Back from a great holiday
Just got back home after spending a great week in the Isle of Wight. The weather was fantastic while we were there and so the kids had plenty of beach time as well as all the normal holiday activities.
Being away also gave me a great opportunity to play with the iPhone. Its not unlocked yet, but I’ve been using it with a monthly O2 SIM card with unlimited web and land line bolt ons.
I would not say I am addicted to the internet, but not being able to access it while in the holiday home would have been a little hard to handle and the iPhone did a great job of keeping me in touch with the internet. I was not able to get 3G where we were staying, but I was still able to get an ok speed with the phone and read internet news, email, looking up places to go, opening times, prices etc and I was very very pleased with it.
I also tried the aGPS as well and again was well impressed. We were out walking and not sure of which routes we could take, so out came the iPhone, opened up maps, got a lock on our location and held it while we walked. Every few seconds the little blue dot would move to keep up to date with where we were and it was extremely accurate. I even got it to route us back to the house which I had book marked and it gave instructions clearly of where to go etc. I was not expecting too much from it, but the speed was excellent as was the accuracy. Even without 3G coverage, the map loaded fine even when using the sat pics. I had also loaded up a load of tunes which I listened too in the evening or when running. Again, sound was excellent and I was very pleased.
I have noticed that with a lot of data access the battery does get used up fairly quickly, but I suppose that is to be expected. I’ve not noticed it being any worse that the stats supplied by Apple. I do think there are a couple of memory leaks as I’ve noticed that the GUI can slow a little after a few days of being on and a restart sorts that out. I’m sure these minor things will get sorted over the next few software updates, firmware 2.0.1 is already being tested.
All in all the iPhone provided me with exactly what I wanted whilst away. Everything I asked it to do it did well and with minimal fuss. I really felt like I was able to use it to the full and get the value from it I was hoping for, so a thumbs up from me on the iPhone.
Still got a week off work :D so looking forward to a little more relaxing with the family and some more days out. I did start a new project while away which is my own Sudoku game. I’m currently working on the puzzle generation code at the moment and I’ll post an update when I have anything interesting to share. Its being built in Java using the Slick 2D library for graphics etc.
Post soon
Mike
3 Comments
ian on August 2nd, 2008
Hi,
Glad tgat you had such a good time in the isle of wight. You sound as though you were lucky with the weather, although there are so many things to do and places to go there.
mike on August 3rd, 2008
Hi Ian
You are so right. With three children to keep happy we found that it really had everything we needed. With the weather the beach was a popular choice of theirs most days :o)
jonny on August 2nd, 2008
Glad to hear you had a nice break mate, will catch up over the weekend :)