What to do with an iPhone?

by -DjD- on April 20, 2009

Filed under: Analysis

Mandi asks…

Any good tips for a noob to this fancy-schmancy world of phones intersecting with other technologies? Just got an iPhone since ATT only has NICE phones these days! What are the first things I should look into with this contraption?

Once upon a time, a phone just needed to be able to call people. Attempting to be all fancy making half-witted attempts at other things like being an organizer, accessing the internet, and playing games just wasn’t a good idea. And so went the conventional wisdom that convergence devices were an unwise proposition. That conclusion however, was blown out the window with the iPhone.

The truth though, is that just because your phone CAN do various things, doesn’t mean you should automatically care about it. It’s easy to fall into the Megapixels, Gigahertz, Terrabyte arms race of technology, but these are all means, not ends. The real question to ask is, “What am I trying to accomplish?“.

So to answer Mandi’s questions, there are some pretty amazing things you can do with your iPhone, and for me, they all boil down to simplifying life and breaking boundaries.

Life in Sync

The days of having to keep a rolodex on your desk, a few numbers on your phone, and your appointment book in your bag are over. Now you can keep everything up to date and accessible no matter where you are. That means:

No need to manually copy info back and forth between your phone and address book at home.
No having to reenter everyone’s number if you lose or upgrade your phone.
No out-of-date copies of info and trying to figure out which number is the right one.
Your info is always backed up because it exists in multiple places at once.
All your contact’s emails, addresses, phone numbers, and even birthdays are at your fingertips whether you’re online, at your desk, or on the go.

How: For your contacts, start by getting everything in one place. You can use AddressBook.app on the Mac, Outlook on the PC, or even your Google contacts. And there’s always MobileMe if you want the simplest out of the box solution. For calendar’s you can use iCal.app and sync easily to the iPhone or get fancier and sync with Google Calendar as well.

Social Contact

One of the things that’s surprised me about my iPhone is how much time I spend on it keeping in touch with people instead of sitting in front of the computer. The Facebook (iTunes) app is great because it’s a nice easy way to keep in touch with everyone without all the other my-little-princess / mob-wars / pirate-vs-ninja ~~distractions~~ nonsense.

I also find myself emailing people more often from my phone than from my computer desk which is great because I can do it while sipping a coffee, riding the train, or waiting at the airport. And because it’s synced over the air, if you start a message on the go, you can finish it back at your desk or on Gmail later on.

Ohhh… and it is a phone after-all… so that’s nice for keeping in touch too.

Reading

For me, this means short-form current-events by way of RSS feeds and news sources. I use Manifesto (iTunes) to keep up on a few of my favorite blogs and Google News which automatically renders a nice tidy iPhone version. Again, this let’s me do my reading whenever I have a bit of down time and wherever I happen to be.

If you want to take it one step further and read books there’s the excellent app Classics, as well as the Stanza (iTunes) and Kindle (iTunes) eBook stores.

Games

I’ve said it before but gaming on the iPhone is huge. The games are fun, portable, cheap, and imaginative. Plus, features like location awareness, motion sensing, and an ever present network connection allow for endless new creative possibilities.

iPod

Don’t forget, the iPhone makes a great iPod too. Even though you probably can’t fit your entire music library on it, it’s easier than ever to create some iPhone specific playlists. Just use the Genius feature to quickly create some great playlists and sync them to your phone.

Wrap up

That may be a bit more than a single starting point but the idea here is to have fun and take advantage of the technology however it suits you. It may mean reading on the go, killing time with some games, uploading photos straight from your phone, or keeping on top of a busy schedule. Ultimately though it’s about making the technology work for you, and I continue to be impressed by the possibilites for this platform.