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View Full Version : The iPhone Tango



straycat
10th-September-2008, 09:11 AM
Well - I've had my new toy now for nearly a month, and I know there's a few other forumites who've taken the plunge on this one - so I thought I'd post a few thoughts about it.

Overall, I'm absolutely loving it. My biggest bugbear is the battery life, which is ridiculously short if you happen to be doing the wrong things on it (I went from full battery to empty last night in the space of four hours, by forgetting to disconnect Apple Remote after I was done using it.)

So I now have chargers everywhere. With a bit of luck, the next update (due Friday) should help sort out some of the battery issues...

Apart from that...

The interface is gorgeous. It is an absolute joy to use. I was initially concerned about how well I'd adapt to the onscreen keyboard (I have quite chunky fingers, and the keys are very small, which has always been an issue with mobiles...) - needn't have worried though, as it's wonderful to use, and the auto-correct takes care of most typing mistakes that I make. Very slick.

A few useful things I've found... firstly, a typing tip which I only discovered last week: if I press the punctuation key, then without lifting my finger again slide it to - say - the @ symbol, then release - I get n @, and it goes straight back to 'letter' mode. Which means that I don't have to hit 'punctuation-@-punctuation' - much nicer. This, combined with double-tap-space-for-a-full-stop, really helps speed up typing.

Favourite applications.
Apple Remote. Indispensible, wonderful app. It can pair up with iTunes on a computer via wifi, and control it. What that means is that I can use it as a luxury remote control on my laptop when teaching, even browsing through my iTunes tracks & playlists as if they were on the iPod. Oh - and it's free.

Shazam. Also free - gives a software interface on to the 'Shazam' song identifier service, and it's surprisingly good at identifying tracks. Just hit 'Tag Now', let it listen to a track for ten seconds, then it'll go away and find the track details, and even give you links to it in iTunes, if such exist.

Simplify... a bit like Apple Remote in reverse - it works over Wifi, Edge or 3G, and streams tracks from your computer to your phone. Wherever you are. Also free.

RDP: Remote Desktop onto a windows box. Works flawlessly.

Koi Pond: Completely and utterly pointless application - turns your phone into a fishtank, and you can scare the fish by stirring up the water with your fingers. Beautiful graphics, and I love it.

eReader: I used to read a lot of books on my old PDA - it's nice to be able to carry 150 books in your pocket wherever you go - and the reading application's been released on the iPhone, so I've been able to transfer my whole library across to it. Not quite as nice as a book, but a whole lot more portable. Free.

Stanza's another good one - that can read a lot of other formats, and connects to some of the public domain sites so you can just go browse, download and read out-of-copyright works on it.

Gav
10th-September-2008, 09:34 AM
Is it true that you can't send picture messages on it?

pmjd
10th-September-2008, 09:36 AM
Is it true that you can't send picture messages on it?

It's true

straycat
10th-September-2008, 09:48 AM
Is it true that you can't send picture messages on it?

Yep. There are a few notable lacks - probably the worst one for me is that there's no copy / paste. Likewise picture messaging, which I personally don't miss, but I can imagine being useful, likewise the fact that Apple provide no way of sending any details of your contacts to others via email or SMS. The last one has been dealt with by 3rd party apps (I use GoContact)

I hope some of the gaps are dealt with in future software updates - 2.1 is out this Friday, which is supposed to be a biggie, but I don't yet know what changes it has.

Tiggerbabe
10th-September-2008, 10:51 AM
I use Sodasnap if I want to send pictures. Vicinity is also a good app to have. And I agree, Shazam is well cool :cool:

drathzel
10th-September-2008, 12:05 PM
I want one!!!