Apple iPhone
 |
Applications
Included with the iPhone, there are several applications. First and foremost is the SMS Test Message. i found the SMS text Messaging easy to use and fairly straight forward. One thing that i like about the iPhone in particular is the user interface. It allows you to see what you have said to somebody since the first time that you text messaged them. This is helpful if you are trying to find something that you were talking to someone about and not have to look too far. The conversations are stored by who you sent the message to, so if you are talking to multiple people you don't have to worry about all your messages being in one folder. I personally have found the "spell check": feature to be helpful, but it may become bothersome if you like to abbreviate words when you type. Fortunately this feature can be altered and once you add words to the dictionary texting becomes quite easy.
 |
 |
 |
iPhone Keypad |
SMS Text Messaging |
iPhone Number Pad |
Second up is the calendar feature. This is a useful feature to anyone that has a busy schedule. You can setup up to two reminders for each event from five minutes before to two days before the start of any event that you add. Unfortunately there is nothing to really rant and rave about for the calendar feature. It is a simple application that does what it is supposed to do and nothing more.
 |
iPhone Calendar |
Next is the YouTube application. since you are unable to view most videos on the iPhone, Apple has decided to let you view Youtube through its own application rather than just enabling video to be played from their regular site. The video quality is greatly reduced in this application to allow for quicker loading time. I found the YouTube application to be almost worthless unless you are hooked up to a Wi-Fi network. A two minute video takes about five minutes to load while on the EDGE network (AT&T's wireless network) and only about 15 seconds when connected to a wireless network. This application comes in useful when hanging out with friends and the topic of " that video on YouTube" comes up and the computer is off.
 |
YouTube Video Loading |
Apple has realized that many people have stocks and want to see how their shares are doing. They have incorporated a "Stocks" feature that is delayed by twenty minutes. This feature is awesome if your interested in figuring out what your stocks are doing. You can save your favorite stocks on the home page and view graphs showing the activity of each share from one day to the last two years. This is more of a feature that a the everyday person with a couple of shares will use. Because the amounts are delayed by at least 20 minutes this is no application to base your share trading on, but more of an easier way to check your shares than waiting until the morning to read the newspapers.
 |
iPhone Stocks |
Next up is the Maps Application. This may be the most useful feature. Originally this application was just an iPhone version of Goggle maps. This application allows you to search for simple phrases like "taco bell" or "wal-mart" and your area code and find the places in the area that match your description. Recently, Apple released their Jan 2008 update. The newest version of Maps allows you to find your approximate location using information from Wi-Fi networks and cell towers. Drop a pin on the map then drag it to a specific location to get directions and real-time traffic information and search for nearby points of interest. The new Hybrid map view lets you see major street names on top of satellite imagery. With this new feature all you have to do is type in what your looking for and push the locate button in the lower left of the screen. I absolutely love this application because I'm always out and about and if i make a wrong turn and get lost i can now locate myself and get directions back to where i was initially heading. It may not be GPS, but its close. And I've heard rumors about GPS for iPhone 2.0
 |
iPhone Maps |
The Last main application on the iPhone is the weather feature. You can store up to nine locations by entering either the zip code or the city name and then clicking on the location from a list of the best matches. This feature was easy to use and very convenient, however it rarely displayed the accurate weather. A quick flip to the weather channel showed that the iPhone was always off by about 5 degrees and only said it was going to rain if monsoon like conditions were predicted. The iPhone cant be blamed for this because it gets the weather from Yahoo. One can only wish that the developers would have gone with The Weather Channel instead. If there were a way to change the information provider, this app would be much more helpful.
 |
| iPhone Weather |
Other applications included on the iPhone are the Clock, the Calculator, and Notes. The Clock has four parts. First is the world clock. you can store several different time zones in the world clock. second is the alarm feature. The third is a stopwatch feature and the fourth is a timer. There is also a Calculator and a Notes Application, which comes in hand when your on the go and don't have a scrap of paper. One thing that I didn't like about all of the applications was the fact that there are different schemes for each. Some had black, some had gray; i think that it would have looked better if they all matched, but that's my opinion. You may like it.