A couple of weeks ago i bought an iphone and also switched to a pay monthly contract for the first time. It’s already become an indispensable little tool…
Email is so much easier
photo credit: COG LOG LAB.
One of the biggest changes the iphone has made to my daily life has been the way i read and respond to emails. Up until a couple of weeks ago, i read emails exclusively on PCs. And to do that i had to;
(a) be beside a PC
(a) have internet connectivity
(c) have time to start up & login
With my iphone and on bill pay, i can get notifications just like text messages without having to worry about paying a bomb for them. This year at college we have very few lab classes, so it’s tricky to get access to a computer. That means i could go all day without using a computer which means i could have 20/30 emails waiting for me once i get home. The iphone has done away with all of those problems… the only time email builds up now is when i’m sleeping.
Can’t trust the college
On Monday we’ll be in to week 8 of college and the whole campus is still without wifi. Insane. If the college had a rock solid reputation for delivering & maintaining IT services, this would be forgivable… understandable… nobody minds waiting for something if it’s worth the wait.
However that reputation just isn’t there and we’ve already seen why this year already. Last weekend Moodle (a place where we download / upload college stuff) was down all day Saturday and Sunday until Monday morning. Then there was the whole fiasco over passwords & policies. They introduced a new password policy without telling us, which meant many were left not being able to log in to any services. Or how about servers being down, networks slow & unreliable… But let’s pretend that doesn’t happen like everyone else. It’s just accepted.
I’ve had mobile broadband with o2 for over a year now with zero problems. I’m also with o2 for the iphone and although they’re not quite the cheapest, i can’t complain… their 3G network seems to be fairly solid. And that’s all you can ask for. A solid, stable connection to the internet when you need it.
Because i spend most of my ‘working’ time either in college or at home, it’s important i have internet access there all the time, even if i don’t need it.
An abundance of space
Of the 32GB of space i have on the iphone 4, i’m only using less than 3GB but i like knowing that all that space is there should i need it. I also have 150 unused minutes & 96 unused texts to other networks. I like knowing that i have all those extras even though i’ll probably never use them all up in a month. So far, my 2gig data limit doesn’t look to be under much threat either. I’ve only used less than 300mb in two weeks.
Social is just better
It’s so much easier using the likes of twitter & facebook on an iphone. Because i can do that whilst in a canteen or walking to the car etc… i don’t feel the need to use twitter & facebook as much on a PC now. So i’m using them less at home, which means less distraction and noise.
photo credit: tizzle
I’ve also started using foursquare and geo tagging images on flickr, just because i can… all thanks to the iphone 🙂