Trying out the iPhone

In my meeting at Bangkok, I had the pleasure to meet kick-ass developers who are trying to change the world (but more on this in a different post). One of these developers was Jerome Gotangco, a Pinoy who is part of the core development team of Ubuntu Linux. He is now an employee of Morph, a new tech company fathered by Winston Damarillo. But back to my point. Jerome brought an iPhone intended as a developer's unit. He let me try it out and the experience changed my mind about PDA phones. Due to my frustrations with my P910i, I had forsaken PDA phones. My P910i is sluggish, counter-intuitive and its handwriting recognition is dumb. I even stopped using its electronic calendar and gone back to a paper-based, DIY calendar. Imagine my internal conflict as I was trying out the iPhone. I wanted to get me one, even only as a PDA (the iPhone is not supposed to work in Pinas, but the tech grapevine says it's been unlocked). My first two impressions of the iPhone: it's fast and simple to use. Others have complained about the camera, but I liked it (compared with my P910, it's much better). I tried out the two-finger photo manipulation. I could zoom in or out by by touching two corners of the photo and then spreading the fingers apart or moving them back together -- and response time was fast. Twisting the fingers rotated the photo, just like in real life. The interface was uncluttered. Buttons appeared only if they were relevant, and there was only one physical button -- the power switch -- which acted like a general purpose Escape button, depending on what you're doing. I wasn't able to try out web surfing, but people have said that web surfing with the iPhone is a pleasure, considering its size.

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Postscript: I was in Bangkok to attend a meeting and conference on Open Source Software (OSS). The focus of the meeting was to enhance a humanitarian software called Sahana Disaster Management System (a free, open source program that organizations and governments can use to facilitate disaster relief and recovery efforts). Thanks to Bobby Soriano for orchestrating the meeting; Dr. Francis Sarmiento for supporting it; and Dr. Alvin Marcelo, IOSN and UNDP for sponsoring it. The creators/core developers of Sahana are Ravindra De Silva and Mifan Careem, and the Filipino team includes Kenneth Demanawa, Reina Sison-Gagno and Gotangco. Thanks guys and back to work!

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