Well I finally did it. I bought an iPhone. I was sick of carrying two devices around, most recently a Nano and a Katana. With the price drop and the announcement of the Wifi music store, I felt it was a good time to hop on board.

I went with 3rd party customizations right away because without them, the phone felt a little naked. There were/are so many things I expect to be able to do that just aren’t there. The people working on 3rd party apps and mods are pumpin out some great stuff.

So far, I like the phone. I love the fact that i have only one device in my pocket My first challenge with the thing was finding the perfect case. In my experience, the perfect case does not exist. I usually have to settle for almost perfect. I found that with the Contourcase Showcase. It’s perfect…with one drawback. It can’t be docked while cased which really isn’t so bad, but the clips that hold it together are delicate and definitely were not made to be open and closed on a daily basis. For now, I just skip the dock and use the direct plug.

It’s nice to be able to crash on the couch and be able to surf the net without having a huge laptop burning a hole on me, while listening to music no less.

What’s good:

- Design. it’s just a great design period.

- Touch. While typing could sometimes be a pain, most notably when in the vertical orientation, the rest of the touch interface feels very natural. And natural is one of the best compliments you can pay an interface.

- Concepts. The ideas that this phone forges ahead with are great. While it doesn’t execute them all perfectly, phone, browsing, music, video, and more all work for the most part.

- Screen Quality. Everything looks great on the thing.

- Battery. I got to a point with my Katana where I would have to charge it almost every night and that’s about where I am with the iPhone. And that’s with browsing and music playback. Not bad. Obviously battery life could always be better.

- Reception. Not only do i get reception in places I never did with Sprint, I get MULTIPLE bars.

- Visual Voicemail. When I first read about it, I knew it was a feature I had to have.

- Wifi. Between work and home, I’m pretty much surrounded by Wifi. And it makes everything work faster and better.

- Potential. If they added half the things people wanted in a software update and the other half with the next generation of the phone, it could be the most ultimate of phones and devices ever.

I feel like i know the phone well that within the first week of owning/using it, I was able to create a very detailed list of things it would need to be that much closer to perfection in terms of functionality for me perosnally.

What I need:

- A2DP. My Logitech Freepulse headphones work fine…with the adapter. The iPhone is big enough without it though and the adapter doesn’t fit through the Showcase because of the poor and spiteful design of the recessed headphone jack. With the Freepulses, I can listen to my music and even calls. And when i hear calls through them, the speakerphone picks up my voice. Great right? Wrong. Since the phone audio wasn’t designed to pass through the headphones, it doesn’t reckognize the signal and after 2 minutes, they shutdown because they think there isn’t a signal. That leads me to my next need.

- A really good set of all in one headphones. For such an all in one device, there really is no great option for all in one headset/headphones/mic with the cool nifty button. The apple headphones sound quality blow and there’s nothing else on the market that has it all. For now, I have to buy an adapter that fits in the recess and either plug in my bluetooth adapter and switch back and forth between Freepulse for music and Plantronics for phone, which is ridiculous because I’m DOWN to one device, but now I’m UP to 2 headsets and 2 adapters? What the fuck? It’s just a mess. I wish Apple had created a new Bluetooth stereo audio patent with all the rest of their 200 patents they filed for the iPhone and released some crazy new hybrid ultimate headphones. I’d pay ridiculous money for it. But it doesn’t exist. That technology hasn’t figured itself out yet.

- A Safari patch. So far I’ve experienced two major bugs. One in which Safari crashes on every website and you have to reboot. The other in which the iPod crashes while listening to something and surfing on Safari at the same time.

- Twitter / IM. Currently I can get this from AppTapp but apps like this should have been offered up as optional widgets through Apple.

- Flash. You dont know what you got til it’s gone. And Flash is gone, and websites aren’t the same and many that I frequent lose all of their funciotnality without it.

- My own ringtones. Obviously this one isn’t going to happen. But the ringtones that came with the phone were just aweful. Nothing that even remotely resembled a RING! iBrickr FTW for now.

- More customizations on the UI - While easily fixed with Summerboard for me, UI/Icon customization should have been available out of the box. And at the very least, you should have been able to set your wallpaper to show under your icons as shown in my pic. It’s kind of dumb that Apple only allowed you to see your wallpaper when you were unlocking your phone.

- Copy and Paste, Voice Dialing, Horizontal Orientation Support For Everything,

Really though, I think the phone will be much more popular if Apple didn’t try to fuck with all the development that’s happening with 3rd party sources.

People say how the iPhone is 3-4 years ahead of its time. That might be somewhat true. ( Well the LG Prada supposedly came out first ) But it would have been nice if the phone that was so much ahead of its time had way more accessories and a few more features to match. Then it wouldn’t be like having a Quadcore computer with only Minesweeper to run and a ps/2 keyboard to control it when all you have is a USB port.

And it sounds like I have a lot of complaints but I like the phone. There are plenty of bugs and shortcomings. Some that can be fixed, some that can’t be fixed until the second gen comes out but in the end, I am keeping the phone.

I just feel like Mulder. I want to believe.

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