 30 days worth of emails in a couple of seconds.
4. No spell check. Was asked this during the week about the iPhone and spell check. Now I can confirm that it isn’t there. Not a problem for me as I don’t think I would be able to type out long emails on the device.
5. Cut and paste. this is an old complaint but I thought that they would have figured out how to do it by now.

Things that I think are fantastic on it though are:

1. Obviously the web browser and the choice between wi-fi and 3G connections.
2. AppStore. Very nice and easy way to get applications on to the device. I can’t believe how many high quality applications are already available for the device.
3. Google Maps - great looking user interface that is integrated with assisted GPS.

All in all I think that this is a great consumer device. Is it going to be a Blackberry killer - no. I don’t think it has the user experience that an advanced/power user will be looking for. I think it is great if you write the occasional email and do a lot of web surfing but if you want some serious corporate usage out of it then it has a way to go.

Have you always been an over person but found that you had to justify with people who insisted on it being under? Do you even understand what I am talking about? If not then head to this site that gives irrefutable proof that over is the correct way to lay out your toilet roll

If you download the latest iTunes (7.7) you can now get access to the AppStore for iPod Touch and iPhone. You can’t see it directly from the itunes store but you can get there by searching for “App” and then heading in to the search results.

At the moment I can see around 7 pages of free apps for iPod touch and iPhone. Some apps are iPhone only so just have a look at the requirements before buying or downloading anything

Cool building art by a bloke called Pedro Estrellas. I can see some Cthulu cross overs in the works.

octo-pied building by *FilthyLuker on deviantART