iPhone Review II

Now that I had an opportunity to work with my iPhone for the past 2 months, I have a revised review of the PDA/iPod phone.

1. The AT&T Edge is still slow and virtually no improvement during the past 2 months. I'm really hoping that Apple and AT&T will work harder to resolve this issue. Even though it's not a real problem for me because I have WiFi hotspot at home, my girlfriend's house, at SAG's office and conference rooms, I still find it a nusaince to have to connect via Edge such as when I'm driving and I want to check on LA Sig Alert for traffic condition.


2. The virtual keyboard initially was pretty cool and then I really hate it. However, after using it for the past 2 months, I'm, beginning to be very proficient at using it. My accuracy have tripled since the last post of the review of the iPhone. In fact, when I have the sound turned on, I can hear myself typing as fast as using a regular keyboard because it just clicks at a high rate incessantly. It also started to learn my most common words and words/names that are in my calendar, contacts, and emails and figures out what I'm trying to type. However, some words such as "bit" and "but" will never be fixed. There are other words, but it's not as annoying as when I first got the iPhone. I still wish they would learn a couple of lessons from RIM Blackberry on keyboard shortcuts such as holding the key for 2 seconds for capitalization and pressing the space bar twice for period. It would speed up my typing some more.


3. No To Do or Task List – Can you believe it? However, I discovered Tada List and it's free. It's the web base version of ToDo lists. It's compatible with iPhone's Safari web browser. However, it's web base, and it's slow when I'm not on a WiFi hotspot.


4. I inititially had a rough time synching my iPhone with Entourage, but after hacking at it for 3 days, it finally worked and it's now working flawlessly. I wish it would sync faster like my Palm Treo. Synching currently takes 10 minutes or so depending on the number of items I have.


5. Recently iTunes 7.4.2 update allows mp3 files ringtones converstion but you'll have to pay $0.99 for the song, and another $0.99 for converting it to a ringtone. Kinda sucks that you have to pay double, but at least you can do it. You can even edit, loop, and cut the song to fit your ringtone preference.


6. I still charge the phone nightly. However, I carry a charger in my computer bad whenever I travel just so that I don't have to worry about battery usage. The USB charging off of my Macbook Pro charges very slowly. It would take more than 4 hours to have a decent charge.


7. The headphone that comes with the phone is not so good. Because of the phone jack, it’s so narrow that any third party headphones such as the Bose headphones are not compatible with the iPhone phone jack. Belkin makes an adapter for $9.95 but it sucks because it's so big and long and cumbersome. Wasn't the whole purpose of getting the iPhone is for the sleek, beauty, and coolness factor of having the phone?


8. What sucks is that Apple just lowered the price of iPhone by $200 ($399 for 8GB) and stop production of the 4 GB due to no one is buying it. What's great is that Steve Jobs is rebating $100 for all current 8GB owners.