iPhone Nation

I've been having issues with my Motorola Droid, one of the original android phones released by Verizon, for a weeks now. My biggest gripes included battery life--I was charging it up to 2x a day for a limited 4-5 hour span; the quirkiness of the touch screen--on occasion it would act on its own accord as if enchanted by Harry Potter or Sabrina the Witch; and the blasted QWERTY auto spell was driving me insane replacing numbers for letters and wacky word intuition.

When I was eligible for the New Every Two upgrade*, a Verizon-supported iPhone was lacking in the marketplace. And despite being  surrounded by iPhone enthusiasts, I was able to resist the temptation of switching carriers to join the iPhone nation. And to be frank, I don't know that I was ready to drink from Apple's Kool-aid chalice. And even now I am hesitant to make the switch.

A chance conversation with Daniel, a sales rep from the 8th Street Verizon Wireless Store makes me reconsider. When he first learns about my dilemma he begins to ask me a series of questions, like do I have Mac and what percentage of the Mac applications I use on a daily basis. That made me really stop and think about how I approach my day to day relationship with the Web. I check my personal email about 3x day, so consolidating all my email accounts (gmail, AOL and MobileMe) into one centralized mailbox with a clean interface was super important and would be a huge time saver. Everything else I could think of--managing photo libraries and calendar plus saving files to iDisk soon-to-be iCloud all required a Mac-friendly environment. I guess one could assess that it was a no-brainer to consider purchasing an iPhone--the Apple Gift Card I received from my brother for Christmas more or less sweetened the deal.

I became an official iPhone owner on Friday, August 12th, 2011. Colleagues and friends in preparation for the purchase day warned me about App Obsession (suffered by folks of all ages) where one finds more time to search and download apps than pretty much any thing else in the world. I polled friends on Facebook for their must have Apps (you can check out the list below), and proceeded to customize my wallpapers and settings as well as sync contacts and music (for the handy little iPod feature).

It was awesome to be out and about today with a streamlined and easily navigable phone (though I'm convinced it will take a long time to uncover every nook and cranny on how best to optimize and customize the gadget). I downloaded new apps, and took some cool photos filtered by Instagram
-- this next week will be a trial run and I hope the platform transition won't be too painful. :) 

Recommended Apps:

1. Whirly Word
2. imo 
3. Skype (3)
4. Hipstamatic (2)
5. Pandora  
6. Find my iPhone (2)
7. TripIt!
8. Viber
9. Soundhound
10. Flashlight (if you got the iPhone 4)
11. +1
12. Calcbot
13. Shazam
14. Angry Birds
15. Shazam
16. iHeart Radio
17. The Scoop
18. Urban Spoon
19. Netflix (if you already have an account)
20. CNN
21. The New York Times
22. NY1 News
23. imDb
24. grubhub
25. NPR Addict
26. Epicurious
27. Menupages
28. Yelp
29. Pulse
30. Thicket

(*ironically has been discontinued with the introduction of iPhone 4)