Official Sanft.com Blog

I admit it, I am a phone geek.  I love my phone and the accessibility a well designed phone gives me and the productivity lifts I enjoy from said phone.  I have been using an AT&T Tilt aka: 8925 aka: HTC Kaiser.  The stock windows mobile 6.0 ROM is really quite terrible, but with a custom cooked WM 6.1ROM, the phone is quite excellent.  It does just about everything I need it to do.  With the new Opera Mobile Browser, the browsing functionality is more akin to the Iphone.

6 Weeks ago, my boss decided he needed a new phone.  While he was happy with his Samsung Blackjack, he wanted an Iphone.  I ordered him one and went ahead and ordered one for myself.  My IT guys support everyone else, but my boss views me as his own personal IT person, so I figured I might as well be familiar with the device and I thought it would be nice to eliminate the need to carry my trusty Ipod Nano.  Here is what I found:

Pros:

• The web browser is totally AWESOME!  Opera is nice, but I never have experienced such seamless web browsing from a mobile device.
• The new Exchange plug-in is pretty, reading email and displaying attachments is pretty darned slick.
• Once you get the hang of the layout, it is fairly easy to navigate the phone.

Cons:

• You MUST have Itunes to activate your Iphone (We have a corporate account, so we did not need to go to an AT&T or Apple store).  This is a pain in the butt in a corporate environment.  There really are no management tools for Itunes, so I doubt these phone will make it across our corporation.
• No wonder there is a program called “jail break”.  I felt like I was in jail using this phone!  There are limited applications (most a not free), you can not edit Word documents, Excel files, etc. etc.
• Notes do not sync with Outlook, that totally sucks
• The phone crashes more often than my Windows Based phone (WOW!!)
• The Ipod functionality IMHO sucks, I prefer the interface of the wheel over the touch interface.
• I could find no functional voice dialing option.  I love Microsoft Voice Command, it works in conjunction with my Motorola H700 Bluetooth head set seamlessly (until the H700 died last week!)
• You cannot add attendees to a meeting you set up on your Iphone (total suck)

All and all, I liked the Iphone, but not enough to keep it.  If you want a read only device that displays thinks beautifully and you do not need a mobile computing platform, the Iphone is the bomb.  If you need a mobile computing platform, the Tilt with a custom ROM is AWESOME. I can recommend a ROM if you want!