Yes, I’ll be getting an iPhone 2.0 (or as I’m choosing to call it, hoping it will catch on, the “Buddhaphone”) but not this weekend when it first comes out, because I have to wait for my Verizon contract to run out at the end of the month. In the meantime, I’ll probably download the new software for my iPod Touch.
The Palm Treo 650 hasn’t been bad – with Missing Sync it syncs to my Mac fairly well. Verizon’s coverage is great, I’ll miss that with AT&T. But Verizon is also about way behind the technology curve; they recently announced and available upgrade to the Palm Centro (the new, smaller version of the Treo) that’s been available on ATT for over a year now.
The Palm has convinced me of the value of a smartphone, though, and the new iPhone should go above and beyond that. On a daily basis I use mobile web to look things up on Google and Yelp, and check that websites are working; Google Maps is now indispensable, paper maps to the contrary. The address book is my main reference (especially since it’s well-sync’d with my desktop), as well as the calendar, even though I still manage to miss birthdays and other notable occasions. I keep notes – grocery and affinity card numbers, shopping lists, busy day todo lists, ideas for t-shirt slogans (“Mentally Confused and Prone to Wandering”), beers I’ve tried, medical history… I used to use Pocket Quicken a lot but when my desktop Quicken fell down and couldn’t get up it took a lot of my enthusiasm away. I rarely use the camera – and I think people who go around holding up their phones and clicking pictures seem nearly as idiotic as the ones who keep a bluetooth headset in their ear when they’re not talking on it. And of course I’ve got an HP-12C emulator – there’s a hacked one for the iPhone as well (and even an HP-16C!) – hope they’ll make it to the new iPhone, hacked or not.
I actually read a book this weekend (“Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom” by Cory Doctorow) on my iPod Touch. The battery doesn’t last all that long when you’ve got the backlight on the whole time, and you have to keep swiping the screen to scroll but all in all it wasn’t that bad an experience, and you can’t beat the portability.