Thoughts on the new toy

So I have had a couple of days to play around with my new iPhone and as Hyun suggested, here are my initial thoughts.

What I liked:

- The phone itself is definitely solid and has a nice finish.
- GPS is awesome. Much better functionality than my Blackberry Bold.
- OS is fast and smooth. I was seriously debating getting the Xperia X10 back in April, but when I was testing it at the Docomo store, the UI was slow and lagged.
- Like my iPod touch, downloading and installing apps are fast and easy.

What I didn't like:

- Taking photos need to have a steady hand. If I don't take my time an really focus, the images are blurry. I wish they had an anti shake mechanism of some kind to neutralize blurry pictures like most Japanese phones here have.
- Can't organize pictures on the iPhone, at least from what I have experienced. I need to get the pictures from the "camera roll" and import them into iPhoto, then create albums and from there, sync it back with the iPhone to have the albums show up.
- Again, with the photos, I noticed when viewing photos with the iPhone, if I rotate the phone, the pictures do not rotate to landscape or portrait view. The functionality works in everything else, i.e. calculator, safari, etc. I wonder why it doesn't work with my photos. I'm debating if I should visit an Apple shop to find out if it is supposed to be like this or do I have a defect on my phone. Unfortunately, I don't pass an Apple store during my daily commute.
- Got a 1,500 yen iTunes gift card but because my account is "U.S. based" I am unable to use it.
- Most likely due to my slow minded ways and not the iPhone's fault but I had a hard time distinguishing which softbank address did what. From what I can tell, @softbank.ne.jp is the equivalent of a mobile to mobile address and @i.softbank.ne.jp is like a PC mail address. I'm still trying to figure out how to send C-mail (AU's short message) type of messages.


Things I need to get used to:

- I really need to get used to the touch screen keyboard. Typing on my Blackberry has been a pleasure, but I seem to make a lot of mistakes on the iPhone. Typing in Japanese though looks to have potential in being more efficient than regular phones. The intuitiveness of predicting what you will type in Japanese is much better on the regular phones than on the iPhone though.


As you can see I did not mention about videos or music because I didn't upload anything to my iPhone yet. Still busy studying for my exam tomorrow. I can't wait until that is done. Overall, I am satisfied with the iPhone. I am not completely head over heels for it because of the perceived shortcomings I listed, but I've been on the market for a new phone for about a year now and this has been the best choice out there for me thus far.

In other news, the nation is counting down to Tuesday night's world cup game with Japan against Paraguay. So far in the round of 16, the obvious teams won, so I hope this game will be the first real upset and Japan celebrates once more on Wednesday morning.