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» Calling and the iPhone

After ten gruesome days with my number in transition I can finally use the iPhone as a phone and it really does make it complete. Being able to surf whereever is really cool and of course being able to call and send SMSs the iPhone way is also really cool and something I’ve been waiting on for quite some time.

I’m realy pleased with how it behaves though and being able to call and do other things at the same time is cool, at least I think so. It’s a shame though that I can’t get visual voicemail here in Sweden yet because I bet that would be cooler than cool.

SMS

For me, sending text messages has never been simpler. Partly because I’ve never been fast on T9 writing and love a full keyboard – also partly because the way it is displayed which I quite like. It makes it much easier to follow up on the conversation you’ve had with someone without any hassle. It just works!

The Phone

The iPhone is a phone afterall and it does really do very good in the phone application as well. At a quick glance you get the favourite contacts and just a tap away are your recent calls, contacts the keypad and of course the voicemail (that for me is just a shortcut for calling the voicemail number). All of these lists are easy to navigate and they also look great (as does everything on the iPhone).

Final Verdict

The iPhone works as it should as a phone and I’ve had no problems with it after using it for a full day yet, it just works as I expect it to. I just wish the carrier here (TeliaSonera) would hurry up and develop Visual Voicemail with Apple.

 

» My first thoughts on the iPhone 3G

Finally I did get to get the iPhone 3G after a long wait. We didn’t have it here in Sweden before and now it finally is. This first look is really at everything except the phone part. That’s because my number is in transition from my old service provider (Telenor) to the new (Telia). It’s going to take a week more and until then I can’t test the 3G speed nor how the phone works.

This review will obviously so far be based on everything else but the phone part with another second review coming of the phone features when I get to try it out next week, and then a mixed after that!

My Personal Buying Experience

I can really say that my buying experience was good. Being before both the UK and US in time the Apple activation servers were working properly and the queue time wasn’t that bad. I got in the queue at 9a.m (with the stores opening at 10a.m) and I got out with my phone at 11a.m. It took about 20 minutes to get it activated and all, mainly because of Telia’s servers being slow. Store staff were great, friendly and it all worked out super for me. Activation time through iTunes worked perfectly as well, meaning I don’t have any complaints here.

My First Impressions

Cool! It’s a really cool device that compared to the old phone I was using, blows everything away. There are a few things I really like and a few things I wish were there, but really none that I don’t like. My first impressions of the phone is that it is really cool however.

My Pet-peeves

My main pet peeve is that you can’t copy and paste information in the phone. From webpages to notes etc. This is something which is really neeed and should be able to be fixed with a software update. Wake up and do it Apple! It has been a top request since the release of the original iPhone.

I would also like to see the ability to turn the iPhone around in any application that uses the keyboard. I find the wider keyboard so much easier to type on and I would like to be able to use it, especially for notes.

The App Store

It’s great that Apple has opened up for third-party developers and it is something which should have been available all along. It works pretty good and there are already some applications which I really like (listing them below). I have one big pet-peeve here as well. I don’t like that they are limiting some applications per country. For example in Terry White’s review of the iPhone 3G, he listed some of his favourite applications and I found some I’d love to have, which I cannot get because I’m in the Swedish app store. It sucks and shouldn’t matter!

Some of my favourite applications that I love already are: Twitterific, NetNewsWire, VoiceNotes, SpeechCloud Voice Dialling, AIM and Enigmo (a very addictive game).

The GPS

It works moderately well it works good when it can get contact. Forget it getting contact inside a building or house but outside it does work really good actually. Although no turn by turn instructions (which should be possible) I like it so far. I had it on when going form home to family who lives a further bit down south from us in Sweden and it worked really well and showed everything that it should, including where I was very accurately.

My current opinion

Without having tried the actual phone (which I believe to be great) I don’t think in any way that the iPhone is perfect but it is the best phone out there that I know of. I will sum up the entire phone after I’ve used the phone features as well for a while so expect my full review up next week! Meanwhile, enjoy your iPhone if you have it and if you don’t, check out the features in action on the Apple Guided Tour.

Oh and by the way, a hidden tip. To take screenshots on the iPhone, hold down the home screen and click the sleep/wake button up top

For the best and and best covered review of the iPhone 3G, check out Terry White’s! 

