• Simply put.. battery life is terrible.
   You NEED to charge this every night, or forget it.  Attribute
  it all you want to 3G, wifi and the screen.. but its still really bad.
  It reminds me of the XDA1, back in the day.  But, the XDA1 had feck
  all functionality compared to this phone.

• I have some Ipod things I bought over
  the years.. for some reason they will not work with an iPhone.. C’mon Apple
  - stop trying to screw us for every penny – considering your quarterly
  fiscal report, you are not stuck for a few quid Steve.

• GPS is great – but sat nav is what is
  needed

• The keyboard is really good on the iPod,
  but its hard to beat the tactile interface of a blackberry

• Using the iPhone as an iPod is great,
  but the tactile interface is a loss there aswell, especially if you use
  it walking/gymming… I want to be able to click to the next song without
  looking.  That would be a great third party product (headphones with
  some basic tactile buttons).  It may already be out there – I have
  not looked.

• For day to day business work, the iPhone
  is not a patch (repeat.. not a patch) on the blackberry.  If you live
  in email (many people do) and hammer out short bursts of messages all day,
  I don’t think this is the model for you.  Give it another release.

• It has crashed… quite a few times.
   Nothing serious now, and I have not had to reset like others, but
  it has frozen up.

• Some applications are just not ready
  (netnewswire on the iPhone has left a lot to be desired with me)

• I really don’t need to mention the lack
  of Lotus Notes support at this stage, do I?

  Update:  Matt White was
  good enough to tell me there is a clicker on the headphones that came with
  the iPhone – 1 click for pause, 2 for next track.  Its not bad (would
  like a bit more functionality though)

• The UI is outstanding -by far best in
  businessss

• It development of the UI is so impressive,
  that it almost seems to know what buttons you will want, and only displays
  them to you.  Outstanding

• Screen interaction and touch screen
  is by far the best I have ever used (and I have had many windows mobile
  devices over the years)

• GPS is excellent – when real SAT NAV
  software comes out for the iPhone, it will be a car "must have"

• 3G is good, as long as you have signal
  life

• The iPhone switches itself from wifi
  to 3g to gprs as it needs to – no questions asked.  It.Just.Works.

• The iPod is as good as ever
• The applications are good – no real
  killer app for me yet, but I know that some will come along

• Google maps on it is excellent
• It is a capable phone.  Now I live
  in the UK, I need a UK mobile, and this is it

• eMail rendering is outstanding
• The calendar is excellent (needs a week
  view though)

• Simply put – it is the best smartphone
  I have ever used from a consumer’s perspective

A few people have asked me how I am
doing it.  Its not pretty, and slightly ironic in its method, but
the following is how I get my mail, calendar information and contacts synchronsised
between Lotus Notes, my iPhone, and my Mac.  First of all, I used
most of the recommendations taken from this
post (thank you Benjamin).

Mail

IMAP – Domino is a *cough* capable IMAP
server.  It will not take heavy load, and is not compliant with some
of the basic requirements, but it will do what you need it to do in your
environment.

Contacts

I sync my contacts using PocketMac
Go between for Lotus Notes.  Do NOT buy this product.
 It does not work for anything but contacts, and has issues understanding
non American date formats. They also do not seem to respond to any requests
for help.  It syncs my Lotus Notes contacts (from my 8.5 beta client)
to my address book application on my Mac.  When I plug my iPhone into
my Mac, iTunes syncs the contacts.  In addition, it syncs with my
Google contacts list.

Calendar

Slightly different from Benjamin’s method,
I decided to use my google calendar account as the proxy.  So, I installed
Google
Sync for blackberry onto my blackberry
curve.  Now, any entry placed in my blackberry goes to my google calendar
account.  In turn, anything placed in my corporate Lotus Notes calendar
goes to my blackberry, so thats Lotus Notes, Blackberry and Google calendar
all in sync (bi-directional).

