gdgt

Written July 9th, 2009

I’m not your average iPhone user.

I received my 2G iPhone Christmas 2007. Our contract with Verizon had just been renewed for another two years. So what did I do? I jailbroke it, and I’ve used it as a glorified iPod touch ever since.

Having the iPhone gave me many advantages over having the first generation iPod touch. The iPhone had a camera, microphone, and speakers, which means that I could do much more with it than the touch.

For those who don’t know, the first generation iPhone you could buy at an Apple store and then activate it at home through iTunes. Until you activated it, you couldn’t do ANYTHING with the phone. Since I didn’t activate mine, I had to jailbreak, and I still have to jailbreak to this day in order to use the iPhone at all.

So, do I like it? Absolutely. Yes, it’s annoying to only have internet where there’s WiFi, but there’s WiFi almost everywhere I go during the day. I love everything that I can do with it – the App Store is amazing. It is an extremely useful device – one that I use day in and day out.

But by no means is it perfect. One of the most major design flaws is the recessed headphone jack. Apple put the headphone jack recessed into the frame of the phone in order to make the “frame stronger”. BS. This means I can’t fit anything except Apple earphones and some other select earphones into the headphone jack.
I think Ryan Block mentioned this once in the gdgt podcast – the recessed headphone jack is maddening, because if you ever want to plug it into speakers, a stereo, a car, etc., then you just can’t. It’s maddening. I’ve bought Belkin’s little adapter that extends the jack so you can actually plug anything in, but I’ve lost it, bought a new one, and then lost that one. It’s a stupid little inconvenience that is just maddening. Thankfully they fixed that in the 3G.

I have four other major complaints:
1. The speaker is ridiculously quiet. I mean it’s aggressively mediocre. You really would have to try to make it that pathetic. Things have improved somewhat with the new iPhones, but I’m still stuck with the 2G.
2. No background apps. C’mon Apple, this is ridiculous. Push notifications don’t solve everything. Enable background applications, please.
3. Apple’s stance toward the jailbreaking community. I can’t believe that they purposely are trying to hinder what innovative developers are trying to do to improve Apple’s platform. It’s stupid.
4. No Flash support. This really wouldn’t be an issue if I could only watch Hulu, Vimeo, and Viddler.

The lack of 3G doesn’t matter to me…simply because I don’t even use it as a phone. I love everything else about the phone – the iPod app is amazing, Maps is incredible, and the thousands of apps to choose from on the App Store make this device like a little computer.
Some people have complaints about the keyboard. Honestly, I’ve never had a problem with it. You do want to throw your iPhone out the window for the first week, but then after that, it just kinda clicks and you can get really fast on the keyboard. And the autocorrection is great.

A lot of people complain about the email app. I have four email accounts – and yes, I get really, really annoyed sometimes by the app, but not enough to really make a difference in my productivity.

The 2G iPhone is definitely a first-generation device. Apple much improved on many things with the 3G and the 3GS. Would I rather have a 3GS right now? Of course. But I love my iPhone – it’s an excellent device.

Would I recommend it? I’d recommend you get the 3GS. You can get the 2G iPhone or the 3G for cheaper, but I’ve used the 3GS, and the upgrades are well worth the price.

But if the 2G is your only option, then I am pretty darn sure you’ll be satisfied.

-gsd