A Newbies Review of the iPhone 3G

I've had my iPhone 3G for ten days now...and I love it! (However, I've had more than a few Mac-zombies say, "I told you so...you should have listened earlier." Save your breath. I told you months ago I would get one as soon as Apple woke up and smelled the Microsoft-roses. And they did.)

This phone is WAY cooler than I am. But it is also a productive business tool. If you have no interest, skip this post. But for those who are thinking about making the switch, here are a few things that I love about the phone (click on any image to see enlarged screenshots from my phone).

YouVersion - This is a sweet application with the Bible in many different versions. Easy to search, easy to read. No excuses for wasting time while waiting for a plane or "resting" in the bathroom.

Calendar - Along with my Outlook contacts, this synchs perfectly with Microsoft Exchange. Any change I make on my iPhone or computer instantly appears on the other device.

GPS - I admit that his hasn't been useful yet, but it is incredibly cool. Click on the image and you'll see that I captured this image when I was standing at the end of my driveway. Through a combination of GPS and Google maps, it has amazing accuracy. It tracked my exact location as I walked all the way around and through my house. You can also do things like search for nearby "pizza" and see all the pizza joints closest to your current location.

Caller Photo ID - Okay, I admit this isn't unique to the iPhone. But it looks friggin amazing on this phone. When my wife calls, and I see this picture, it makes me smile!

End Call Feature - Not sure why this amazes me so much, but the phone knows when I'm done with my call. As long as I'm talking on the phone, the screen is black and saving battery power. But as soon as the phone moves away from my ear, it lights up and gives me options to end the call, pull up a key pad, or add another individual to the call. That is intuitive.

Movie Listings - there are a few different applications that can search movie times, but this one is amazingly easy. Just tell it zip code, day, and search by movie or theater. Within a few seconds, I can see the movies, watch the trailer, buy tickets or read a review. I could do it on the Motorola Q, but it took me several minutes to get to it.

Visual Voice Mail - This is pretty cool. The voice mails actually download to your phone. No more calling the voice mail computer and waiting for "boring Bertha" to walk you through all your choices. You can see all your voice mails on your phone by name, listen to them in any order you want, and skip to any portion of the message you want to hear. I'm very happy about this feature.

YouTube - this application comes pre-loaded on your phone and lets you view any YouTube video on your phone. You can search by tags, categories, channels or words and quickly find what you are looking for. In the example to the right (click to enlarge), you'll see I pulled up a video of Jason Miller leading worship at a Granger service.

Twitteriffic -- I realize not everyone uses Twitter, but for those who do--this application is amazing. I like it MUCH better than the original Twitter application. It color-codes tweets by whether they are general, an @reply, or a direct message. It also includes all @replies to you in your normal string rather than on a separate page.

Text Messaging -- I was used to text messaging on my previous phone, but the iPhone keeps everything organized by conversation. So you can see what was said previously in the same thread (click picture for enlarged example). Very handy.

There are several other "fun" features that I won't go into here, but in summary, the iPhone 3G is well worth the $200 phone if you are in the market.