Apple iPhone 3G S Review From A Blogger Without Home Internet Access

By Pinyo, on July 6, 2009

Some of you may be thinking about getting the new Apple iPhone 3G S. Some of you may try to justify the purchase by giving up your home telephone and high-speed Internet access. Well, I got a chance to live it, and figure I would share my experience.

Last week, my wife bought a new 32GB iPhone 3G S. As part of the upgrade, she had to sign up for AT&T unlimited data plan, which costs an extra $30 per month (this cost is per phone). I wasn’t thrilled about it, because I think it’s an unnecessary expense — and recurring monthly expenses are the worst! I even mentioned this on Twitter to @GetOutOfDebtGuy that I would only consider buying an iPhone if I need it for business use.

Anyway, my Verizon home phone and DSL went dead last Friday.  Since Verizon doesn’t provide repair services on weekends, I had to use the iPhone to satisfy my Internet obsession.

First Impression of the Apple iPhone 3G S

My first impression of the iPhone 3G S is that it’s a wonderful little device. The sound and image qualities are great. I was very impressed by the camera, camcorder, web browser, video playback, image browser, iPod, and other features.

Without my home Internet access, I opted to use my wife’s iPhone over my older Blackberry because the web browser is much better, and it’s also faster (although not as fast as home Internet). I love the auto-rotate and the 2-finger zoom capabilities. I also like the fact that you can have multiple windows open on the iPhone and quickly switch between them. Casual entries of usernames and passwords are also easier on the iPhone.

In the end, I was able to check my emails, participate in forums, and review comments on my blog using the iPhone. However, I think that’s as far as I’ll go with the iPhone.

iPhone Still Has a Way To Go

Although the iPhone was useful, it still has a way to go before I consider it ready for business use, or for it to even be practical for power web users. Here are a few shortfalls:

1. For a lot of typing, iPhone is not that great. I even prefer the Blackberry’s tiny but real keyboard over the touch screen keyboard. The keyboard is too small for 2-thumb typing and does not give good feedback. Needless to say, it took me a long time to type anything more that a few sentences.
2. The built-in Safari web browser doesn’t have caching capability. If you use the back button a lot like I do, you’ll notice the delay while it reloads the page. You can work around this by opening a new window, but it takes a bit getting used to.
3. Web pages are not perfectly rendered. Although the built-in Safari web browser is better that anything else I have ever seen on a mobile device, it’s still not perfect. For example, font sizes are showing up wrong on some pages, certain embedded objects do not render at all, and certain input areas are not recognized (and you cannot enter data).

Conclusion

Anyway, the iPhone is still an amazing device and the $30 extra per month for the data plan is not unreasonable given the added capabilities. For a casual web user who lives alone, replacing home phone and Internet with the Apple iPhone might even make good financial sense. But beyond a single user, the financial advantage quickly fades, because the $30 per month is per phone. Also, if you use the Internet for anything more than checking your email and casual browsing, you may want to think twice about giving up your home Internet.

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Pinyo is the brain behind Moolanomy personal finance blog and a few other web sites. If you like this article, please subscribe for free daily email updates.

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