So, following on from the drama a week ago (I was far from alone in the Carphone Warehouse security check nightmare), I managed to get hold of an iPhone 3G relatively easily at Manchester’s Apple Store on Saturday.  I didn’t even have any activation woes – it was connected to O2 from the moment I got it home.  Some people may say being connected to O2 is woe in itself, but I’ll set that aside!  For a long-time veteran of Nokia smartphones (I always go back to them – three months with Windows Mobile was enough for my lifetime), how is the iPhone shaping up for me?

Well, to be honest it’s great.  Sure, it has its shortcomings (lack of MMS and video camera being the biggest for me) but I knew about those before I bought it.  The ‘pros’ for me include the email client (coming from S60, which still can’t render HMTL email after all these years, it’s a revelation), the App Store (everything Nokia’s ‘Download!’ should be, but isn’t – see All About Symbian’s rant about that here) and the ultra-quick GPS.

All is not completely rosey in the iPhone garden though.  Setting aside MMS, video camera support and all the other things people always complain about here are two things Apple should fix as soon as possible (in my humble opinion):

1. A notification light. The one thing Windows Mobile devices have right is the notification light.  You can see at a glance if you’ve missed a call or have unread texts or emails thanks to that little blinking light.  With the iPhone I have to switch the screen on and slide my finger across it to unlock the phone before seeing if I’ve missed anything.  Even a counter for missed events on the ‘unlock’ screen would make things quicker and simpler.

2. Redesign the default homescreen layout. Now, I know you can move everything around to your own liking, but the current default layout (which many users probably won’t change anyway) doesn’t make sense.  Having Safari and iPod at the bottom means you have to scan around the screen to see your unread SMS and Calendar Event coun, while missed calls and Emails appear at the bottom.  With my redesign (see above) you get all your icons that can have ‘counts’ against them all together at the bottom.  I know this is down to personal preference, but to me it seems much more logical for the default.

So, there you go.  Two commonsense improvement to an already almost perfect design.  It’s certainly testament to the iPhone 3G’s design that I can only think of two things to change.