Back to the iPhone

I'm embarrassed to admit that I was one of the fools who had an iPhone the first week the device was released. After about 4 weeks with the iPhone, I sold it to a co-worker and went back to Blackberry. I bitched about the 'soft keys' the 'SMTP' issues, etc. I didn't have these issues with Blackberry. After about a 4-month stint on my Blackberry, I decided to return to the iPhone.

Here's why:

First, the iPhone is a rugged device. Within my 4-month time back on my Blackberry Curve, I had returned the device 3 times because the charging port on the side wore out, leaving my unit impossible to charge. One time I had to drive 3 hours during a trip to San Fransisco to return it to an AT&T-authorized warehouse. I never had hardware issues with the charger on my iPhone.

Second, the Blackberry UI is terrible. No matter how hard they try, the graphics are unimpressive. I yearned for the sexy UI on the iPhone. At one point I even went with the very expensive AT&T Tilt. Which was an equally useless device. Not to mention it had the same charger connection as the Blackberry, so I returned it immediately.

It's good to be back.

More importantly, I figured out how to solve some of the issues that I had with the iPhone the first time. Here they are:

1) USE GOOGLE MAIL. Duh! I set up Google mail on my iPhone so it could check my POP mail from work. Then I used IMAP to sync my mail to the iPhone. After setting this up, I have ZERO spam. It also eliminated my SMTP issues entirely (I guess most hotel wireless connections trust Google's SMTP mail).

2) Rely on WiFi wherever, whenever possible. Once I set the iPhone to automatically switch to WiFi when I walk into a "hot zone", I experienced lightening speed with my email (faster than Blackberry). Since I solved the SMTP email issue, I was OK with the phone connecting to WiFi.

3) Believe in Apple. There were several small issues that made me hate the iPhone the first week it was on the market that now have been solved. For example, our work phone system sends us voicemail messages as an email with an attached WAV file. For awhile, I could not play this file on my iPhone. As of today (I guess the software guys fixed it via the last update), I can play WAV files from within my email with the iPhone's QuickTime player. Problem solved.

Steve Jobs was right, having a software-based phone is infinitely expandable and easy to upgrade. I've learned that if you are willing to wait, the Apple folks are listening and willing to fix it. Well done, Steve.