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I’ve had my iPhone jailbroken and used for the past week or so. There’s not a lot to be said about the device. Physically, it’s a gorgeous phone. That really shouldn’t surprise anyone given Apple’s focus on beauty. The screen is a magnitude of 1,000 better than either my T-Mobile Dash or the Blackberry Pearl. Given that the screen is much larger, they have more real estate to work with and Apple has made every attempt at using that real estate wisely.

I haven’t gotten the nerve to jailbreak the new software yet, so I can’t test out the Microsoft Exchange functionality yet. The methods are still not foolproof and I’ve heard anecdotes about non-jailbroken devices having issues with the 2.0 firmware. I’ll wait until Apple releases 2.0.1 or 2.1 before upgrading. I use the Mail app to check my gmail accounts and it does a fantastic job. The e-mail is full rich HTML and works like a charm. Blackberry devices don’t come with HTML e-mail as a standard option (surprising but true) and don’t even strip out HTML markup in e-mails making it necessary to buy a separate program if you want to be able to read HTML e-mails at all. The Windows Mobile device was much better with HTML e-mails but the screen size was once again a limiting factor when trying to read such e-mails. Being able to zoom in on the iPhone really increases the usefulness of having an HTML e-mail client.

The one main issue I have with the iPhone is with Mobile Safari, the web browser on the device. If you are on a Wifi connection, Safari simply blows everything else out of the water. I used Pocket IE, the Blackberry browser, and Opera Mini on the other two devices and while Opera was leaps and bounds above the other two, Safari is so far ahead it’s scary. However, all that horsepower simply chokes on an EDGE connection (the kind you might get over the air). Opera Mini beats Safari hands down when it comes to browsing over the air. Opera has a built in mechanism to cache pages and speed them up for mobile devices. It makes browsing on an EDGE device bearable. The iPhone is a magnitude slower than Opera and it makes any kind of browsing not worth the hassle.

I did find one workaround on the MacOSXHints website. It uses the cache that Google has to speed up browsing on a mobile device. It works alright but it still isn’t as fast (or automated) as Opera. Of course, for websites that have mobile versions (such as the NY Times and this one) visiting the mobile site eliminates a lot of the graphics and fluff anyway. I basically have two sets of favorites, one for mobile browsing and one for wifi. It’s cumbersome but at least it allows me to browse somewhat better.

Another thing I don’t like about the 1.1.4 firmware is the lack of installing anything. Basically, to do anything on the iPhone you have to have a wireless signal. This has been fixed by the App Store (and I could use Installer.app on my jailbroken version) but there are times I need to waste time and don’t have a signal. I’d like to have some games or something to pass the time. Hopefully this will go away once I upgrade to the 2.0 firmware.

All in all, it was one of the best $100 I’ve spent in a while (actually after selling my Blackberry, I netted $25). I’m down to one device, which was my goal all along. I look forward to using the new firmware and really begin testing the Exchange support. My only worry is battery life, which is currently only two days without ActiveSync running and without automatically checking e-mail. I may have to disable Exchange in order to get through the day.