Francine Hardaway says in her blog post today, “If it weren’t for the limits of the data download through AT&T’s lousy EDGE network and the lack of video capture on the iPhone, I’d be giving up carrying my laptop.”
Personally, I’m finding that I’m carrying and using my iPhone (for tasks other than making calls) more than my UMPC–even at home. The iPhone is simply smaller, lighter, faster and quicker at starting up and shutting down, and getting access to much of the content I want.
Would I exchange my Tablet PC on business trips and the like for an iPhone? That’s less likely. At least for now. My Tablet PC serves a broader service for me. I use it for development, for writing, and heavy duty surfing.
The iPhone works well for browsing techmeme, thredr, news.google.com, checking the weather forecast, looking up addresses, and the like. In fact, it works so well that I generally don’t do these things on my UMPC anymore. I use the UMPC more when I’m sitting down and will be reading or writing for an extended period of time. The iPhone is better at times when I don’t have time…or better yet when I have nothing better to do with my time. And since I carry it with me most always because it’s my phone, I have easy access to it.
All this being said, the display on the iPhone is a bit too small. It gets frustrating to manually zoom in and out of pages. I also miss flash on it. Too many of the sites I visit have flash videos now. And, like Francine, I really would like to see video broadcasting supported by the iPhone as well as faster connection speeds. Provide these features and my UMPC will have an even harder time competing for “most often used device.”