So, the iPhone has arrived from Three, who has been kind enough to send a sim card with it with the All You Can Eat data plan, so I can browse to my heart’s content!
Now all I have to do is get started.
The nuisance factor of Apple products is the whole iTunes connection part. You basically can’t use the iPhone until it is synced with iTunes, and that takes around an hour if you don’t already have iTunes installed. Luckily, for me I have an iPad, so it was already installed…but it still took around 45 minutes to go through the entire process.
Next thing is adding email addresses – a huge proportion of my time is consumed with emails. Whether it’s emails from readers, advertisers and sponsors or subscriptions, they come in thick and fast, so I need to get this up and running quickly.
And quickly comes the first snag…
You see, with a BlackBerry, you can pay for the BlackBerry service that basically helps to “oush” your emails through. Without getting too technical, this means that when emails reach your server, they take up to about five minutes before you receive them on your phone. If you’re a high email uses like me, you get them almost instantly – and that’s a perfect solution for me.
With the iPhone, while setting it up, I realised that it only does “push” email for certain email services like Yahoo. But, if you add an email account from your own domain, or even Google Mail, it uses “fetch” email, which is A LOT slower to pick up emails.
The fastest it will grab the emails is 15 whole minutes. I am still stunned at this…we are in 2011 after all and Apple does say that its email handling is good. I think it’s ok, and needs improvement on the whole push and fetch side.
Next snag…
So, I get an email from someone who I need to send an attachment to…I hit reply and try to find a way to attach to the email and find that I can’t. In order to send an attachment, I need to find it and then send it, so if it’s someone that isn’t in my contacts, I have to copy the email address, then forward the picture, document or whatever to them in a new email thread all together. This is a nuisance and not very efficient in my view.
The plus point is that the emails are a lot clearer than with my BlackBerry. I don’t have to download images in html emails, they are done automatically and with that large screen, reading emails (or anything for that matter) feels amazing…like getting a new pair of glasses or something.
