sugarenia.com

Almost 30 days ago, I became the happy (and kinda broke) owner of a black iPhone 3G, 16GB. I’m not that much of an enthusiastic consumer, I bought it and that’s it – only a tweet betrayed my purchase.

I decided that the best time for me to write an obligatory iPhone post was this. 30 days after my purchase, things should be quite settled down, I’d have a solid opinion on the matter. And that’s true.

Some clarifications first:

• Vodafone does not want you to have a non-contract iPhone. They won’t let you have it, the end, no matter how much you flap your money under their nose. The best solution, if you’re not into iPhone hunting, is to inform them that you want one for a contract, and then suddenly “change” your mind.
• The 2.1 firmware update was what 2.0 should be.
• The battery life is not as short as advertised – with moderate use, it can go on for 2.5 – 3 days. Quite an accomplishment for something with such a large touch screen and a constant “TOUCH ME NOW” factor.
• No, I haven’t jailbroken it yet. I still don’t see the point, given the kind of my usage.
• App Store is such a sweet way of distributing applications, but I want trials. Lite versions do not cut it.
• No, anonymous friend, I don’t care that I don’t have video / MMS / SMS report support. I can live without it, really.

All in all, the iPhone is a sweet, sleek piece of mobile sex. Fangirlism aside, it’s the sexiest and simplest mobile phone I’ve seen and used and that’s a fact.

Now, the obligatory list of my favourite iPhone apps. Or rather, those that I find the most interesting or useful:

Air Sharing. Indispensable – essentially, it turns your iPhone into a wireless hard drive. Sure, WiFi is not the most secure or stable ways of handling data, but it works and it made my iPhone a 16GB portable disk and I’m happy.

Twitterrific. I’m an avid fan of Twitterrific on the Mac – I hate all others Twitter clones. For me, Twitter = Twitterrific, and the iPhone interface is really cool too.

Shazam. Impress your friends by identifying even the most obscure song mixes – I did.

Things. I still find the Things to-do organization system a bit queer, but it’s the simplest and most efficient way to add tasks on the iPhone (and keep then synced with the iMac), so Things it is.

Aurora Feint & SoD. Two awesome adventure / puzzle games, the first free (and social!), the other paid. Seriously, gaming on the iPhone is real fun and I can’t wait to see what else the App Store has in stash for us.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with my little phone. Never had the crashes problems or keyboard lag that other iPhone owners suffered, so 2.1 was an update from heaven for me.

It’s a pretty thing, but I’m not all obsessed with it, I don’t check it for scratches all the time, I don’t wipe up its smudges all the time, nor I secretly get it with me at bed at nights and lick it.

It’s simple, it’s nice, it’s functional, it really works, that’s it. Get one, if you can – if you can’t, it’s ok! Get another phone.

Just don’t go around saying that your HTC is soooo much better than my iPhone – you have no idea what you’re talking about. We’re not talking functionality here, we’re talking user experience, and iPhone is all about that.