My wife works for a major advertising agency and she’s working on a big project for her high profile client. She’s putting in long hours and her team needs to be able to find her at all times of the day, so the company decided to give her a smartphone. IT ran out of BlackBerrys so they asked if she wanted an iPhone instead. “Sure”, she said. So as someone who has never owned an iPhone, what does she think?
Do you feel cool having a smartphone, especially an iPhone?
Yeah. I can actually talk to people about apps because my younger coworkers have iPhones and they talk about them all the time. Also, my colleagues are jealous because I got an iPhone for work while others have BlackBerrys.
What apps do you find cool?
Well I haven’t downloaded any apps, but there are already a bunch of apps downloaded by previous people that used the iPhone. Urbanspoon is useful to get lunch, but there are mostly games and other past-the-time apps on the phone–like the Voices app that changes your voice to sound like Darth Vader or like you inhaled some helium.
So IT isn’t concerned about what users download on it or other security issues?
They didn’t say I couldn’t download anything, but I haven’t downloaded anything anyway. And besides my login and password they didn’t have any other security instructions. They showed me how to access email and calendar, make a phone call and get online.
What apps for work do you use on it?
I just use email and calendar. I don’t even know if there are work apps on this thing.
So what work apps would YOU want on it?
A scheduling app to build a schedule for our direct mail and other projects. We use Excel today and then PDF it. Also a mobile analytics app for response rates and other projected metrics would be nice because now we give someone the numbers and they do the number crunching.
Would you buy a smartphone for your next personal phone?
I don’t think so. I don’t think I need all those apps and some of the apps didn’t really work well–like an ATM finder app that didn’t find ATMs that I wanted. I use my personal phone now to check email and browse the web and check Facebook, so that’s enough. Plus a smartphone is a bit bulky.
So there aren’t any apps that make it worthwhile to buy a smartphone?
Well, maybe some shopping apps that give alerts for sales or coupons or when there are no lines at a store. The food and restaurant related apps are also nice.
Ah yes, it all comes back to food. What else do you expect from the wife of the Mobile Gourmet.
Tags: iPhone, Jason Wong, Mobile Gourmet
