Anyone that doesn’t have an iPhone is missing out.  There I said it. So I know there are lots of reviews out there of the new 3G iPhone, but I couldn’t help but include my opinion after a couple weeks of use. 

Full disclosure statement:  Have I said to myself or others on the other end of the line, “Arghhhh, this phone SUCKS!”?  Yes, I have, multiple times.  But I said that with my old Treo 700w as well, and I know those Blackberry users say the same thing from time to time too. 

That being said, let me get some of my major complaints out of the way.

1. No copy/paste, it just drives me crazy
2. I can’t forward a text message from one person to someone else.  And with no copy/paste, this is really a pain in the ass sometimes
3. My old USD iPod charges will not charge my iPhone.  I had to buy a new car adapter and a 2nd wall charger for emergencies.
4. Sometimes my phone doesn’t ring when people call.  They hear, “ring ring ring”, I hear nothing except a voicemail bing if they leave a message.
5. Sometimes I call people and they can’t hear my voice unless I hang up and call back.  This hasn’t happened since software 2.0.1 came out, so maybe that was fixed. 
6. No direct MMS, come on, where is MMS??

Okay, so those things are a pain, but beyond that, the phone is amazing.  

Battery Life: At first this fell into the complain section, but after some extended use I started to really understand what was going on.  If you listen to music or watch videos all day, you’re doing to run out of battery, sorry, you just are.  If you play any games, like I enjoy crushing in Hold ‘Em Poker, you will run your battery down noticeably faster.   If you set up 3 emails accounts and tell them to stay up to date pretty much all the time, you’re going to be looking for a charger before the end of the day. 

However, if you set email to sync at 30 minutes, leave the location services (GPS) off unless you need directions, and stick to phone, web, email, and text messages, the battery does a respectable job.  It was really hard on me to get to this conclusion, it took weeks before I could get myself to go a day without lots of iTunes, videos, YouTube, and Poker, but when I finally did, I was impressed. 

EMail: Having been a windows mobile user for the past 3 years or so, I am very impressed with the email functionality built into iPhone.  I am a big Gmail/Google apps user and the IMAP over SSL fuctionality is amazing (and secure), miles above WM5.  I have not used MobileMe, but I do use the Active Sync/Exhange integration.  The iPhone does exchange and syncronization better than Microsoft does. 

Web browsing: Safari on the iPhone is as good as it gets.  No more mobile web browsing for me.  Full web pages, in portrait or landscape view, display and work great.   Zoom in, Zoom out, no problem.  Combined with WiFi, I can pretty much do any web surfing I need. 

Maps: Where am I?  I need coffee now, but don’t want to deal with traffic.  Done.  Enough said.

YouTube: Great way to kill time, video quality was surprisingly good.

Built-In Camera: Decent quality actually, great for blogging and social sites.

Other App recommendations:

• Mobile News
• Twitterific
• Holdem
• MySpace
• Facebook
• AIM
• Pandora
• eBay
• Evernote
• iTunes Remote

Tips: Get a car charger, get a good case (I like this one), learn all the features of the little button/microphone thing on the included headphones, buy an iPhone.