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Review: Two Weeks With An iPhone

Posted by
July 21, 2007

Tags: Apple, Apple iPhone, smart phone, smartphone, Mobile and Wireless, Wireless, iPhone

Channel: Wireless

Having owned my iPhone since about 20 minutes after they went on sale June 29, I'm comfortable in saying that, while the iPhone isn't perfect, and has some real flaws, it's nevertheless the best-designed, most pleasurable to use device I've ever owned.

Keep in mind that I'm no newbie, having used smartphones since 2001. Along the way, I've owned a Sprint Kyocera 6035 smartphone, an Audiovox PPC-6601 Pocket PC phone, also from Sprint; and two Verizon XV-6700 smartphones. I also support four models of Palm Treo, the aforementioned 6700, and the Motorola Q Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphone, all in an Exchange/GoodLink environment. So I'm hardly new to the joys of either smartphones or corporate uses thereof.

In reflecting on my two weeks with the iPhone, my objective is to move beyond nattering about its specs or complaining about what it doesn't do, and shed some serious light on security issues, corporate e-mail syncing, iPhone application development, and a bunch of other areas of interest to serious users, both corporate and otherwise.

Syncing With Microsoft Exchange

I wanted to deal with this first, because it's about a third of the noise in the iPhone signal. Right now, without third-party products such as Synchronica's Mobile Gateway, you can't connect to Exchange, (or Domino/GroupWise) via any method other than standard e-mail protocols. Even with a product like Mobile Gateway, you only get e-mail sync due to limitations in the iPhone. If you need full-on Exchange/Domino access à la GoodLink/Exchange ActiveSync, if that is a hard requirement for you, and you don't want to carry two cell phones? Don't get the iPhone for now, you'll not be happy with it. There's no sense in getting something that can't perform a critical function.

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