My Favorite Things

I have had the iPhone for over a little over a month now. I have used it for a couple of weeks now as my primary work phone. During that time I have found several things that I absolutely love about the iPhone. Here they are - in no particular order:

• How easy it was to set up email to my home email account(s) - I was never successful to do this on my other mobile phones
• How it automatically jumps on my wifi when I am at home to get me the best bandwidth (and does not use my not as good 3G coverage)
• The Facebook App, I am now always connected to my community
• The App store (easy to download, easy to update)
• All the the neat, cool, kooky and useful applications that make this the one device that can do almost anything
• Playing games with my 13 your old son who has an iTouch (like air hockey) over our home wifi network
• How easy it is to see your missed calls, number of voicemail messages, and contacts from a single application
• How easy it is to scroll through my 100s of contacts to find the one I want
• How the screen dims when you holding up the phone to your ear talking, and then comes to life automatically when you hold it horizontal
• How I continue to discover new things (like the normal calculator changing to scientific with screen orientation) and new applications (like paper football) from my son
• How you can magnify the size of the text on a web page or navigate through your photos with a flick of your fingers
• The single hard button to silence everything - don't need to unlock the phone (very handy)

Applications Update

I have downloaded quite a few applications now (have 4+ pages worth). Yesterday I had a buble with 7 on the AppStore icon on my phone. This was indicating that there were 7 applications that had an available update. This is pretty neat to show. I was then able to go into the app store and select the update icon and is showed me which of the 7 applications that I have downloaded had an available update. I could then click on the application and see what was included in the update. I could then select to ignore the update, or to download the update. The update download was similar to the original applications update in that it asked for my iTunes password. I also had the ability to update all of the applications at once if I wanted to.

This is a neat way to notify the user that there is an application update, and allow the user to decide if they wanted to take the update(s) or not.

Track Thing Accuracy

This morning into work, I tested the Track Thing accuracy against my car's odometer. According to my car I drove 12.4 miles, and according to Track Thing I drove 12.68 miles. So, the iPhone application does show more than what it is supposed to. I did notice that sometimes even when sitting still, the milage did increase by .01 mile or two. So, I don't know what sort of algorithm is used by the application, but it does seem to be off (show too much).

GPS on the iPhone

I have been doing some hikes lately, and I wanted an application that could record how long I was walking. I looked on the appstore and found quite a few applicaitons that were for GPS tracking or step tracking. Reading the reviews for these, however, did not give me a warm and fuzzy. There was not one program there that had more than 2.5 stars average.

The problems with the GPS tracking is that the GPS turns off if the screen is locked (Apple makes all applications run in the foreground only). Some of the applications made this clear in their description. The ones that didn't had many customer complaints. Some of the GPS applications included a camera icon so that you could take a picture while the application was running, and several applications suggested that you start your music (ipod) first and then run the tracking program. This doesn't sound the best user interface to me. There were also many complaints about the accuracy of the program, the programming crashing all the time, and that the application drained the battery. I was willing to pay for an application that works, but with the reviews, I decided to try "Track Thing" which was FREE.

The application was pretty easy to use. I went ahead and turned off the screen lock, and made sure I was fully charged before I set out on my 5 mile walk. The application uses GPS and so provides you with your coordinates (longitude, latitude, altitude, bearing) and provides you with a distance travelled (metric or imperial) and average speed. There is an ability to display a map, but this was default disabled, and so I left it that way because I thought that it would reduce battery consumption.

I have a SonyEricsson phone with built in GPS, and so I decided I would also take it along to compare with the iPhone. The SE application shows you a path that you are following (no map though) and also showed distance travelled and average mph.

After a couple of miles there was a difference in the distance travelled between the two devices. As I continued on this difference became greater. After the 5 miles, there was a difference of about .5 miles between the two devices. I actually think that the SonyEricsson device was more accurate based on my knowledge of the route I walked. I will try and test the iPhone on my way home tonight and compare with my car's odometer.

I think that I'll try another of the GPS trackers. Some of them will update your position on a web viewable map and so your loved ones can see where you are. That might be interesting. I think I may also try one of the pedomiter ones to see if they work for me.

Don't need iPhone Plan

I had to purchase a new subscription to get the iPhone. My goal is to replace the new subscription I bought with my current AT&T service, and the mobile phone number that everyone knows. Until I do that, I have to carry around two phones :-(.

We are working through the systems at work to get the new subscription transferred into Ericsson, and then to add iphone service to my current subscription, then moving my current SIM into the iphone, and then cancelling the other number. This is not a straight forward process, since the iphone is "not approved" at Ericsson.

Last night I popped out the SIM in the iphone, and popped in my current SIM, and the service works with no problems. I guess that there are a few holes in the AT&T systems, because everyone says that this should not work. Well, at least for now it does.

Interesting that I currently have an unlimited data plan that is $5 a month cheaper than the iphone data plan. I am now debating when I want to add on this plan to my current subscription.

Not Bad Camera

I have had the opportunity over the past three weeks to take some pictures. I was quite impressed as to the quality. I just used the default settings that came on the phone (haven't had time to explore much here), and these looked good. See below for some samples -





This was from our neighborhood Holiday parade. The fire department came out and showed us one of thier trucks.

The picture size is 422 MB












Launching a midsized rocket by the Dallas Area Rocket Society. This was a very overcast day, so not alot of lite. The picture size is 320KB.

This one was very hard to see on the screen of the iPhone, but looks good on the PC.



Our Christmas Tree.

The picture size is 93KB




















I was even able to compare a photo done on the iphone and my cannon digital camera that I will post in just a bit.