Patrick-
As a long time windows mobile user I never thought I would get an iPhone… until I used one at the AT+T store two weeks ago and walked out with it.
I am amazed at how happy I am with my decision to get one. Yes, it has limitations, but what mobile device doesn’t have its share of trade offs?
While I would like the option for 3G, like you, I am not finding it as big an issue as I thought it would be. Moreover, on my last two phones I kept 3g off most of the time because otherwise the battery life was HORRIBLE.
The notes app is rediculous.
That, and the lack of integration with microsoft exchange prompted me to hunt around for solutions. And there are a lot of them– all web-based. Google’s offerings in rss, calendar, mail and documents work amazingly well. That led me to realize that this may be the first truly web 2.0 mobile device.
For contacts, tasks and notes try Highrise. It is an amazing web-based crm. The great thing is that safari displays the pages perfectly, allows you to rotate to landscape and enlarge the field you want while giving you a larger keyboard. And even using edge the pages load quickly.
As for the keyboard, I went back to my HTC Cavalier yesterday… I am typing much faster on the iPhone.
Congrats. Enjoy the phone!

dan – thanks for the great comments. Like the story on how you got one. Google Reader I’m definitely using – did not like their documents offerings so much, but maybe tried the wrong ones so far – I tried out GOffice. Highrise = aha – had that on the list to try soon. Will give that a look today. Thanks a lot for the thoughts and tips!

Great stuff Patrick! Like a true gadget-freak that I am, I was also VERY interested with the iPhone. I pretty much cursed every gadget god that’s out there when I’ve learned that it’s only on AT&T. So, I was happy with my DASH, and once in a while I’ll drag my wife to the apple store just to play with it for a couple of sec.

Well, I guess the wife noticed my interest… Got one last Sat on my birthday! Well, I must say it’s very, very, very nice…

Oh, can anyone tell me if it’s possible to do push-email? That’s pretty much the only complain I have so far. Speaking of which, I think the email part is the one thing that really needs to be “fixed”. I can’t even delete multiple emails…. pfft.

Nowire – what a birthday gift! I don’t need Exchange right now, but I did find a very good series of posts from Brandon at PocketNow, including this one with a mention of 4Smartphone hosted Exchange and IMAP support etc, maybe of some use:
http://www.pocketnow.com/index.php?a=portal_detail&t=news&id=4303

Yeah, I had to pinch myself several times just to make sure, but I guess my wife is learning. LOL.

Thanks for the link. I’ll sure will check it out!

Nowire-
I am a devoted exchange user so the lack of sync was a huge issue for me. I ended up setting the exchange server to always forward a copy of each email to a gmail account. That works quite well for me on the iphone.

Hey Dan,

I might have to do that. I did able to setup my mail2web account on the iphone, and it works. The only weird thing I noticed is I have like (literally) about 100 more extra folders. It’s very weird, it’s olders of other people, organization, etc.. It would’ve have mind if I can actually see their emails. LOL. Nah. It’s very irratating. I definitely miss my Dash when it comes to email.

NoWire
I did same checking and even my exchange server (I use mailstreet) does IMAP. But I have to tell you, I am so happy with GMail and its tagging (vs folders)that As am using it on my tablet and desktop more and more. Not for a corporate user but it is really quite excellent.

Exchange, folders, and mobile devices has always been more than a bit dodgy when it comes to folders – even with a Windows Mobile device (maybe different on WM6, not sure) sub-folders of your Inbox are erratic at best. I’ve head direct from MS guys that that was very sketchy with EAS.