Yes, just before Christmas I was able to grab a 3G iPhone and since then I am using it as my primary mobile phone.

iPhone Applications

I think that pretty much eeverything has been written on the pros and cons of this device and I simply want to tell my own personal experience.

First of all it is worth to say that I usually bring with me two devices. A BlackBerry bold that I use mainly to keep me in touch with my business inbox and another mobile phone for voice call, texting, etc. Definitely I am not the typical user. I do not really need any access to my corporate stuff since there is the BlackBerry for that purpose.

I have now spent several weeks with the iPhone and I have to say that I am really impressed and I think I will keep it as my primary phone for at least some months.

There are only a few features that are important to me and that are not present today:

• Cut and Paste between applications.
• The ability to forward an SMS.
• The ability to send a contact as a vcard using an SMS.

Actually these are things that have been there for ages and they are quite simple to implement from a technology standpoint. I do not really see why they are missing on this high end device.

Apart from this I am really happy with.

I have installed a bunch of applications, and I have actually spent a good amount of money on the AppStore.

Currently there are the applications I have on it:

• Shozu
• iXpenseIt
• X-Plane
• Tumble Pro
• Facebook
• SyncML
• Now Playing
• CoolIris
• Stanza
• MobileFiles
• Google Earth
• Frotz
• Rogue
• Seadragon
• Shazam
• NetNewsWire
• Twittelator
• Nambu
• VNC Lite
• LinkedIn
• WordPress
• AccuWeather
• 1Password

Yes, it is a quite long application list but there are actually three or four applications that makes me not even turn my Personal Computer on while at home.

• Nambu. A fantastic Twitter and FriendFeed client. I am definitely addicted to these two services and I love to browse these two services with my iPhone. I also love Twittelator but it supports Twitter only.
• Stanza. Fantastic e-book reader. I found myself reading a bunch of free e-books during the holidays and I have to admit that even if I was skeptical about e-book on iPhone, Stanza proved to be very usable and enjoyable. Definitely something to have.
• Facebook. A little bit less addicted to this but quite useful when I am hitting the road.
• VNC Lite.
• SyncML. I use this to sync my contacts to any 3rd party SyncML provider out there. Actually Zyb is still my favourite.
• NetNewsWire. Not a perfect user experience in mobility but still valuable to look at your news feeds.

While using the iPhone I still some inconsistencies in the User Intefarce in native Apple applications but this is definitely something I can live with.

I was very impressed by the location services. Fast and accurate.

I did not test any of the push technology since I do not really need them since I am using my BlackBerry Bold for this purpose.

I also found myself playing a few games on the device and even if I had some concerns on the usability I have to say that the iPhone may definitely be considered as a gaming platform. I was a great fan of X-Plane, the best of breed flight simulator on Mac OS X, and seeing it run on this device was absolutely amazing.

A short anectode. I left my phone on the table and it was grabbed by my two years old son. I found him sitting on the sofa playing with his favourite application, Sounds of the Jungle. I was thinking it had been my wife to unlock the phone and launch the application. I asked my wife and I ws surprised to hear that she had not done anything on the phone.

I then took the phone from my son and locked it again and I was astonished while looking at him unocking the device in one simple touch, navigate to the tab with the Sounds of the Jungle application and launch it. Moreover the application has a mall “I” icon that gives informations about the application itself when pressed. You have to dismiss the dialog box before continuing to use the application and I found that my son also found the way to dismiss that dialog box and go back to the application.

I understand that being a digital native is something but there should be also some excellent design in what Apple did on the iPhone.

I think I will use the iPhone as my primary phone for quite a long time.