Darice de Cuba

When the first generation iPhone came out in the United States on June 29 2007 it became the most wanted gadget world wide. But the rest of the world had to wait to be able to buy through official ways. This brought on a big market on ebay and all kind of shady websites to sell locked iPhones for huge prices. It wasn’t long before in the Netherlands iPhones started to make an appearance, people who managed to buy one and jailbreak it to use it with their current mobile account.

I remember considering doing the same but really didn’t want to take the risk of buying one and then having it breakdown and not be able to use the warranty. In any case the few who had the first generation iPhone where mostly tech savvy people considering you needed to know how or know someone who could jailbreak the phone for use. For one year the first generation iPhone was a status item in the Netherlands.

Then in the summer of 2008 T-Mobile started selling the 3G iPhone as an official Apple reseller. On launch day it was craziness of long lines at every T-Mobile store, everyone and their grandmother standing inline to be one of the first to buy the 3G iPhone. Due to lot of things not going smooth right away I waited until fall when my contract with T-Mobile was up for renewal to get an iPhone.

The iPhone went from an exclusive gadget to a an everybody gadget. People bought the iPhone which comes at a minimum with a 2 year contract starting at 30 euros a month. They didn’t even know right what the iPhone could do or not. I remember a colleague arguing with me that “yes the iPhone 3G can record video, of course it can”. And I was seriously dude it can only take photos.

People bought the iPhone just because it was/is an wanna have gadget, most will know their way around and get it under the knee. But most will just use it as a phone/sms/ipod and a few popular apps like Facebook, train info(Trein). But the advanced options like syncing your Google Calendar, iCal and such will go unused, most don’t know to turn off data roaming when abroad consequently getting bills of 500 euros.

So now you could say there are different levels of iPhone users:

• the casual user (phone, sms, ipod, maybe email and few apps and games apps)
• the business user (phone, sms, (multiple)email, calendar and and few apps)
• the power user(phone, sms, (multiple)email, calendar, tethering, lots of apps like twitter(some more hen one twitter app), facebook, wordpress, as of recently dropbox, feed readers, Ego, Airme, Camerabag, Flickr, etc.) Note I don’t mention iPod because most power user have an iPod also.

Off course not everyone is a fan of the iPhone. Just like the Windows/Apple war you now have the Blackberry/iPhone “which one is better” war. Here in the Netherlands the iPhone came out first and then the Blackberry. There are iPhone users who switched to Blackberry and there are those gadgets fan who now own both. As for me the only pro I saw in the Blackberry was the ping system. But as of recently the iPhone has it’s own ping app. It’s a no contest really; the touch screen, the huge amount of available apps and the eye candy of most apps. This makes it a no brainer, for me anyway.

The general notion is that since the introduction of the iPod and now the iPhone Apple went from a small “exclusive” user base to a wanna have products to the general public. For Apple this is good because it means more income. For the ones who are using Apple before it became a wanna have it means patience.

Last I was standing in the Apple store waiting to be helped, I had to wait half an hour while the store guy kept answering question after question about the iMac before the guy decided to buy the thing. Core Apple users know their stuff but now with a broader base of users you’ll have to pack an extra dosis of patience before going to an Apple store.

A month or two after the iPhone G3 was released in the Netherlands I got one for myself. I’m already a T-Mobile client so the switch was with minimal fuss. I even got it before my contract had run out, I just upgraded to the iPhone contract that comes with 150 minutes, 150 SMS and unlimited data transfer. The only restriction was that you have to take a 2 year contract, even if you offer to pay more for the phone.

The iPhone was of the best purchase I have made, since I’m deaf a regular phone is too much of an hassle to use for SMS. With the iPhone now I have all the above fro 30 euros a month. I can type SMS messages more easier, I have Push set to check every 30 minutes for email messages. This is handy considering I get my blood results through email from the doctors and any other contacts like work, etc. are through email instead of phone.

Now when waiting for my turn at appointments or during train rides I can kill time reading the news online, checking facebook and twitter. I have several apps installed that I use daily or regularly:

• Ego
• Camerabag
• AirMe
• Buienradar(A dutch app that shows the weather satellite images)
• Trein(Train departures in the Netherlands)
• BelStatus(shows my current T-Mobile subscription usage)
• Facebook

I relied several times on Google maps when I had to go somewhere where I’ve never been before. I would turn it on, fill in the address of where I have to be, active current target and walk to my destination with the help of GPS. The weather app I consult more then once a day, I’m weather obsessed. Just yesterday after reading that the first storm of the hurricane season has formed I downloaded the hurricane app to keep track of this hurricane season, especially now with climate changes that Aruba keeps getting more in the risk area. Or actually the risk area keeps expanding beyond Aruba.

I can conclude that after 8 months of using the iPhone I won’t use anything less anymore. The Blackberry seems to be good too, but I never saw one to try out. So I won’t compare those two.