Next I install Companion
Link onto my Mac.  This keeps
iCal in sync with the Google calendar (bi-directional).  So, all entries
that are placed in google calendar from notes/blackberry are put onto my
iCal.  My iPhone gets sync’d when I plug into iTunes (considering
the battery life of the new iPhone, expect to sync a lot for charging purposes).

In short, my calendar is now sync’d
across many formats (although I would rather it not be up on google) and
the sweet irony of using my blackberry device to pump information to my
iPhone is not lost on me.

I’m not saying this is THE way to do
this – if you have a better method, please by all means share.  But
it does seem to work reliably and mostly wirelessly.

Well, I just couldn’t NOT test it.  Now
I own an iPhone, it was a matter of time before I gave it a go.  So,
using the public beta of the 8.5 server, which we run, I upgraded my mail
file to the 8.5.  This gives me access to the Notes Ultralite UI,
which is designed to be used on the iPhone browser.  It offers:

• Browser based access (no integration
  with the native iPhone features)

• Mail / Contacts / Calendar information
• Light interface

You get to it by navigating on your
iPhone to the webmail login site and entering your user name and password.
 So, I started here:

 

and entered in the URL, then name and
password.  First things first, you would need to design the login
page to be more iPhone friendly, but it went in.



and then it brought me to my mail.  

Read
on…

Yup, I queued up for an hour at the
O2 store in Connswater, Belfast to collect my shiny new iPhone3G.  The
pricing plan is WAY better then O2 Ireland (as long as I do not roam with
data).  Its sitting here, beside me looking pretty and charging as
it should before you use it.  Question… how much work am I going
to get done today…..

Answer is obvious.  I should of
stuck to keeping today as a day off!  One thing I noticed in the queue
in front of me at the store.  About 50% of the people queuing were
young business professionals, all of which were going to work afterwards
with their new toy.  People who think this is going to stay a consumer
toy are very, very wrong.  

Taking a few minutes away from the day
job to just comment on the impending release of the iPhone in Ireland,
which you can only get with O2.  I will be blunt.  The cost and
contract can only be considered a complete rip off.  Lets look at
it.

First of all, you have to take an 18
month contract to even get an iPhone. Purchase of the 8GB model is €399,
and the 16GB model is €499 (McMerica – thats $618 and $776 respectively).
The phone pricing per month, and the tarrif entitlements though, are just
awful compared to other countries.

Here is the Irish pricing and tarrif
details.

Now lets look at the UK one…



Lets compare the basic tarrif for each
country.

In Ireland for €45 per month, you get
175 minutes talktime and 100 text messages, 1GB data transfer (which is
ample because all you get is EDGE speed).

In the UK, for £35 (which is €45) you
get 600 minutes talktime and 500 text messages, and unlimited data transfer.


Visual voicemail is also not supported
in Ireland.

This is yet another example of carriers
ripping off people in Ireland.  As much as everyone wants an iPhone
(believe me, I am one of them), I just will NOT pay this for it, and would
hope that others will follow suit.  Rant over……

Update:  Warren Elsmore
is staying with me.  He made a useful point.  It may be cheaper
to get a UK iPhone and just roam in Ireland, then the Irish model.  How
bad is that!  Anyone want to do the math?

Ed just blogged this.
  The press release is here.
 It will be announced at Lotusphere.  This is a SERIOUS extra.
 iPhones are pervasive, infectious and very, very user friendly.  If
this turns into what I hope it is, Lotus Notes Traveller, which is FREE,
will support the iPhone.

This means you get mail and PIM data
over the air to your iPhone.  

No, I have not seen it yet…. .but
if it works, I’m off to the apple store… quickly.  And I can see
myself joining a queue of bloggers.

A plea to the gods of RIM to make a
killer product.  I used an iPhone today.  I was hooked very quickly,
but its just no good for work as it does not tie into Blackberry mail.
 Now, if someone in RIM developed a GOOD software client for blackberry
on the iPhone, that interacted DIRECTLY with the interface on the iPhone
(not though a virtual interface or seperate program) for just mail/pim
(including address book), I would buy it right now.

Would you?