iPhone is good for business

January 12th, 2010 at 10:55 · Filed Under At Work, Gadgets, General, iPhone, Phones, Technology

As I promised earlier in an article that I would write about my experience of using the iPhone. Well, here it goes…

Mine is a 32GB Black iPhone. The specifications can be found on Apple website so I am not going to repeat them again here. I used a sleek Nokia 6300 before this so it took me some time to adapt to the bigger/wider iPhone. This is not really a problem to get used to, actually. So, let’s put aside the physical differences.

I had been looking into various smart phones by Nokia and Sony Ericsson before I settled for Nokia 6300 almost two years ago. Well, nothing is comparable to iPhone as I find today.

On the 4th day, I had already got a chance to take my brand new iPhone into action. I completed a task outside and needed to go back to my home/office. I usually made payment to my suppliers at the bank. Then I would go back home/office to scan and email my suppliers before they could send me the goods. This usually would happen a few hours later or in the evening because I have the habit of being cost-effective when running errands outside. With iPhone, I snapped a photo of the bank transaction slip with its built-in 3 megapixels camera and emailed the photo to my supplier immediately. By the time I stepped out the bank, my supplier had called me and confirmed receipt of the fund. Everything was done on the iPhone at the bank.

While the competition in smartphone market is mounting with Google’s Nexus One and Android enabled phones with attempt to take down iPhone, nothing has come closer to the 3 billion downloads of iPhone apps at Apple’s App Store.

I am using quite a number of applications for productivity and I find them all useful. I am able to check my schedule and make appointment, follow my to-do list, review some documents (PDF, graphics etc,) which my co-workers and I shared. More, I can email, facebook and tweet anytime, anywhere with the iPhone (the list goes on.) These tasks are a little over killed on a MacBook I can say.

When my dad was in the hospital a few months ago (I still had not had my iPhone then), I had been in and out of the hospital with my backpack. It was quite annoying trying to find a good spot where I could sit down, open up my 13″ MacBook and connect it with a 3G broadband. Sometimes, the seat had been taken by patients’ relatives. Most of the time, my MacBook and I became the attraction of bored people sitting around me. Some nosy people would peep at my screen. Checking and replying business emails had became a difficult task as my privacy was invaded. It was like houseflies buzzing around while you were eating your chicken pie. Were you able to enjoy anyway?

With iPhone, this scenario has changed a little bit. I am still able to communicate and do some light tasks without the need of my MacBook and houseflies peeping. I can add, modify or delete appointments and contacts on iPhone and sync with my Macs via MobileMe. I am also able to update my to-do list and sync with my Macs via WiFi later when I am home.

As a software developer, I spend most of my time at the keyboard spewing codes other than blogging, emailing, facebooking and tweeting. I would rather save this coding task on my Macs if there is any code editing app available for iPhone. When I am not at my desk, I would want to follow up with tasks like the reviewing of drawings/images (icons, logo etc), design and technical documents on iPhone.

The iPhone is handy during short discussion sessions (less than 15 minutes) with co-workers and clients. A relatively large MacBook would look clumsy in this situation.

I can also use iPhone as a remote controller to navigate Keynote presentation slides using Apple’s Remote. This app makes me look more professional (and well, cooler) when presenting because I need not walk to my MacBook to press a key every each time I want to change the slide. I can do it on my iPhone.

Well, the list goes on and on so long you have not run out of imagination of how to utilize your iPhone. I would never go back to Nokia or Sony or anything else except iPhone.