Samanathon.com

There I was sitting in Honolulu thinking to myself that it was about time to pick up a decent digital camera.  I’ve always enjoyed photography and own a nice 35mm SLR, but I hadn’t joined the digital world yet because I didn’t want to “downgrade” my camera (I can’t afford one of those fancy Digital SLR camera’s yet)  But I’m in Hawaii….You can’t run around without a digital camera there, so it was time to bite the bullet and pick up a simple point and shoot digital camera.  Now I’ve always despised phone cameras, the quality is terrible and you can barely make out faces.  I try and avoid using mine as much as possible.  So during the lunch break, I was out with Saman and guys at the mall, and like everytime Saman and I go anywhere near an Apple store, we stopped in to see the new toys.  This was the first time I’d ever actually held the iPhone in my hands and played with it.  And sure enough within a day or two I picked one up and justified the purchase by claiming it was my camera.

The Camera was one of the first things that impressed me with this new wonder toy.  With a two megapixel digital camera, the quality is actually good enough to use for some real pictures.  (Now don’t get me wrong, I’d still take a 7 or 8 megapixel camera any day of the week, but 2 is enough to actually get some decent 5×7 prints from)  The greatest feature of this little marvel camera, happens to be that it IS a phone camera, I find that I always have a good camera with me now and can take pictures of things that I would otherwise have missed out on.

On the bad side, the camera does have a few limitations and issues.  1) No Movies, still frames only…I personally don’t take many movies anyway so it wasn’t a big set back. 2) Self portraits are pretty much not happening.  The soft button that you use to take the picture is in a great location when you’re looking at your target, but when trying to take your own picture, it’s nearly impossible to actually press that button and hold the camera pointed at you at the same time. 3) No zoom, at all, period.  You have to frame the picture by where you stand, 9 times out of 10 you can deal with it, but every once in a while, it would be really nice to be able to zoom in or out a touch.

Other features that I love about the iPhone:

1) Google maps.  It’s so nice to have a mobile reference when walking around the streets of cities that I don’t really know.  Downside is that there is no GPS.  The locate me feature is nice, but leaves you wanting a bit more.

2) Contact management.  Something I think everyone forgets about the iPhone, the contact management system syncs great with Address Book on your mac, and is incredibly complete.  I can call, text, email all from my iPhone, I can also store address information, Instant messaging screen names, notes, and even a photo all in the same address book that I sync between my iPhone and computer.  The downside here is that you are missing a couple of key features, like being able to organize the groups directly on the iPhone, currently I have to organize groups on my computer.  And also being able to assign ringtones to groups…key feature, I can’t believe it’s not around yet.

3) iPod on your phone, got to love it.  Now I’m never without my tunes.  Too bad they don’t have the 160gb model yet….

4) Slide to Unlock..  I love bar phones, I’ve never particularly cared for flip phones, but the one problem I’ve always had, is accidental dialing even when I lock my phone.  The iPhone is the first phone that I’ve never had a problem with.  I’ve only had an accidental dial once, and that’s because I didn’t lock my phone before putting it back in my pocket.

Overall I love my iPhone, but there are a few things that really do need to be fixed/added/improved before the device will really live up to it’s potential, but in the mean time I haven’t found anything else that can even compare with the feature set and simple interface that the iPhone currently offers.  Personally I’m going to be really excited to see the 2nd generation of the iPhone..maybe iPhone Air?