 

» I got my iPhone 3G!

Okay, I’m all happy, I got my iPhone today after a long time waiting for it. Queue time here wasn’t to bad, I got in the relatively short line at 9a.m and got out with my iPhone and all at 11a.m. It took perhaps 15-20 minutes to set up the contract and all with my number transitioning. Unfortunately it is going to take a full ten days for my number to transition so I cannot use the phone for calling or anything other than WIFI use. So my review is going to be once I’ve gotten to use it more. So it’s going to be split, in a little while I’ll talk about all other than the phone part, and then once I’ve gotten to use it, I’ll cover that as well to finally write a full one.

Hope all of you who were after one got it! More tomorrow.

» Late Thursday News

I’m pretty tired after working a full day in the camera store and I’m going to be early because the day is repeating itself tomorrow. Fun but tiresome. Here are at least a few late Thursday news.

• From screenshots of the new Apple App Store we can see that they are imposing restrictions in both price and application size. The maximum size is 2gb and the prices range between $0.99 to $999, where the latter probably is for more enterprise styled applications.
   
• A new build of the Parallels Desktop shows support for both Linux as well as 3D graphics inside of Windows. To get the free update, just go under the help menu and chose Check for Updates.
   
• One of the site visitors sent me a comment yesterday noting me on a tutorial error which is indeed a realism miss. In the Pixelmator tutorial about Creating a realistic sunlight effect I missed to at the end, flip the copied image vertically so that the small piece of the window comes at the top. So for anyone being affected by this miss in the recording, now you know how to fix it.
   
• Over at his blog, Scott Kelby has posted a review of the Ray Flash. The Ray Flash is essentially a ring flash that attaches to a normal hotshoe flash to make it a ring flash. It sounds like a cool product so go and check that out.

That’s that for the news today, tomorrow I’ll be back with the Friday goodies, so stay tuned. Oh and until then, don’t have too much trouble, it is Friday 13th.

» Thoughts about the Nikon D3!

I just got to play a little with the Nikon D3 today, just a quick look but I was pretty impressed by it, especially with the performance on the 6400 ISO level, images which are useable! The white balance preview when in Live View is pretty cool as well although I find the focusing in live view mode pretty clunky and overall the camera sounds quite loud when taking photos (there is of course the wonderful shutter sound though). Also the portrait grip is pretty uncomfortable and oddly balanced. It feels like I’m going to drop the camera any second because of overload in weight. In the end though I think it is a wonderful camera, given the quick look I had on it!

» Monday News Tidbits

Today seems to be gadget day with most news being about some of the coolest gadgets available right now!

D3 and D300 Stuff, site + review

• Starting off in the camera news, brought to you by the amazing wildlife photographer, Moose Peterson is an entire little (or not so little after all) site about the D that has just been released with more stuff being added along the way according to Moose. So go and have a look at the D3 Site!
• Following the news of the cameras in Nikon’s latest release we have a great review by Terry White on the Nikon D300 camera posted today over at his blog! It’s based on his first impressions with using the camera for about a week now and he really seems to be liking it a lot. So if you are in the market for a D300 or just want to read up on it, go and read Terry’s review right here!

New Web Design tutorials coming!

So I’ve begun to write a couple of highly requested web design tutorials for the site here and the first one to be released is a tutorial on how to make a stylish portfolio header right in Photoshop that we’ll use to build an entire portfolio site, right in Photoshop! So go to the tutorial section and check it out!

Learn to polish up your vector art in Photoshop!

The amazing illustration guru, Nick La has posted up a very cool tutorial or article on how he uses Adobe Photoshop to polish up his vector art made in Illustrator. I found it very interesting and cool to read so if you are interested you should definitely take a look at it here!

» Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Review

So after using the new Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for about one week now I feel I’ve gotten into most of the features that is new and that you may use everyday which I’ll start off by saying, is not near all the 300 new features, examples include the fact that there is a lot of features that are to do with improved functioning or networking such things I do not use more in-depth in my day to day work on my computer.

I’m basing this review on the functionality of the 10.5.0 release of Leopard since that is what I have running under a MacBook 2.0 GHz 80gb HDD, 1gb RAM with a LaCie 250gb external drive and it is from that I base on how smooth things are running.