Laura and I have been saving up for awhile so we can afford some new toys from Apple. We’ve sacrificed without for so long, we decided that now is the time to jump on the technology band wagon and enter the 21st century. I’m talking about the new iPhone 4 and the iPad.
For over four years, I’ve had the same free phone from T-Mobile that I got when I signed up with them. Because it was free, it had no camera, no web, no mp3 player, no radio, no extras, no nothing. I could text on it, but it was a huge pain to even do that. The phone has served me well enough for what I use a phone for (to make calls — imagine that) and I had even bought a second battery to replace the original that failed two years ago. It was a four and a half year run, but with the dawn of the new iPhone 4, the ship had finally sailed on my old phone.
Being a tech geek and Apple fan, I’ve wanted an iPhone since its inception but never really wanted the extra costs associated with it (for the data plan) and didn’t really need any of the other features it provided. Why? Because remember, unlike many people now, I simply use a phone for that one specific purpose: to talk. I know that’s old school and quaint, but that’s the way I am; or was.
A couple of weeks ago, Laura and I decided we had saved up enough and took the plunge and ordered two new iPhones and just the other day, they arrived via FedEx. I get a small raise each July and that amount would cover the increased cost of having a data plan attached to two phones, instead of just airtime we had with the previous phones.
I have to say, the phones have exceeded my expectations and are quite amazing devices. I’m sure that after a few more weeks, it will be hard to go back to the type of phone I had before. Having never owned a smartphone before, I don’t have a lot to compare it to as far as other phones, or even the older iPhone 3Gs. The screen is amazing, the speed at which it thinks is blazing fast, the apps are out of this world, and I feel more connected to the rest of the world than I ever have before.
Being connected can be a blessing and a curse. If I had an office job, I wouldn’t want to be that connected, but since I fly, I’m glad to have e-mail, Facebook notifications, and Mint.com updates right away and quick as a flash. Well, quick as a flash if I’m on a wifi connection, fast if I’m on a 3G connection, and slow as molasses if I’m on another type of data network. The 3G speeds at our house and in-law’s house is somewhat slow, but while in New York City, the 3G was blazing fast. I guess the distance to a data tower can make a difference, but when I’m home, I use the free and fast wifi for the phone all the time.
There truly is “an app for that” with just about anything you can imagine. I just downloaded an app to find the cheapest gas around town, and it can look for gas based on a specific city name or zip code, or by my current GPS position. With the Google Maps app, using one’s current position can show you just about anything you want to see that’s near you, from restaurants, to gas stations, to stores, to anything. Being on vacation with this little gem will be quite handy. Imagine walking near Times Square in NYC. You don’t know where much of anything is and you and your friends are starting to get hungry. Use your position to find out what restaurants are nearby. Decide you want Italian, and see which Italian places are close. Pick one, look at its menu, decide you want to eat there, click on the phone number and make a reservation — all from the palm of your hand, in about 30 seconds. Pretty awesome.
MapQuest has a free app that gives you driving directions, turn by turn. I really like this app because now I don’t have to pay for a TomTom or navigation system in my car. How do I get to that strange address or store I’ve never been too? Who cares, just type in the name or address and go!
My blog entry here talks about some fun apps that I think everyone should have. Another one that is free is the Find my Phone app that is free from Apple (if you have a MobileMe account). If you log into your MobileMe account, you can find the location of your iPhone or iPad so you’ll never lose it again. You can send the phone a message to start beeping so that you can find it when it’s fallen between the cushions of the couch, or you can send it a message to lock down, or even wipe it clean of all data if you suspect it’s been stolen. I used it just the other day to see where Laura was. If she was at her parents, I didn’t want to disturb her, but it showed me that she was in the parking lot of the local Kroger, so I called her. Amazing.
The best feature of the new iPhone, in my opinion, is FaceTime. The new phone has two cameras on it: one faces outward and the other faces the person holding the phone. The outward facing camera is the main one, is 5 megapixels, and is aided by a new LED flash. The secondary one points out from the screen, and looks at you as you hold the phone. FaceTime utilizes these cameras to do a free video chat with any other iPhone 4 owner, if both phones are using a wifi connection (3G isn’t fast enough for the data transfer rates). I start with finding Laura in my contacts, and click the FaceTime button, which initiates a request on her end for a FaceTime call. When she accepts, we get to video chat with our phones, instead of with some clunky computer to computer video chat. We can even switch from the camera pointed at us, to the outward facing one to show the other person what we are looking at, instead of showing them our face. Cool, for sure.
Laura’s iPad is here, and mine is on back order, but those are fun gadgets too. I envision leaving my old 13 inch laptop at home when I go on trips for work, simply because the iPad can do what I need it to do, but is much smaller and lighter. It’s amazing to play with the iPad for a few hours and then go back to the laptop: what a large, clunky, heavy, and dimly lit screen that laptop has become!
Let me pass on one word of advice if there is an iPod touch, iPhone, and/or iPad in your future: Use one and only one login to iTunes across all your devices. iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads use iTunes to connect with the rest of the world, in buying apps, in syncing contacts, and backing up its data. Since Laura and I both will each have our own iPhone and iPad, we will want to share the apps between the devices. All apps purchased on the iPhone will also work on the iPad (albeit, apps designed specifically for the iPad work much better on the iPad than iPhone apps that are used on the iPad). However, if I buy an app for my iPhone and Laura wants it on her own iPhone, it’s no problem to move that app over to her phone because we both use the same iTunes login and account name. If she had her own iTunes login, then we wouldn’t be able to share the apps, and thus have to buy the same app twice, one for each phone. This also goes for the iPad and iPod touch as well. All four devices we have use one iTunes login and password, just to simplify the process. Yes, it is possible for Laura to have her own iTunes account and painstakingly move the apps from my phone over to hers, but it’s a big hassle, and not worth the effort.
We also share a huge list of contacts, but what we did was divide them up into two groups, one called Toby’s and one called Laura’s. When we sync our contacts, all of them on are both phones, but we can choose to only look at the group by our name, so I don’t have to find who I’m looking for among her contacts, and vice versa. The same goes for Safari bookmarks as well.
So, if you are thinking about making the jump to iPads or iPhones, or even an iPod touch (which is just like an iPad but smaller, and just like an iPhone, just without the camera or phone) then I say go for it. When I’m at work and trying to find a flight to get home, I don’t have to scramble to call Laura and have her look up a bunch of flight information for me, I can just look up on my phone what I need to know (via the Kayak.com app or the American Airlines app — both are wonderful). When flying somewhere on vacation, she can listen to her own set of music on her iPhone’s built in ipod and I can listen to mine. As an aside, the last time we flew to Texas on some vacation time, I used my phone’s GPS and Google map to see what taxiway we were on when we landed at DFW. We could even watch our current position blue dot move along the taxiways and then turn into our gate as we rolled along — that was fun.
The sky is the limit with what one can do with the new phone, and one’s own imagination is all that is stopping users from accomplishing whatever they want on the new toys from Apple.