The iPhone hype train and subsequent hangover is beginning to fade. I thought I’d post my “2nd Impressions” now that I’ve had plenty of time to tinker with my little marvel. And yes, I am posting this from my iPhone.

My wife’s ancient Windows laptop has finally died, so I’ve turned over to her my slightly-less-ancient G4 PowerBook. Instead of jumping right into a brand new MacBook Pro, I’ve decided to use my iPhone to take over my laptop duties – email, RSS reading, etc. I’ll report more on the experiment soon.

As you can probably infer from the fact that I’m writing this from my iPhone, I’m getting pretty comfortable typing on this thing. I use what I call a Jedi iPhone Typing Technique — you have to let your mind go and stop thinking so much while you type, and it just starts to flow.

My “2nd Impressions”:

I’m floored by something we take for granted on our desktop and laptop computers – multitasking – albeit the iPhone’s utilization is more simple. When sending an email on my old Treo, for example, I’d get stuck while the phone would churn on the data, contact and log on to the network, and then send it. When you send an email on the iPhone, you can immediately move on to other things while it does all the gruntwork in the background. In fact, most (if not all) of the apps can go on with their assigned tasks while you move on to your next item.

Having the wifi on the iPhone just makes everything more enjoyable. I spent the weekend in a hotel in the boonies that had wifi and loved my connectedness. I even found it quicker to consult the hotel’s website for info on my iPhone than calling the front desk.

I love the efficiency of replacing a Treo phone and an iPod with one much sexier device. I even prefer to use the iPhone as an iPod to my 60 GB iPod with video – if only because I can keep the iPhone in my pocket, continue to receive calls, and stop / start my music or podcast with the handy button on my hands-free earbuds.

I made my complaints clear in my podcast review of the iPhone, and I’d like to tack on a couple more small ones.

Though the camera is much better than the one on my Treo, I feel they could have improved a few basics such as adding video, a zoom function, more megapixels, and better white balance handling.

And I still want better integration with Google’s various applications, which I rely on religiously: GMail, Google Calendar, and Google Documents. Right now interfacing with these is clunky or non-functional. I will give them credit for a nice iPhone-ready version of Google Reader online. This is where I spend most of my time.

—

So those are my 2nd Impressions. I could probably think of more, but at this point, my hands are getting tired and a little slippery.

No related posts.

Filed under: Product Review