Friday, June 11, 2010

Smart phone

I am not much of a gadget-geek. As long as a gadget does what it is primarily meant to do, I do not care for bells and whistles that come attached to it. Thus, for the longest time, my cell-phone did exactly one thing and did it well: it was an excellent mobile phone. It had a great signal, clear un-garbled voice and good battery life. It had neither a camera nor a mp3 player. In other words, it belonged in a cell-phone museum. But I was extremely pleased with it.

AT&T finally got fed up and sent me an ultimatum asking me to upgrade my phone - they were no longer going to even support the technology my phone was on. Sigh! Oh well - I upgraded to another phone with good reviews for voice-quality and battery life. The camera and mp3 player on it were basically a joke though. No problem, I use my canon and my ipod for those purposes anyhow!

Last year, I bought an iPhone for S as a gift. S is not much of an Apple fan though and re-gifted the phone to me after a couple of months of use. I was annoyed at having to give up my beloved no bells and whistles phone. But hey, you don't keep an iPhone lying around with no one using it.

Thus, I started using the iPhone. Initially, what I loved about it was the in-built GPS. It worked so well when we concocted plans on-the-go to visit a previously non-visited destination - just google the address and feed it to the map application - nice! The next draw was the availability of so many good apps for free. I went into app-overload mode for a couple of weeks. Then I began loving the ability to check weather/stocks/email anytime, anywhere.

iPhone, how do I use thee? Let me count the ways:

  1. I set the alarm for the morning wake up call and also use the snooze function extensively.
  2. I set up appointments and reminders on the calendar.
  3. As soon as I wake up, still lying down, I check personal email on it - reading email from family is a nice way to begin the day.
  4. Checking and replying to work emails when I am supposed to be on-call off-hours is such a cinch.
  5. I love,love,love the maps and GPS functionality.
  6. I make shopping lists on it.
  7. LoseIt is an awesome app for tracking calories.
  8. I carry it to work-meetings and fiddle with it when things go too off-topic (no one knows that you are not using the phone to check work emails >B-))
  9. I use it to listen to music.
  10. Occasionally it has served as a stand-in camera when I miss bringing along the real camera.
  11. Locating restaurants in a new area is so easy.
  12. So is browsing for vetti things like what the "Congress-created dust bowl" sign you spotted on the highway means.

Oh, I could go on and on and on. I realize now: A smart-phone is one of those things that you do not miss having in your life till you have owned one.

However, I do have a gripe - the iPhone mostly does not have a strong enough signal and the voice quality sucks. Really, would that be too much of a requirement to ask of an i-PHONE?

5 comments:

Vishesh said...

I want a nexus one..*sigh still not yet released here...

Vishesh said...

btw my blog url has changed it is http://blog.visheshunni.com - pls update ur blogroll ;)

SK said...

iPhone lying around??? Too much!! :--)
Sometimes I feel email is more addictive with iPhone :--(

Serendipity said...

:P the gps reminded me of the story you had posted about how u REFUSED to get a gps and how u stood by your maps.Alty did the very same thing during my visit last year .. and drove me nuts with her maps.Ironic though she bought a spanking new iphone soon after i left.
good good for u :)

SF-1 said...

I was trying to stay away from this blog, but then somehow my inner self won't let this injustice happen with Nokia. Of all the things mentioned in your blog for which you use your iPhone, I can guarantee Nokia S60 phone can do all that. Leave apart S60v5... even Series 60 v3 can also do all that, so can you imagine what Symbian S60 v5 phone are capable of?

The biggest thing why I hate Apple is that they don't want people to own their iPhone completely. First of all, 2 year contract... then network lock... then you cannot just create an app and install it. That has to come via App Store. Nokia also has Ovi Store, but it is not only restricted to that. On a Nokia handset, you can install any application available on any website. You can even create your own app and install it, but for iPhone, you will have to beg Apple to approve your app before you can use it. This is rubbish. Why should Apple be concerned what I want to install in my device when I have paid a hell lot of money for that device.

Sorry for such a long comment and I can keep on going and pointing out the benefits of Nokia over Apple, probably that could have been my next blog, but not my topic though.