3 Weeks with iPhone 3G
I slept overnight outside the Palo Alto Apple Store to get this White 16GB iPhone on the first day. I immediately fell in love with the new physical design - the new iPhone feels so much nicer in my hands than the original iPhone. In fact, I've been using this new iPhone mostly without a case, leaving it naked in my otherwise empty left jeans pocket. I am using a screen protection film though.
GPS is really nice to have. It's made the Google Maps application much more useful already, and I hear rumors of advanced navigation features in an upcoming iPhone update.
3G coverage is spotty, so it hasn't been quite the revolution I was hoping for, but nonetheless an improvement, and quite speedy in some places.
The App Store is an interesting development too. I wish I had Installer.app still, but there are a lot of decent apps coming out for free in the App Store, including one from WordPress which I'm using right now to write this post.
Anyway, I heartily recommend the new iPhone to almost everyone... You should get one today!
Listen to RSS Feeds by Phone with Jott
Jott just released a new feature, allowing you to subscribe to RSS feeds with their service, and then listen to them by calling a toll-free number. If you're not familiar with Jott already, they provide a speech-recognition service to save text notes for yourself, and also integrates with other sites, like allowing you to post converted text to Twitter for example. So, this text-to-speech feature is an interesting addition that somehow makes the service seem more complete.
I haven't really figured out what RSS feeds I would prefer to listen to a robot reading... however I'm sure I'll find a use for it. Now if only Jott Feeds would integrate with Google Reader and you could listen to your Google Reader news, and then Jott would mark those items as read. That could be really awesome in the car.
One Week With A Nokia N95
I've been using a Nokia N95 8GB (N95-2) for the past week. And I just took the SIM card out and put it back in my iPhone. Here's why:
- The user interface feels outdated after getting used to the iPhone. It feels more like Windows than Mac if you know what I mean.
- It doesn't have a full keyboard... only the normal 1-9 number keys. I didn't know how much I would miss this.
- This version doesn't actually have 3G data speeds, like I had thought. So, it's still really slow on EDGE.
However, there were some things I really liked about the N95:
- The camera is really great. It has a macro mode which is great for snapping notes or text. It will also record pretty high quality video. There's also a second camera on the front, so you can video chat... or record yourself.
- Qik. Broadcasting live video from Qik was fun. I hope I can do that on the iPhone soon. (you can see what I broadcasted at http://qik.com/rex)
- I finally found an application that lets me broadcast my GPS location to a website. Eventually I want to have a log of everywhere I go, created automatically, and of course private. (but that I could create scripts to send me notifications related to where I am, etc..)
- The wealth of available applications. This was my first experience with the Symbian mobile OS, and there's a ton of stuff for S60 phones. Good looking 3D games, and other goodies.
- Also bluetooth syncing. I want my iPhone to do that. I don't like having to plug my iPhone in all the time.
The 3G iPhone rumors abound, and predict all sorts of things. Like the launch date is mid-June supposedly. And that the 3G iPhone may support video recording, and even include a secondary camera, for video conferencing. Also maybe even GPS. Now, I don't know how much of that is true, but you can just see for youself over at MacRumors. Anyway, I guess I'll just suffer with my first-gen iPhone until this summer, when I'll either get a 3G iPhone or a Google Android phone... or both. =D
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I'm Rex. I write about personal technology and I fix computers.
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