Hello, iPhone

Over the weekend my husband B gave me a very special gift. My very own iPhone. An iPhone 4. All the features. All the fun.

You may have heard of this iPhone thing, I think it’s going to be big.

Obviously, I am not an early adopter. There’s reason why I have not have an iPhone before this, and it was called the Penance Phone. I was gifted with the Penance Phone after I had lost two cell phones within a period of six months. Out of shear frustration, B went out and got me the lowest-end phone he could possibly find. The Penance Phone.

The Penance phone was seemingly designed for the elderly. It had no fewer than three ICE buttons – ICE, In Case of Emergency. For a background picture you could pick from a picture of a long stem rose, a child-like drawing of a tree and a house that looked vaguely Italian, or the Verizon logo. There was no camera, no mobile video. There was a tip calculator.

Using the Penance Phone was, for the most part, very simple. The biggest challenge with this phone was texting, which I pretty much refused to do. As it only had numbers, typing HELLO, for example, required me to type “4433555555666.” Impossible.

But this weekend, I said goodbye to all that and said hello, iPhone. It really is amazing. I can make phone calls AND receive phone calls. I can text using letters. I have the cool xylophone ringtone. My iTunes are all on my phone. I get email any time, anywhere.

And there are some really gee-wiz features that still amaze me. I have GPS and now know where I am, where I am heading, and what the traffic will be like on the way.

My iPhone also includes a feature called “Face Time.” Using Face Time means that when you call another iPhone user, you can actually see the person you are calling, kind of a hand-held Jettsons screen phone. I tried that out with B this weekend, and it’s really, really impressive. I think it will be even more impressive when we aren’t in the same room.

I also like the camera feature in my new iPhone. I can now capture all the small details of my day and share them with, well, you. Lucky! The iPhone camera also includes a feature where, without moving the iPhone, you can actually turn the camera around and take a picture of yourself. I have not yet used this for an actual picture, but I have used it to be sure I don’t have lipstick on my teeth. Works well.

And that’s just the beginning. There are bunches of “apps” that I have yet to down load, all kinds of ways my life will be enhanced with my phone.

So as I drove home from work tonight, I got to check traffic, look at the map, see my email, listen to music, and call B to say I was running late. All from my iPhone. And all while driving at 65 miles an hour.

I love my iPhone. And I like to think this is progress, but even in these early days, I am beginning to wonder if this there is some new kind of new penance that comes with this phone.