Flutterby™! : iPhone switch 2008-12-01 15:53:28.631694+00

iPhone switch

2008-12-01 15:53:28.631694+00 by Dan Lyke 13 comments

Dori on what it took to switch to an iPhone:

Or in other words, $55/month × 24 months ($1080) is what it takes to get me to move to a phone that I'm otherwise currently finding very frustrating.

Interesting that the Apple solution is that much cheaper. On this last trip we forgot the Tom Tom, and didn't worry too much about it 'cause we (thought we) knew the territory, but in the details found we missed it. I half thought that if we had smarter phones we could have fallen back on them, but I still can't convince myself that I want to pay a premium to carry that set of compromises around.

I've been in a holding pattern as well - I'm out of contract on my personal phone and I have needs for a work phone that does both navigation and good web browsing. So far, those two don't exist on the same phone yet. Verizon has a spate of phones that do great navigation and the iPhone has the best web experience... But I only want one phone!

iPhone 3g has google maps.. and it's worked for me when needed. Google Earth is a free download. I've been VERY happy with my iPhone. Web, e-Mail, txt.. plus SSH.

I'm tempted to jailbreak it to do tethering. It's the only thing I miss from my MotoQ.. but I also haven't needed to tether my laptop since I bought the iPhone. But it would be nice if the TomTom could tether to my iPhone.

meuon: Does the iPhone do audio navigation? Theoretically you shouldn't need to tether your TomTom to the iPhone - you should just use the iPhone.

Locally with AT&T it was a wash on the contract between the iPhone and the Blackberry for me so I went with the Blackberry. Navigation on the Blackberry is almost as good as the Garmins I've used but that "almost" is what caused me to get stuck in Kansas.

Dan, with VZW and a phone which does VZNavigator, one can "rent" the service for a day for $3/24hrs. That's a decent compromise for someone who doesn't need a GPS that often and LOTS of cheap/free VZW phones can do VZNavigator.

Got a while before my contract is up; I expect some 4w3sum Android phones to be out when that happens.

I expect Android to be like the first iPhones.. Awesome, but quirky. The 2nd generation will be more awesome, less quirky.

There are times I want to tinker... and cut myself on the bleeding edge. And then there are times I want a device/technology/service to just work.

It's why I haven't jailbroken my iPhone (yet). So far, I've put my trust and faith in Apple and AT&T, drank the kool-aid, and it just works, like it should. if I break it.. I lose some of that "it's a service/device I pay for others to make work" glossy shine facade.

meuon: I've found I enjoy life a little more when I let a gadget just be something to help me get work done in defined quantities - and not something I have to get root on. Hence my total addiction to Google. In fact, I was seriously considering spending the $50 to upgrade my Gmail to the "pro" account so that I don't have to hassle with my web hosting service with email forwards. And I might do that when my web hosting account is up for renewal again. But based on this addiction, buying the Google phone just makes more sense for me. It's just a shame that the HTC G1 misses the mark on some key things.

Killer phone: LG Renior with iPhone-style browsing and Google Maps-based navigation.

iPhone doesn't go auto-navigation or turn-by-turn, and I suspect it's pretty unlikely with the current hardware. The GPS sucks too much juice, and Steve doesn't want people complaining about dead batteries.

I got the iPhone when I got tired of broswers that suck on phones. The lack of tethering hasn't bothered me, since I stuck an ssh client on the iPhone, and that gets me the critical things I used to tether my laptop for. Plus it's gotten much easier to find wireless for the laptop.

The karmic confluence is I'm selling and installing software called "Juice" in Guyana.

And I don't -NEED- turn by turn, even though I love the TomTom's abilities to do it. Pulling up a GPS centered map on the iPhone is enough to save my lost ass and get me where I need to go. or find somewhere I have no idea where it is, and get there like I always used to.

Imagine the future generation of drivers... without an ability to navigate without turn by turn directions to places they go often.

Re: Turn by turn, it's not going to happen how we envision it, but driving up from Fresno on Sunday evening, we had patches of fog. It was a bit early in the season, but with images of hundred car pile-ups on I-5 or 99 in my head, it was unnerving to hit a stretch of reduced visibility.

I believe that in 20 years the extension of the forward looking automatic braking systems being played with on high end cars, and the HUD capabilities given by nav systems are going to make the view out the windshield way less critical. I don't know what all of the enabling technologies are going to be, or whether we'll still have to manually steer, but navigating with reduced visibility (or faster than we're limited to now because of headlights) will be the norm.

Biggest peeve about the iPhone - sometimes the cellular part of it gets "confused" and incoming calls will ring once, and then be dropped. Outgoing calls, same thing.

Rebooting the iPhone fixes the problem, but I seldom find out about it until I'm missing an important call.