"Sometime they are back"

Yes, an iPhone is back on my hands. My company has "offered" me this opportunity I could not reject (the alternative was a Blackberry, and I can not deal anymore with those small keys, not mentioning the tiny display). So now i have this v3 iPhone, it does not catalyze attention anymore, it's a pretty common smart-phone nowadays .

What has happened since two years ago? The phone are recovered most of the issue I listed in my previous blog.

- MMS is supported

- copy and paste is now implemented, pretty nice

- I can synchronize calendar, contacts and mail with my Google apps in a snap

- I can send and receive contacts via SMS

- the camera is reasonably fast

- it can shot video

- can be my Internet modem for the PC

New improvements:

- the push technology is fascinating

- the stability has improved a lot, Safari has crashed just once with a Java intensive website

There are still a couple of things I can catalog as "open point":

- I can not copy/paste from web pages; say I need to copy a phone number from a page in order to dial it ... no way, sorry

- the battery is still a concern, but there is not much to do at the moment, what about recharging via solar panel as part of the screen or by the movement of the phone itself?

- Bluetooth is not for file exchange, still useful only for the headset and PC-modem

- the camera has no flash (there are rumors about it for the next release)

- a mini USB connector to recharge battery would be nice, what about the soon to come European law that enforce mobile phone company to adopt a unique type of adapter? Will Apple comply or will it go it's way?

- I can not configure which apps can use by default the localization service and which not as I can do with the push technique. I can only enable or disable them as a whole

- managing group's contacts is not (yet?) possible;

- the most nasty limitation is that I can not use the applications while talking over the phone. This is very important when looking for information stored on the phone. I have a catalog of credentials to access live support and call centers (for example my bank), and I can not browse the catalogue. I need to write data on a piece of paper somewhere first, but this is not always handy, and if I have to use paper ... well, why using the iPhone?

Concluding, it's an appealing device, but as I said the last time, I still do not suggest buying this phone.

The strange thing is that during the first days of use I was surprised every time it rang! The last thing I expect this device to do is calling and receiving voice calls. I tend to forget that it's a phone after all.

Oh, as a side addition, I just put back in production my dear "old" PalmTX as a navigator device for my gliding. It's still a gem, fast, easy to use, responsive .. indeed Palm has lost a great opportunity, I was doing Internet, Bluetooth, wi-fi, data over GPRS, email, voice recording, mp3 player, web browsing, data sync, office document editing in 2003 well before Apple came in the arena. All this in only 100Mbytes. Again, I'm still able to write with the handwriting in the Palm much faster that tapping in the iPhone, it's impossible to be as fast. The iPhone will never do handwriting, it requires a stylus which Steve refuses: I do not understand this though.

it's a pity, really. The innovator was not able to take advantage of it's leadership and innovate further.

RIP Palm!!