With so much hype around the iPhone 3G and its new Exchange Sync features I decided to pick one up ditching my Windows Mobile device for a week to give the IPhone 3G Exchange client an aggressive test drive.

Now I rely heavily on my mobile device to keep in touch while on the run, using email, contacts, calendar, and of course my phone heavily, so if the iPhone 3G’s Exchange client has any issues I will sure find them. The first thing you notice when you pickup an iPhone 3G for the first time is its sexy menu system, which is great, but I want and need is the ultimate mobile email and scheduling device.

The iPhone 3G Email Setup

Delving into my iPhone’s email settings menu, the menu allow you to configure your Exchange mailbox account which I know is what you want, along with several other email services and systems including Yahoo Mail, Gmail, mobileMe, AOL, POP3 and  IMAP4, etc, which covers most of the major email servers and services.

After configuring my device for my corporate Exchange mailbox along with my personal IMAP4 mailbox, and then going into the iPhones email client I am given the choice of which of my mailboxes I want to open. Selecting my exchange mailbox I am presented with all of my corporate emails, entering into a messages it’s more evident how great the iPhones email client is, showing a full page email, including html emails.

Scheduling and calendaring is looks great but in reality there is one major flaw, and this is the ability to change/update a current calendar item or even the ability to propose a new meeting time, this is a feature that should have been made available, who knows why it was left out?

Contacts in Apples iPhone are great mainly due to the full screen format, placing all the information you want right in front of you, with also the ability to associate a picture or ring tone with a particular contact, all round contacts in the iPhone 3G are great.

To be truthful at the surface after my initial play with the email interface I so much wanted to give this device a glowing review, but after delving deeper I found many of the core features and functions that are found by default on a Windows Mobile device are missing all together, perhaps these will be included in a future incremental iPhone software upgrade or the future IPhone 3G 2, who knows?

Features missing from IPhone 3G’s Exchange/Email along with other general devices features which are missing:

Exchange, Email Client & SMS

• Copy and Paste between within the IPhone 3G’s email client and other applications – This should have been a core feature on the iPhone 3G, considering Apple’s main aim with this release was corporate/business users, for me its feature I most want and hope it will come along in a future software upgrade.

• Forward SMS message feature missing – That’s right there is no way to forward an SMS in the IPhone 3G to another person/s, and also because there is no/copy paste feature you cannot even compose a new SMS and then copy/paste the contents of the message you want to forward.
  

• MMS but a non issue for most mobile business users - Not a show stopper for me but I can imagine some business users may need or want this feature.

• Battery life with Exchange push mail – The downside of push email on any device Windows Mobile or iPhone is battery life, but it seems the iPhone 3Gs battery life is affected greatly when Exchange push email is enabled.  My personal experience has been a maximum of 1 day with Push email enabled, which is not good, but then I also listen to a lot of pod casts, music and do a lot of web browsing. I have found though tweaking my email sync setting and changing my exchange sync type to fetch instead of push increases battery life significantly, getting a more reasonable 3 days battery life. 

General iPhone 3G device features missing & flaws

• File Copy via Bluetooth – This is a feature I will miss most from my Windows Mobile device, the ability to compose a note or some text and then do a file transfer via Bluetooth.

• Bluetooth HPDSA Modem functionality – For me not a show stopper as I have a 3G HPDSA module for my laptop, many business users want this feature.

• Voice dialing and voice memos – Another great feature which is missing, doing a lot of call while on route in my car the voice dialing feature on my Windows Mobile device is great, somehow I don’t see Apple adding this feature too quickly.

• Stereo Bluetooth A2DP Support – Given Apple and iPhone’s are renowned as an entertainment device, why in the world would support for Stereo A2DP Bluetooth be left out?
  

• No Video Camera feature – Most if not all camera’s and PDAs Windows Mobile and other have a video camera feature, my only guess is that it’s been left out so we all upgrade to the latest device in 12 months time, but hopefully an update will fix this oversight.

• Complaints of cracks on white iPhones - Some users with white iPhones have complained their devices are cracking around the headphone socket and the edge of their screen; I need to see more info and evidence on this before this can be considered an issue, maybe these devices have been dropped?

• GPS – when I first saw the news that the iPhone 3G had a inbuilt GPS system I thought wow that will be good, in reality it just not so good the iPhone 3G uses goggle maps and assisted GPS via cell phone towers to get your location, not good at all, no voice prompting and if you are out in the middle of the outback with no coverage, this feature won’t work at all. I love TomTom on Windows Mobile.

What Apple got right

• User Interface - Even the most diehard Windows Mobile or Black berry user will have to agree the IPhone 3G’ss general user interface and email interface totally rocks.

• Full screen email and web browsing – We all have to love this one now the ability to view a full from a mobile device, no more mobile versions of websites for me. Also the ability to double tap any element of a webpage to zoom up is great.

• Predictive text input – Apple have done a great job with this, allowing anyone to quickly and effectively touch type via the on-screen keyboard. I have large fingers so when I used the iPhone 3G for the first time, nothing was coming out correctly but then I realized the predictive text input was actually correcting the mistakes made because of my big fingers.

• Phone and Music on the same device Priceless – No more having to carry two or more devices where ever I go.

Despite the above missing features (Apart from copy/paste) there are no real show stopper for me, using the iPhone 3G for email is a real joy, mainly because of the way the inbox is presented and the full page view of messages.

Hopefully Apple will get its act together and fix the majority of these issues in a software/firmware update. In the mean time I am waiting to see what is on offer from companies such as Samsung, LG and HTC via Windows Mobile 7 to counter the Awesome interface of the IPhone 3G.