iPhone Gets Better and Better

So today is the first day back at work.

I'm finding all sorts of stuff to like about the iPhone that Windows Mobile just doesn't do (or maybe it does, but requires some sort of add-on, or maybe it doesn't). Examples include:

- The automatic switch between my home network then AT&T's 3G then the Starbucks network down the street then back to AT&T's 3G is just, well, I don't have words for it. It's been totally seamless and the only way I know of the switch is the change of the icons in the upper left-hand corner. It's very well implemented, and gets me to my goal of always being connected somehow. The radio station I was listening to with ooTunes didn't miss a beat the whole time. Impressive.

- The ease of getting my e-mail from gmail and from the office in one place is just exemplary. (Oh, geez, am I sounding like a fanboi? Eh, not yet.....) I don't think this is the "universal mailbox" because messages from my two accounts are not co-mingled -- each has its own mailbox. And the display of the mail messages is just like looking at my laptop or desktop. I never had this functionality in the few WinMo mail apps I could find. Gmail is set to IMAP (and the office Exchange account defaults this way too). I find that I can quickly go through these two accounts, deleting what I don't need, reading the rest, and allowing them to sit until the evening when I fire up my tablet and download the messages to my "just in case my gmail account or Exchange account disappears I have a local backup" Outlook client. When the download happens, the mailbox on my iPhone is cleaned out, ready for the next day. OH, and the folders from Outlook is duplicated on the iPhone. DONT'T KNOW HOW that happened, it just did, and is incredible.

- The Tritton bluetooth dongle is working well. When a call comes in, the caller name (or phone number if the caller is not in my contacts) shows up on the screen. I can accept the call by pressing the action button once, or reject it by pressing and holding for a few seconds. Sweet! I also found that if I'm not on a call, I can double-click the action button and initiate a call to the most recent phone number I dialed. Hmmmm... I wonder if I'm in a call that I received, and I double-click the button, can I initiate a call to the most recent phone number I dialed and have that call automatically added to the conversation? I'll have to try it out!

- I just can't believe how fast the iPhone 3GS runs when rendering webpages in Safari, even using my AT&T 3G connection. I can't think of any site that I've been to yet where the page didn't render VERY quickly and VERY well. I'm just amazed.

Do I sound like I'm gushing? Oh, well, I guess I am. My friends were telling me that I wouldn't understand the experience until I actually owned an iPhone and actually used it for more than a few hours or even a couple of days. I can't believe I'm already on my 4th day -- and unbelievably, I can't imagine going back to WinMo. I also have found that yesterday and today (other than to type up these long-ass blog entries and to fire up my Outlook client for a few minutes to collect e-mail), I've not even used my computers at home. That's HIGHLY ODD for me; maybe it's the newness of the iPhone, maybe I'm just trying to push the boundaries of what the iPhone will do for me, who knows..... More later.