Phone Adventures

Earlier in 2010 I wrote about my first smart phone (entry). As my plan is nearly up and I had an opportunity to check out new devices, I took a spin in the Verizon store with J. Kudos to him for giving me good advise on my first smart phone. For the second smart phone, I didn’t end up going with either suggestion (HTC Rezound or Razor Maxx). With all the hype around 4G phones and huge screens, I was joking that before long we’ll all be carrying ipads and using them as phones. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Incredible but when it comes to new Droids, I just wasn’t all that impressed. So I ended up getting the iPhone 4S. No 4G, no droid, and no huge screens. It’s all good.

Since I’ve had the iPad for a while, I was already familiar with the setup of the iPhone (let’s face it, the phone/text part isn’t that hard). And since I had already started to clean up my google contacts (getting ready for switching from smart phone to smart phone), the contacts sync didn’t take too long either.

Things I miss from the droid:
-ringtones: I know this isn’t impossible but it just seems harder on an iPhone.
-music management: I’m awful with my iTunes music library and sync ever since I got my first iPod back in the days, so it’s been a lot of drag&drops with the SD card and amazon mp3 store with my droid. this led to my iPhone music library completely empty until i figure out the sync/org part. My iPhone has 1 song in it, from the free single of the week, no joke!
-contact search: while the iPhone contacts page does have a search bar at the top, it doesn’t allow for easy search using the numbers pad like droid. Fewer misdialing?
-better support for multiple calendars: I did find a few iPhone apps that take multiple google calendars but for now, I haven’t committed…
-different skins/themes. you know how you can do a “travel” skin with travel apps and “work” skin and “social” skin (at least with HTC)? yea, none of that…have to make do with the “folders” or limit my apps (which isn’t a bad thing).

Things I like from iphone:
-it’s the same as my ipad. ok, so this is not a plus if you haven’t used either the iphone or ipad before…
-imessage/text is much cooler.
-more fun apps that I’ve already had from my iPad. now I can take them on the go too!
-less confusing interface than some droid features.
-this is not really a big deal…but you do get better case selection for iPhones. I actually didn’t even bother with a case for the HTC. just went with a screen protector and that’s it. For the iPhone I got a red/black gradient hard rubber case with screen protector. May ditch the screen protector after a while since I’m not thrilled with it.
-Siri

IPad vs iPhone:
-facetime integration is better on the iphone
-Siri rocks. and apparently my English is not that bad (or they’ve improved it since rolling out)
-Zite looks 100 times better on iPad than iPhone. I suspect it’s the typography or the top bar showing the diff categories in the iphone version that makes it not as clean.
-I’m trying not to go overboard with copying the iPad apps since some apps are much better on ipad than iphone (i.e. Vevo or magazine apps).
-why is Muji Calendar free on ipad but not iphone? sigh.

Read my previous post on ipad reading apps.