Rebel Fish and the iPhone 2
Now that she’s had her iPhone 2.0 for a week, Rebel Fish feels it’s time to chat about it. All-in-all, it’s been a satisfying experience; and the applications… oh! the applications! It seems about 20 a day are arriving at the store, with no end in site.
Let’s start with the hardware of the phone, itself. Rebel Fish got white, because it’s different and beautiful. It does scratch, but so does black. The basic feel of the phone is a little sexier, due to the slight bevel Apple has introduced to the back of the phone. The overall dimensions are roughly the same.
The bevel, while feeling nice in the hand, is a bad idea when on the table. Rebel Fish loves the rock-solid feel of the 1.0 phone when using it as a calculator, texting, or whatever she happens to do. With the new bevel, the phone rocks and slips when you hit the edges of the screen. Bad.
The audio quality of the speakers and microphone are both improved. It’s much easier to hear and people seem to enjoy better microphone pick-up. The metal buttons are pretty, but otherwise unchanged from the original.
The battery doesn’t last as long as the 1.0 phone, but Rebel Fish suspects that’s more due to the addition of the 3G capability, which she’s glad to sacrifice some battery life for. The 3G requires more power! And, while it doesn’t last as long as iPhone 1.0, it still lasts longer than any other 3G capable phone on the market.
The addition of the GPS is fantabulous! Rebel Fish frequently turns on the Google Map program, activates the GPS-follow mode, and turns on the satellite image. When you’re driving, you can zoom in and see the buildings you’re zooming by in real-life mirrored on the phone. Your little, pulsing, blue dot moving on the road you’re on–even showing it on the correct _side_ of the road. It’s so fun!
But really, the heart of the upgrade has been the software. Rebel Fish has downloaded many of the available applications, and she’s screenshotted the ones she’s decided make the cut–just for you! Click the thumbnail to see them all.
Rebel Fish loves Loopt, a little application that auto-detects your location, allows you to take a photograph, and post a little note. It then updates Facebook, Twitter, and more!
The language learning applications are fantastic. From flash-cards to native speakers, it’s becoming much more practical to learn a language.
The games are great, of course. In the iPhone, we’ve got the world’s best gaming platform–and you can expect folks to start developing some awesome titles for it. Texas Hold’em, by Apple, is perfect. You can play against other folks on your wifi network, or in single mode. It’s a blast to sit around a table with 4 or 5 friends, still chatting, tossing insults, and playing a great game of poker–without the cards or chips!
Rebel Fish also enjoys Twitterific, a simple app to keep tabs on her friends that Twitter and Tweet.
There is, of course, a down-side to all this joy. The push applications (which, Apple has admitted, aren’t exactly push applications) seem to take more of the battery life out of the phone. Syncing and backing up the phone takes longer, as there is now more to sync. Essentially, we have been enjoying the iPhone’s speed because we’ve had way more processing power than was required to run the basics of the phone. Now, with hundreds of third-party applications arriving, the little processor is feeling it’s limits.
Rebel Fish heartily suggests that anyone with an iPhone who hasn’t (is there anyone?) upgraded, dive in; the water’s great!
Go go gadget Apple!
RF