Using Smartphones

In Hawaii, I noticed a lot of people using smartphones, but not just as phones. They have really become information and entertainment devices. A few observations:

- While the buzz is all about the iPhone, Blackberry is still king. For the most part, the Treo seems to be pretty much dead. I saw maybe 2 all week.

I got a lot of great use out of my new iPhone and it was a great way to test some of it's features. GPS works great, even in Maui. I got 3G service pretty much all over the island. The Facebook app worked flawlessly and allowed for the immediate upload of pics. One of my favorite features is Google Reader. I'm a news junkie, and the interface is great.

A few wishes for the iPhone?

- Do email better. Blackberry still rules in the email world. With iPhone, there are no filters for spam, no custom signatures for different accounts, no new email "tones" that can be configured for each account, etc. I have 10 accounts in mine, so when new mail comes in, I need to see what email account it was received by. Sucks.

- Don't run everything in the background. Blackberry lets you run apps like GoogleTalk in the foreground, so you can use it along with the other features. The iPhone treats it like a website, so when you leave it and go do something else, your session ends.

- Allow ota syching of the Google Calendar with the iPhone. (I'm told this is coming, but it can't be too soon.)