Cup of Geek

I am going to try and post on some tech things with some regularity - your Daily (ok monthly?) Cup of Geek. It will probably focus on smartphone and web stuff. Those of you not interested...wait, how can you not be interested??? Smartphones right now are like web in 1996!!! :)

First installment - the iPhone.

Well, I finally broke down and got the iPhone when the new 3GS came out. Had to release my assault weapon...err..4yr old old Windows Mobile smartphone - it was time. I also switched to AT&T from Verizon and I did not port my old number, as I would like to leave my past behind. I had that old 703 number forever and it was tied to my old business, etc so I would get a lot of random calls on it. I just wanted to release that number.

Those of you that are running my mobile app (dub me now) would get my updated cell phone automatically in your BB, WinMo or iPhone address book. Those that aren't - well c'mon think of my children - do you want them to starve?? Please sign up today! - its FREE :) Plus, you can win an iPhone 3GS or BlackBerry of your choice click here.

Anyway self promotion aside, I wanted to post about my experience thus far with the iPhone and AT&T. First off, I have been a smartphone user for about 7 years. So I expect A LOT of my phone. The iPhone has not disappointed in that department. It does everything very elegantly and the attention to detail, both in hardware and in software is amazing. One small example, listening to music with the headphone jack plugged in (a standard jack which is another nice feature), if you unplug your headphones the music pauses automatically. Just shows the level of detail that the designers have when it comes to usable functionality. Can't tell you how many times on my old phone I would unplug my headphones and then music would be blaring out of my speakers.

Overall, the hardware design is top notch. You can't take anything apart on it, and the phone feels like it is well constructed. I like having one USB sync cable that also acts as your charger - no need to bring two cables when you travel. Plus the screen works well indoors and outdoors. Overall, the phone feels very solid and sturdy in your hand.

Apple made an interesting choice when designing the phone. First, they decided that NO apps will be allowed to run in the background. So the phone is incredibly stable because shoddy developers (like me) can't spawn jobs that sleep and run in the background. What inevitably happens (anyone with a BB or WinMO phone knows this well) is that some of those cool little apps start leaking memory like a bitch. Then - something will lockup, crash, etc. You know the drill - if it is bad enough you pull the battery and reboot. Now the iphone gets away from that because you can't run anything in the background. Once you push that magic button to exit the app - that app and all its resources are killed.

There are times when this ISN'T desirable however. Like when I'm listening to music on Pandora (awesome app BTW) and I want to check google traffic or my email. Well I can't, because once I close Pandora - boom its dead. Or if I am on yahoo IM, same thing. So you truly cannot multi-task on the iphone. However, it is a tradeoff that I believe is worth it in terms of overall stability. BTW, just to be clear - you can run certain APPLE apps in the background (like the iPod), just not 3rd party apps. Overall, most apps "retain their state" pretty well so you just switch back and forth and its not a big deal. The new Palm Pre has an interesting take on this model - I'll have to post more about it at some point.

Random functioanlity notes:
- iPhone 3gs handles video streaming very well, and you can output videos to your TV too!
- native YouTube app is pretty addictive
- Visual voicemail is freaking brilliant
- the virtual keyboard has not been bad for me. Could I type better if I had a QWERTY keyboard - sure but the new 3.0 OS does a nice job handling input. I've been surprised at how well it handles typing, as that was my biggest stumbling block.
- The way it switches between WIFI and 3G connectivity is very smooth. Download speeds are pretty good with 3G, and AT&T is going to double the speed by year end.
- GPS with google maps is great for the navigationally challenged like myself
- emailing pictures and video is incredibly simple (MMS TXTing is disabled by ATT for now)
- there is absolutely NO BETTER mobile web browsing experience than the iPhone (Google Android is close 2nd). The Safari web browser can do virtually everything that a desktop browser can do (JavaScript, AJAX, etc) . Plus ,the iphone is so popular that many sites are delivering custom iphone versions of their sites. The "pan and zoom" features of browsing a non mobile site are far better than anything else out there. It will not do Flash, however I see that as a good thing :)

OK, now the bad part. I came from Verizon, and I can tell you AT&T's network is nowhere near as good as verizon. Call quality is much more variable on ATT, and I get occasional dropped calls. If I was a sales guy who was on the road 24x7 and making a ton of calls... it would be a tough choice. But for me, the plusses of the functionality of the device blow away the shortcomings of the cell network.

Our company gets a ton of BB devices (we are RIM partners), Android, etc so I have played around with a bunch of phones, and I really found that the iPhone was the one I liked the best (I can't stand BB's thumb scroller thingy to navigate around - I always want to touch the screen). I saw what VRZ had in the pipeline for smartphones and I just wasn't impressed - so I made the switch. BTW - those of you with VRZ, they are going to be releasing some Google Android phones at the end of the year, and will have the Palm Pre in 2010.

Anyway, at some point I'll post about all the BB devices I've seen from RIM as I know that we have some dedicated BB users on this blog.