Last Friday I finally bit the bullet and sold my soul (well, my bank account at least) to an 18 month phone contract, after swearing to remain Pay-As-You-Go which I’ve been on ever since first owning a mobile phone, all for the new shiny Apple iPhone 3G 8gb.  I’m a geek, we all know that, and after all the hype I just couldn’t let this pass me by and I didn’t fancy waiting until the PAYG model appeared with a hefty price tag.  So I thought today I’d take some time to post my impressions of the device.

Hit the “Read More” link to read my full impressions.

First off lets look at the aesthetics.  It is without a doubt a very sexy device, sleek, shiny and not as large as I initially expected.  It fits comfortably into your hand as well as your jeans pockets (I’ve yet to wear a pair of jeans in which it felt uncomfortable or dangerously squished), although as yet I’m still a bit cautious on having anything else in the same pocket as the phone for fear of scraping or even smashing the screen – it does seem awfully scratchable, but that remains to be seen I guess.  I’m also worried at the thought of dropping the phone – maybe its the fact its quite light but something tells me it’d be a lot more prone to break compared with my sturdy former phones (Sony Ericsson & Nokia models).  The phone is a comfortable weight, reasonably thin, and a fairly portable size.  The screen looks really good, even at its default brightness of 50%, which I’ve not bothered to adjust (I’m assuming higher brightness will require more battery power), it looks great and is viewable even on a good day outside.  The touch screen also works pretty well, with only the occassional need to re-press to register something.

Anyway, lets move on to the software and features of the phone.  I’m going to start by addressing what I see as limitations of the phone, and then moving on to the positives.

Limitations:

• Lacks multimedia messages (MMS) – Yep, you can forget about picture and video messaging through MMS.  The iPhone just doesn’t support it, despite most phones in the past 4 years supporting it.  Of course, you could just email your picture instead!
• No text editing – You can’t edit, forward or cut and paste messages whatsoever.
• No SMS character count – This is such a minor feature and yet, for me, is something so hugely frustrating which could be corrected with a mere few lines of coding in the software: The iPhone does not display the number of characters you have currently typed in a text message, so you have no idea if you have stepped over the 160 character limit per text message.  Of course, if the message does exceed this length then it will send as a multi-part message, but that isn’t the point.  Not all of us have the privilege of unlimited text messages: with my current O2 contract I get 500 free text messages, and, while it is unlikely I’ll exceed this, I still don’t like wasting extra text messages on a few characters which I could have trimmed if I knew I was over the 160 character limit.  Another problem with multi-part messages is that often the ‘parts’ of the messages are delivered at different times, meaning the recipient may only receive half the message and have to wait minutes (I’ve even seen it be hours) for the rest of the message, which isn’t exactly convenient.  Come on Apple, FIX THIS! Every other phone out there that I’ve ever seen does this.  Its not exactly difficult to program a character counter.
• Limited/”Gimped” Bluetooth – When reading up about the iPhone 3G I seen Bluetooth 2.0 in the specifications, and so assumed this meant that I would be able to transfer files across Bluetooth with the phone, as can be done with most phones which incorporate Bluetooth.  Sadly, I was mistaken.  The Bluetooth included with the iPhone is only for use with headsets, nothing else.  No file transfer across Bluetooth.  Crappy eh?
• No video or voice recording – Yes the iPhone includes a 2.0 megapixel camera, but it doesn’t support video recording which, at the knowledge that I’m sounding repetitive here, every other phone with a camera supports.  Again this is something that could be fixed with a future firmware update, or perhaps an application, but it sucks that it isn’t core functionality.  Voice recording is already supported by several third party apps on the Application Store on iTunes.
• 2.0 megapixel camera – The camera has a fairly low megapixel level, 2.0.  However, in saying that, it definitely suffices for photos which I wish to take when I haven’t got my 7 megapixel camera with me as the lens seems to be good.  Still, higher resolution would be nice.
• Software is slightly unstable - I have encountered the phone reset itself on a few occassions, although it was always whilst using a 3rd party application (never whilst texting or in a call).  Hopefully this become less frequent with further firmware iterations.

So there are some basic, silly omissions from the phone, which annoyed me a bit to say the least, considering this was a phone that I shelled out a one-off payment for, as well as a rather substantial monthly cost (in comparison to what I was topping up with on my previous PAYG phone).  In saying that, the phone is still an extremely worth-while gadget. Here’s why:

Strengths:

