I’ve had an iPhone 3G for about 2 months now, so I said I’d post my thoughts on it.

I bought the phone primarily because I wanted a useful mobile device for e-mail, and also because I love new gadgets! I must say though, I’m very impressed with it.

As expected, the battery life isn’t fabulous, but I still get about 2 days in between charges. It also charges very quickly, and battery life can be extended by turning off wifi and 3G if you’re not going to be using them.

I’ve never been too bothered about having a camera on my phone, but the quality of the iPhone’s camera seems to be quite good. That said, I’ve really only played with it, taking random photos just to see how they came out. It would’ve been nice if the phone supported recording video clips too.

The calendar application is nice, but I’d like if it could show upcoming appointments on the home screen instead of having to open the application. Another application I’m making good use of is the stock application. It uses Yahoo finance to get stock quotes, and allows you to personalise it so it can retrieve prices for the stocks you want. It doesn’t have any advanced features though, like portfolio tracking.

The email application is very easy to use and setup. It supports IMAP, POP3 and SMTP protocols, and their secure counterparts. Reading e-mail is comfortable, and the touchscreen interface is easy to use. The Safari web browser is also very easy to use. The one issue I’ve had is that, on numerous occasions, the browser has hung and then crashed, but the phone continues working.

While I haven’t made any major use of the Google Maps application, I can see how useful it can be. It can pin-point your location, then you can ask for directions to somewhere or someone (if you’ve stored their address in your contacts). You can also search for facilities in your locality (eg. restaurants) and you can tap on the location pins to get details on each, including phone number, website and address.

The common worry I’ve heard is with regards to typing e-mails, text messages etc. However, the keyboard presented on screen for typing is very easy to use, and quite responsive. Each key you hit zooms in and shows the letter you’ve just hit. Also, as you type, if you do typo, it’s noticed and by simply continuing typing the mistake is replaced with the correct word. Of course this has its drawbacks too, particularly when it picks up on a word incorrectly. The corrected version is shown in a little box and if you don’t want it, you simply hit the ‘x’ in the box to close it.

Lastly, as a phone, it works perfectly. When you make a call, you’re shown a screen with a few different buttons, like speakerphone, keypad, contacts, add call and hold. If you have assigned a photo to the contact for the person who you’re ringing or who’s ringing you, it’ll be set as the background. The audio quality is fine, and I haven’t had any complaints on the other end, so presume the microphone quality is also fine.

All in all, I do like the iPhone. I have to send mine back for repair, because the bluetooth is faulty in it, but even with this fault, I’m happy with it. Now, if O2 could sort out my contract, I’d be sorted!

Today, Bloxham Stockbrokers released 10 policy options for the Irish government to “protect the domestic economy while positioning Ireland for future sustainable growth”.

While I agree with most of them, points 1 through 3 I don’t agree with. These are

1. Cut taxes. (only way to boost consumer confidence is through increased disposable income)
2. Restore confidence in the housing market. (cut stamp duty further)
3. Remove the logjam in the banking system. (get NTMA to fund cheaper mortgages)

These three points focus on trying to sustain, and further inflate, an unsustainable bubble. The economic growth of the last number of years has been built on cheap and accessible credit, and on everyone spending themselves into large amounts of debt.

Bloxham want to give consumers more disposable income, in the hope that it’ll trigger them back into a spending spree. The US tried this with a tax rebate, and it hasn’t reignited their economy. I think, however, that the recent economic downturn will prompt people to be more prudent with their money. I suspect many of them would use it to pay down debt, and I doubt it would prompt people back into a debt-fuelled spending frenzy.

When Bloxham talk above about restoring confidence in the housing market, what they’re really saying is to give potential house buyers more money now so they pay elevated prices for property. The housing market in Ireland, as in the US, Spain, the UK and elsewhere, is deflating. Trying to keep house prices artificially high by enticing people to buy now will only serve to prolong the pain. House prices need to fall to more reasonable levels before people will have the confidence to buy into the market again.

The last point above, having the National Treasury Management Agency fund mortgages, will only serve to increase the national debt and leave Irish tax payers covering the defaults. There’s good reason why people can’t get large mortgages – the lender doesn’t think they can repay it. Over the last number of years, mortgages were given out to people without their income being properly stress tested. Banks are now imposing more stringent checks before handing out the cash. By making mortgages easier to get, these checks would become more lax, and we’d end up with the same problem we have now in another few years time.

Luckily, the rest of Bloxham’s points should serve to strengthen our economic position. I’m not sure if selling state assets to cover current expenses is a great idea, but since they didn’t expand too much on the points, I’m not sure if this was their intention.