Newb iphone question...

So after telling myself for years that I wouldn't go apple, here I am now and got a iphone 3GS dropped in my lap to replace my ancient HTC mobile phone.

Any contact I've had with itunes in the past has been horrible, so I'm wondering what reasonable choices (if any) I have to use this phone without using that crappy software. I assume I won't be able to avoid getting an apple account to access the app store, but how can I keep my itunes interaction to a minimum?

Would it be worth upgrading the iOS? looks like its currently running 4.2.1? Or rather just jailbreaking it?

Any other advice?

Upgrade it as much as you can. It's actually possible to activate and use an iPhone with no computer at all these days, but I'm not sure how far back support for that goes. You'll have to have an Apple account and use the app store if you want any apps (which you do). The app store UI on the phone (and in iTunes, actually) is a lot better than the music management part of iTunes, so I wouldn't avoid it on that count.

I have no experience with jailbreaking, so I can't help you there.

Absolutely upgrade it. You'll need to use iTunes to do so (because you're on 4.2.1), but once you're on the latest iOS - 6.0.1 - you'll never need to use iTunes again (though you should plug your phone in every now and then and transfer any purchases you have on it, particularly music).

Jailbreaking is sort of pointless unless you need a carrier unlock or something. IMO, YMMV and all that.

Thanks for the input!
I also figured that its probably best to upgrade for now and just see how the phone performs. I'll just try to keep the itunes interaction to a minimum..

Sidetrack: is it possible to get an app to download YouTube videos I want to watch, saving me mobile bandwidth? I believe not.

Not that I'm aware of, you can buffer a you tube vid in safari and play it off wifi but not 2+ in my experience

Googling for "download youtube video" find several methods to download to a Mac/PC. Once there, they can be synced to the iPhone.

THIS MAY BE ILLEGAL IN SOME JURISDICTIONS.

My wife just got an iPhone after years of barely-smartphones with no data plan. Hooray for 2013!

I encouraged her to pick an iPhone because despite my hatred of Apple, I figured that it would probably still be easier for her to use and a better phone than some of the Android alternatives.

Now that I've actually had an iPhone in my hand longer than it takes me to set up my clients, I'm noticing some real deficiencies with these things. Namely, the keyboard.

Sweet christ, how the hell can the keyboard not have periods on the primary key screen? Or secondary functions for the keys if you hold them longer? Or a predictive text thing that gives you options like my Android does?

Are there any apps to upgrade the default keyboard on an iPhone or is she stuck having to hit the number shift to get to punctuation?

There are no apps but the reality is that you'll find it more annoying than she will once she's been using it for a while.

More annoyances: The Gamecenter doesn't save your login names, so when we want to switch users we have to type them from scratch each time. LAME.

If you double tap space it will put a period at the end of the sentence and then a space.

yay! How about commas, any shortcut for those?

Not that I know of. Or for apostrophes, which I actually find worse.

I could see that being a valid complaint on the iPad* but come on - smartphones aren't really designed to be used by multiple users.

* It probably is a valid complaint on the iPad for that matter. I'm surprised that Apple haven't implemented some kind of multi-user mechanism into the iPad's version of iOS, given that they tend to get passed around in a lot of households.

I'm not going to buy an iPhone just so I can get my Ascension fix. Bah!

Hey iPhone Wizaards, I've had my iPhone 4s for a few months now. Its great, thanks for asking.
Long story short, I finally hooked my iPhone to iTunes and iTunes informs me that I have 2.9GB of "other".
This is after clearing the Safari Cache, deleting recent phone calls and VM (it went from 3.1 to 2.9GB) oh and restarting.

Short of hitting "restore" any ideas? Is this Netflix related maybe? I use the shit out of Netflix.

Look at Usage on the phone under Settings.

That is helpful, but it shows what I already know, that my apps are using XGB of space.

I suspect "other" is the data being used by my apps, I wonder if it is storing my last 50 Yahoo Mailbox messages?

I am going to move/delete some email with large attachments and see what happens.