Is it really worth to buy iPhone?

Related to my previous post, I already got hold of the phone that everyone’s talking about (okay, somebody might react…not “everybody” but “most people” should be more appropriate…if you can’t live with “most people” term that I used, then just shut up, you’re not a normal being then).

There are actually lots of people I know who kept on bugging me to get them iPhone and ship to them. But I just kept on saying that I couldn’t think of a way to purchase an iPhone for them without the AT&T contract. I tried opening/using my phone without activating it with AT&T but it didn’t work. And I don’t want to take the risk of buying an iPhone for them and only to find out that it really doesn’t work without the AT&T contract. I know there are some who sell unlocked iPhones but I’d rather suggest to just buy the iPhone from these people instead of me buying for them and shipping those to them (take note these iPhones that I can buy here are still “locked” so they might still need to have them “unlocked”). So, that’s the explanation I have for those of you asking me to buy iPhones. J

It’s been only 3 days now since I officially became a proud owner of such phone. Why proud? Let me prove my point. Everytime I take out my phone (but not necessarily showing them off), I can always (and I mean always!) hear the people around me start talking about iPhone or Apple products. This usually happens in restaurants. Some of the quotes I heard were:

(1) “…nothing can beat that plus it’s an Apple product!”

(2) “…well, I just hope they would offer that in other network providers”

(3) “…I heard they will start opening the market in Europe soon.”

(4) “…that phone is really cooooolllll!”

(5) “…One of my nephews has that…so my son is now also crazy over it. And me too!”

So, there… so it’s indeed right to use “most people” in my first sentence of this post (pasintabi lang sa mga Apple antagonists).

As I’ve said, it’s been only 3 days… but then I haven’t found any weak point of the phone. I got the newly released (Feb 5, 2008) 16GB iPhone which is fairly enough capacity to store music, videos, photos, etc. It comes with a dock, headset/earphone, USB charger, charger adaptor, wipe rug and Apple stickers (which you usually get in Apple products, hehehe. Pati yun sinama eh noh).

Just like with its countless advertisements, it has many, many features which you will find very enticing. Instead of enumerating them, I prefer just to enumerate the functions I discovered which I really enjoy making use of. I didn’t bother to read the manual, my bad! I was too excited to use it and plus, I was kind of familiar already with the basic functions (ikaw ba naman ang maka-more than sampung balik sa mga Apple stores “ever since the world began” para lang takamin ang sarili mo, bwahahaha!).

So, here are the functions I really appreciate. This just a very personal list and should not be used commercially (as if naman na may magkakainteres na ireproduce ang mga yan, hahaha!). Some of them are also capabilities of my previous phone which I already handed down to my hubby, but there are still many many more features! Actually I still can’t think of any capability of my other phone (which I use) that does not exist with iPhone…

(1) Voicemail is very much easy to access. There’s a separate menu/option for Voicemail. I might need to quote here the wikipedia -- "The iPhone includes a Visual Voicemail feature allowing users to view a list of current voicemail messages on-screen without having to call into their voicemail. Unlike most other systems, messages can be listened to and deleted in a non-chronological order by choosing any message from an on-screen list." -

(2) Text messages, weather data, etc. cannot be easily deleted. Sometimes, we mistakenly delete some of our data, but iPhone has this function that before you can delete a specific data, you first have to flip the stop sign vertically and press . No more erroneous deletion of data!

(3) The Weather Channel for multiple cities. For a frequent traveler and moreso, driver, this is very much needed. This is one my must-haves these days!

(4) There’s a Sleep/Wake mode to conserve battery life which also exists in my Treo before.

(5) Wi-fi capable that you can turn on/off. With this, you can surf the net either thru wi-fi or AT&T network (e.g., Edge).

(6) This is my most favorite -- Google Maps! You can select if you want to show the:

a. Satellite – this is like the Google earth! So you can actually see the buildings, streets and other establishments!

b. Hybrid – just like the Satellite in letter A but with the street labels! Navigation made easy!

c. List/Map – this is the standard google map that you can find online.

…and just like the normal google map online, you can drop pins (or in other words, add another destination along your way or change route), and also you can ask for directions with Start/End customizations.

d. It also has a compass for you to know the right direction

(7) Contacts – you can store multiple numbers and other infos (with customized labels for your own reference) for a single contact/name.

(8) Mail program where you can store your gmail, yahoo, etc., or even your company’s email provider. Plus, the mail program is also highly customizable (e.g., how often do you want your iPhone to check for new mails, how many messages you want to be displayed, Font size, Signature, etc)

(9) Youtube player

(10) Usage monitor – this records the total number of minutes and megs of data consumed. It also maintains a monitor of the total number of hours you have consumed since the battery’s last full charge. This is even categorized as “Usage (this is when you’re using the phone)” and “Standby (idle time)”

(11) When a phone number is being showed in your mail or in your browser page, you can directly call that number by just tapping it! This is also a capability of the recently launched Leopard OS for macs.

(12) Widely customizable iPod! It has many settings on how you want the songs to be played.

(13) World Clock – I can easily check the current time in many different countries/cities. This one is very useful function for a frequent traveler or just someone who often meets either by teleconference or online with some other business colleagues.

(14) You can easily access iTunes. One of the best ways to kill the time!

(15) You can store “Favorites” from your contacts to easily access the numbers you frequently call.

For more information of its features, visit the Apple website or this wiki.

So, to answer the question if it’s really worth to buy iPhone, well it depends on your priorities. For me, I’m willing to spend more as long as I get my “needs and wants”… but of course still having something left for other necessities.