Proud Geek

No, I didn’t succumb. I haven’t bought an iPhone, and my getting-ancient-yet-trusty Palm Treo 650 is still my smartphone of choice. But I did get to play with a friend’s iPhone several times, and discussed the finer points of the iPhone with him — with him demo’ing everything at least twice to me. ;-)

Some quick thoughts, to supplement what I wrote before the iPhone was released:

In the iPhone’s favor:

• It sends shivers up and down my spine! It is so geekingly freekingly cool. Just the way it looks, the way it feels and sits on my palm, the way the Apple logo seems to be winking at me …
• The screen is so crisp and brilliant — and it looks so large (and bright and colorful) in comparison to my Treo’s screen.
• Being able to rotate the screen 90 degrees just by tilting the iPhone to one side (or the other, for left-handed users) — that has got to be one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while.
• The ability to scroll by flicking your finger in any direction on the screen is fantastic. Just flick your finger, and the page (or photo) moves / flips naturally in that direction — and gradually slows down till you flick it again. Looks as if you’re flipping through actual photos or pages. Very natural.
• Want to magnify a photo or webpage? Just put two fingers on the screen then draw your fingers apart. Want to zoom out? Bring your two fingers together. The multi-touch screen (you can use two or more fingers at the same time) is a new feature, and a relevation as well.
• No stylus. None. Use your fingers. Nice.
• 6 or 8 gigabytes of memory (depending on the model you buy). Huge friggin’ amount of memory. My Palm Treo only has like 24mb (I think) of memory. Let’s see … (Switching to the calculator mode on my Treo.) How many zeros in a gigabyte? Damn, 9 zeros. Divide that by 24 megabytes, six zeros … 333 times as much memory as my lil weeny weenie Treo’s memory.
• The Safari web browser works just like it does on an Apple computer screen. Works well with many java-laden websites like Zoho and Vitalist and their ilk. Wouldn’t work anywhere as well on my Palm Treo’s browser. And what’s more: it formats webpages just like they’d be seen on a full-screen monitor — and if you want to see different areas of the webpage, you just zoom in by sliding your fingers.
• It’s got wi-fi built in, for those times when you’re close to a wi-fi router (like the one in your home or at Starbucks). That, plus its normal mobile-phone data connection for the times you aren’t in a wi-fi hot-spot. C’mon, Palm, put wi-fi in them Treos already!
• The camera takes crisp 2-megapixel photos. Looks very good. Makes my Treo’s .7 (yes, below 1) megapixel photos look positively grainy in comparison. No, wait-a-min, those Treo photos ARE grainy.
• The iPhone looks, feels, and operates like art. It looks and feels so good that it oughta be rated X — or at least NC-17.

Strikes against the iPhone (in my opinion):

• No actual touch-feely keyboard. Sure, the keyboard pops up onto the screen, and you can type on it. But I like to walk and type at the same time without looking at the keyboard. (I could say I can drive with my knee and type at the same time, but that’s illegal in many states …) Can’t do that with the iPhone, at least as far as I know — you have to look at the screen and watch what you’re typing.
• No ability (for now) to highlight and then copy and paste. What!? You can’t copy an address and then paste it into the Google Map app or into a new contact. I wonder if the iPhone does it more intuitively, perhaps recognizing an address and giving you the option to map it or add it to your contacts. But in the meanwhile, if you try to highlight something, a small magnifying glass shows up instead and magnifies what you’re pointing at. Ok, that’s kinda nice, but totally unnecessary for many people. I just find it very odd that these iPhones don’t come with highlighting and copy / paste abilities. I’m certain that an update soon will add this capability.
• No memory card slot. I know, 8 gig is large enough to hold just about anything plus your kitchen sink (in technicolor). But I like being able to move information to or from a computer using a memory card rather than sync’ing. Faster, more controllable. I have a 2 gig memory card in my Treo, and I use it so much for different things — including plugging it into other people’s Treos and also different computers — that I can’t imagine not having it. (Hmm, this is beginning to sound obscene …)
• Got new email? It only vibrates just once. Once. Not up to 8 times, like if you’re using Chatter (absolutely my favorite smartphone email program) on a Palm Treo running on Palm OS. Hope the next iPhone update will fix this.

Got any thoughts you’d like to share about the iPhone? Don’t be bashful, share in the comments.

The iPhone will go on sale on June 29th. Yes, June 29th of THIS YEAR.

What’s so cool about the iPhone?

• 3.5 inch wide videos via the Apple iTunes store (must sync from a computer first)
• Totally cool colors and icons
• Large screen that can be viewed vertically or horizontally
• Keyboard that appears on the screen when you need it — for you to do some heavy-duty typing
• 2 megapixel camera with knock-dead color
• Internet browser that makes webpages look like the real webpage deal. And it multi-tasks by loading pages while you work elsewhere — niiiiice.
• Email that works with POP and IMAP and gets emails in the background while you work.
• Can be used world-wide or on Cingular’s high-speed EDGE wireless network, or with a wifi router, or via bluetooth.
• Comes with three different sensors: an accelerometer that detects if the iPhone is being held horizontally or vertically; a proximity sensor that senses whether you’re holding the iPhone near your ear; and an ambient light detector to brighten or dim the screen as appropriate. Hot damn.
• A multi-touch screen that lets you interact in ways never seen before — like flipping the covers of your different music albums, or moving through photos. Breathe deeply, Proud Geek, take deep breaths or you’ll hyperventilate.
• 2.4″ wide, 4.5″ long, .46 thick.
• And much more!

I want it. I want it soooooo bad. But will it be more useful to me than my venerable Palm Treo 650 with push email, e-books, my favorite information manager, a friggin’ awesome choice of games, and so much more? And my Treo 650 comes with a full keyboard with keys I can actually feel as I press them (and which I can type while walking and looking around and not looking at what I’m typing — yes, I’m that geeky) — can the iPhone’s “soft” screen keyboard beat that? Only time will tell.

But, ach, I want it soooooooooooooo bad.

TIP that I picked up from another blog (wish I could remember which one), which got it straight from an Apple executive’s mouth: on June 29th, all the Apple stores will be mobbed with lines around the block. Don’t go to those stores if you want the iPhone. Instead, go to your local AT&T / Cingular sales office. More likely they’ll also have the iPhone and won’t have the same crowds.

This seems too good to be true.  Visa and Mastercard are (separately) working on technology that would make it possible for your smartphone (Blackberry, Palm devices, Windows Mobile devices, and many cell phones) to also operate as a credit card.  You’d make purchases by bringing your smartphone close to specially designed EFT (credit-card machines that you see in stores) which would then detect your credit card info and process it.  And your smartphone would then tell you how much money you’ve got left in the bank.  Smartphones would also be able to get info from business cards as well as specially-designed advertisements in magazines.  Ain’t technology wondrous (and a bit scary, too)?

Thanks to MyTreo.net for this nugget.