• Touch screen – As already mentioned, the touch screen works very well in most cases, and offers a very intuitive interface for navigation, as well as exciting control schemes for games and applications.  The texting isn’t half as bad as I thought it would be either, though it does take a little bit of getting used to.
• Wi-fi – The phone is able to easily link to any wi-fi connection which you have permission to use.  Great for high speed.
• 3G speeds, internet on the go – Unfortunately the village where I live doesn’t offer 3G, then again thats hardly an issue considering I can use wi-fi when I’m in my house (or, more ideally, just hop on the computer).  The nearby city, however, does offer 3G, and its excellent.  I’m extremely impressed by the speeds on the iPhone, prior to using it I had little idea of how phone connections had progressed since my previous phones only had basic WAP.  Internet on the phone is excellent, even on ye olde WAP connection its very much usable.  I haven’t had any issues with the phone’s browser (Safari) and find it pretty easy to use, including easy to zoom in and out finger gestures.  The e-mail client is also very easy to use, and able to check email on a regular basis and alert you to new e-mail whilst on the go.
• iPod interface – The phone also has a fully fledged iPod interface built-in.  Since my phone is only 8gb, I’ve only loaded my “essential albums” collection, as I still have my 80gb iPod for the rest of my music on-the-go.  The sound of the phone’s in-built speaker is fairly decent and louder than a lot of other phones.  It can also be plugged into an iPod dock to play music.
• GPS system – The map system in the iPhone allows you to be located using the in-built GPS technology, and allows you to create a route on the map to get you from where you are to where you want to be.  At the moment the software doesn’t support turn-by-turn navigation (i.e. it doesn’t know what direction you’re going and won’t give you directions, only show you a plot-line), however there are a lot of rumours that these features are just around the corner (pun intended).  There are also rumours that Tom Tom are working on their own client for the phone.
• Applications – This is by far the phone’s strongest feature.  With the 2.0 firmware, Apple has introduced an SDK for developers to create their own applications for the phone, which can be downloaded from the iTunes store and transferred to the phone with ease.  Some of them cost, but a lot of them are free.  These applications can add all sorts of extra capabilities to the phone, such as voice recording, tourism guides, Twitter access, Youtube, Last.fm, Facebook, turning your phone into a lightsaber, blogging tools, dictionary, Flickr tools, instant messaging, games and music identification.  Pretty much every day I’ve been checking the iTunes store for new free applications and checking out the ones with promise.  The only application which I have as yet purchased is Vicinity, a great application for telling you about the place where you currently are and allowing you to locate nearby bars, supermarkets, hotels, etc.  You can find a list of the recommended apps later in this article.  I really can’t rave about these apps enough, they are awesome fun as well as incredibly useful.
• Appeal – Come on, its a fully touch-screen sexy phone.  Thats a strength for sure, right?

Oh yeah and you can umm.. make calls on it if you really want.

From looking at the listed limitations and strengths above you may think that there are as many cons of the phones as their are pros, but this most certainly isn’t the case.  I’m incredibly satisfied with the phone, in particular the applications, more of which are becoming available everyday, which are helping to turn the phone into just about everything I could ever need in my pocket.  The fact that O2′s contract offers unlimited data transfer is also a definite plus, as I don’t need to be concerned with how much I use the phone online, which is really how it should be these days.  In short, despite its stupid short-comings and oversights, the iPhone is a great bit of kit and lets you take the world with you wherever you go.

For those of you who have also taken the plunge to get the iPhone, here’s a list of recommended apps which you can get from the iTunes store:

• Vicinity (£1.50) – A great application for finding nearby facilities such as bars, clubs, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, as well as offering access to wikipedia articles about nearby towns or cities and flickr photos taken nearby.  Facilities can also be shown on the iPhone’s GPS system and directions given from your current location.
• Twinkle (free) – A great little Twitter app which allows for all the basic Twitter features (i.e. tweeting and viewing follower’s tweets and direct messages), as well as allowing you to take a photo from within the app and send it with your tweet.  The app also allows you to find Twitter users near you (who also have to have used Twinkle to tweet).  An alternative is Twitterific, however I believe Twinkle to be superior.
• Shazam (free) – Allows you to record a clip of a song which the application will then attempt to tell you the artist and name of the track.  Works pretty well from what I’ve tested!
• Facebook, MySpace (free) – Two very good apps for checking your social networking sites.
• Last.fm (free) – This application is fantastic, and allows streaming of music to your phone, either from your own library, your recommended library, or the libraries of friends or last.fm neighbours.  Even plays through an iPod dock.
• WeDict (free) – Dictionary.  Always handy!
• NetNewsWire (free) – Good for reading your news feeds.  Can become a pain to keep tidy though.
• WordPress (free) – Good if you own a WordPress blog like me!  Allows for blogging from your phone.
• TripAdvisor’s LocalPicks (free) – A very handy app to check ratings for nearby hotels and restaurants.
• Light (free) – An extremely simple concept but useful if you’re caught short of a torch.  Turns your screen brightness up full with a white screen.  Surprisingly good as a torch.
• Palringo (free) – Instant messaging on the go.  Works with Windows Live Messenger, AOL, Google Talk, etc., and works well!
• Aurora Feint (free) – Great free game, fantastic that they didn’t charge for this.
• Currency (free) – Allows you to check the latest financial conversion rates.
• VoiceNotes (free) – Use your iPhone as a voice recorder, a feature which should’ve been core to the iPhone’s software.
• SudokuFree (free) – Free sudoku, great for time-wasting.
• BubbleWrap (free) – Who doesn’t like bursting bubble wrap??  Now you can do it on your phone, hurrah!

I may add to this article later if I realised I’ve missed things that have impressed or annoyed me!