Deafpagers.com has seris of iPhone report at http://www.deafpagers.com/blog

1. http://www.deafpagers.com/blog/2007/07/10/one-week-with-the-iphone/#more-60
2. http://www.deafpagers.com/blog/2007/07/03/iphone-for-the-deaf/
3. http://www.deafpagers.com/blog/2007/06/18/preview-apples-iphone-is-it-worth/
4. http://www.deafpagers.com/blog/2007/07/10/one-week-with-the-iphone/

There will be two more iPhone articles come out this week.

Good Luck with your decision.

I wanted to comment on one of the things that iPhone has…

autotext feature.

My coworker showed me the phone and I played around with it a bit and it sure comes with autotext feature. Is there a place where we can add words to autotext list? I don’t know about that. From my experience it looks good. Would I buy it? Yes and no. Yes definitely will buy it probably six months from now or until the next version comes out. No, too much hype and AT&T probably is not caught up with everyone yet (I think).

Overall, the phone looks really cool!

Chad-

Thank you for your iPhone report. IMHO, having a phone is all about communications. The ‘desireable’ features you listed about the iPhone is all about making your life easier. Kinda misses the mark, wouldn’t you agree, about having it in the first place?

Keep in mind that iPhone is only 3 weeks old now. I’m sure it’ll get improved in no time with thousands of feedbacks.

Why compare iPhone with Sidekick? What’s wrong with the blackberry? I think Blackberry is better than Sidekick

@Boston: That was what I meant by the keyboard “learning” your words after certain amount of typing. It isn’t AutoType where I can type “org” and it’ll automatically expand to “organization”. I would like to be able to establish certain abbreviations or keywords and they would auto type to whatever. I am a heavy AutoType user and I miss that. I’m pretty sure Apple will implement that for iPhone hopefully not in the too distant future.

@Cousin Vinny: Communication is my #1 priority, too. It provides me the necessary communication tool just like any other mobile devices. Nothing different or unique about it except that it has excellent user interface (touch screen) and ability to read MS Word and Excel files. The biggest lacking feature from iPhone’s email interface is the ability to enter BCC addresses. Apple mentioned that it will be added, hopefully in the next version. Additionally, I am a person who relies on productivity tools to help me go around my daily task efficiently and quickly. iPhone is basically my smallest computer in my pocket, hence mentioning all the “making my life easier” features with communication on top of everything. I am happy. :)

@JFLMad: I wasn’t neglecting the Blackberry device. I simply never owned nor used one so it wouldn’t be fair of me to compare. Sidekick, I have been using it since it first came out. If anybody here has an iPhone and used Blackberry in the past, I definitely welcome his or her review. Anybody?

I’ve owned a iPhone since the first day. I’ve also owned a Treo and Blackberry (both the 8700g and the Pearl).

I can say right now that the iPhone keyboard is faster for me than the Treo and Blackberry keyboards. It just requires a change in how you approach the typing. Ill share my observations with the rest of you. I actually now prefer the portrait mode over landscape mode for keyboarding right now.

With Sidekick, Treo, Blackberry, we have become accustomed to PRESSING keys. If you try to migrate that same behavior over to the iPhone, it will still work, but you are only wasting energy and effort in two ways. a) attempting to press down on a key that doesnt need pressing, and 2) expending energy to stabilize the iPhone with your hand when pressing down with your thumb.

What you should do INSTEAD, is just hold the phone in one hand and with your thumb, simply and lightly touch the keys to type. A very light touch is all is necessary. With a little practice, you’re able to type much faster and more efficiently. You’re spending less energy and time on each key, and you’re able to use your hand to help move the phone around to make it easier for your thumb to reach those far-off keys, now that you dont have to hold the phone so tightly to stabilize it if you were pressing down on keys.

Give it a try, you will be quite pleased with the improvement!

On a side note, there is another excellent alternative to BeeJive chat for AIM. Check out http://www.flickim.com – it is an all javascript solution for AIM.

Cheers,
-tim

Chad,

many thanks for the clarify of the blackberry. Look like Tim will do the report on that soon.

I bought the iPhone last weekend for my wife, my work only supports BlackBerry. My wife had SK3 and her contract ended Saturday so we had a good reason to move on to something better. We are avid Mac users so let me just say that the iPhone is the first phone I’ve owned (Treo, BB, SK, TalkAbout, etc) that works seamlessly with a computer!

Having played with the iPhone for a few days I’m *jaw-dropping* impressed! However I do agree with Chad’s points it could be a little more deaf freindly but all the other features really makes you forget the things it lacks and lets face it, no phone is perfect for the deaf, no matter what you pick there’s always the “deaf-friendly” issue.

I think the keyboard will get mixed reviews depending on the person. Chad took 2 weeks to get used to it, for me it only took a couple of days, you have to hold the iPhone right and tap lightly, if you smash your thumbs like you would on SK then you’ll make more mistakes and get frustrated but you barely need to touch the screen and you’ll make no more mistake than you would on any other pager. I make more mistakes on my BlackBerry than I do on the iPhone now so the “keyboard drama” isn’t an issue at all for me.

Anyway, the iPhone blew me away and I’ve showed to a lot of skeptical deaf people to insisted that Curve was better, now they’ve changed their mind, the iPhone will make all other pagers and deviced look and feel very old. I hate my BlackBerry now :).

BTW, I have several movies on my iPhone with subtitles, all you need to do is convert your DVDs to iTunes compatible movies and enable subtitles on a converter (I used Hand Brake).

David

If you don’t mind me asking, how much do you pay monthly for service for your iPhone?

Never mind, I read back and got my answer.

Puzzled! Iphone does have landscape keyboard…it does have instant messaging. There is an AIM app.