ProgrammingWall

Ok It’s time to start tapping the iPhone icons. Mine is a factory made 1.1.3 16 GB :-), no upgrades till date. The first things you should not miss on iPhone are the built in apps.Like a gentleman apple expects you to use these apps, and not any other from the so called untrusted sources:-

1. Youtube – Aaah!!! who didnt want youtube on their phone, i wish we had wi-fi everywhere i went in India.

2. iPod – This is great, I guess now it’s time for me to get the FM transmitter/adapter for iPhone so that i can use the iPod in my car/home over any speakers. Will have to get it from US now.

3. Google Maps – Great to see maps of India on your mobile, not pretty precise but considering the mughals never planned Delhi thinking we would tap our phone and use a map, so it’s kinna ok to get a fair idea. I am sure it will be much better in month’s to come. No driving instructions though but you can definitely spot the road in front of your house at least if you are in Delhi. The pin drop is great.

4. Safari – Oh this is killer, but no flash support :-(.

5. Mail – Looks good, but i would prefer this app to be password protected, what if i lose my phone or someone steals it (it happens too often in India), he enjoys my mail too so this is a security issue according to me.

6. Stocks – Good if you are into the bourses. The yahoo finance widget a true copy of the kanfabulator desktop widgets but it’s worth it. By default you see NYSE but can add BSE, NSE scrips too.

7. Photos – ok, not much impressed.

8. Camera – The software looks like as if it was developed before someone even thought of iPhone :-).

9. Weather – Good, again the yahoo widget, you can add indian cities too.

10. Itunes – I never use it because i fear something may get updated and my phone may be bricked.

Some more default apps but these were worth mentioning.

But one things which sucks is the iTunes sync. This is why i hate it, and where they lock you into the apple world. How can ppl so blindly say that only Microsoft blocks other software and plug-ins, I guess iPhone is one the most locked in products.

The negatives as per initial usage:-

1. The phone charger is horrible, two piece device. Maybe guys using iPod wouldn’t feel so but normal mobile phone user would. It’s so difficult to carry the charger in pieces. Bad design.

2. The battery life isn’t so great, but considering it’s a full fledged mini PC, so there would be battery limitations.

3. The earphones socket is non standard one so you plug any regular male speaker or earphone plugs into the phone, so it becomes useless in your car until i buy a kinna converter now.

4. Ooooops iTunes sync sucks. Steve Job’s expects you to buy everything from videos to ringtones 🙂 on the iTunes store.

5. Using the speaker phone is an issue because of the volume.

But, still i must say i am impressed.

Trust me if iPhone could read and write vis-a-vis USB drive, it would have been a hit among the females too 🙂 (Am i doubting their geek quotient, nope). I mean iTunes really blocks it’s use as an external hard disk or USB drive but we will use it that way through FTP, SSH or something else.

Now it’s time to load the real apps which make this phone rock, yup the servers, the clients, the games and the etc’s. It wouldn’t a be mobile anymore now.