Okay, I broke down and got an iPhone, against my better judgement. But I played with it at the store and it was just so slick and fun to use, I couldn’t resist. But there are caveats, my friends!
Well, my Windows Mobile phone ticked me off for the last time on Saturday. Add to that the fact that I live a mere 565 yards from the Apple Store, and the next thing you know, I have an iPhone. There are goods and there are bads. Here are my thoughts.
iPod: Apple says this is the best iPod they’ve ever produced. Malarkey! I think it’s the worst. The controls aren’t as easy to use, particularly if you’re driving, running, walking, whatever. The touch screen is very sensitive, so there’s no navigating your finger and then pressing once it’s set… nope, the instant your skin grazes the glass, you’ve pressed a button. Cover browsing is nifty, but not so nifty that it’s a banner feature. It’s a gimmick. And once they release the 80GB (or larger) versions of the new iPods, it will take days to scroll through all that album art. It also uses a proprietary headphone jack, because of the phone functionality, so you can’t use just any ol’ pair of headphones. But I expect a flurry of accessory headsets to be available soon. Finally, the limited storage of the iPhone makes it far from the best iPod ever. I want ALL my music with me. Oh, it also doesn’t work well with existing iPod accessories. For instance, the Monster plug that I have in my Acura… the iPhone immediately pops up and says it wasn’t built for this accessory and asks me if I wish to go into Airplane Mode to reduce interference. WTF? So I have to turn the phone off if I want to use it in my car. I would say this is far from the “best iPod ever.”
The best feature that I have seen is that it asks if you wish to delete videos after they’ve been played to save space. Well, since all is accessed via iTunes, what space is needed? Email space? Perhaps if someone is taking a lot of pictures, then they may wish to reclaim space in that fashion. But there’s no option for deleting anything else. Like music, for instance. Still, being able to delete videos from the iPhone is a much-needed feature.
Oh, and it has speakers, which helps but they’re not all that great, of course. But if you’re sitting at work and want to just watch a few videos at low volume, then it does fine.
Mail: The mail function is pretty nifty, overall. But there are caveats, of course. The good thing is that if you have a Mac and use the Mail program, the account settings are transferred to the iPhone effortlessly. But the mail feature is good for reading mail and not a whole lot else. Case in point. I run an IMAP server at home. The iPhone connected to it beautifully (I had to adjust the settings, since my Mac uses local computer names to connect to the server, and the iPhone would need a URL), but it doesn’t handle the mail very well. I have deleted a handful of mail from my Inbox, but it’s still there. The iPhone doesn’t show it, but it hasn’t updated the IMAP server to tell it to move the mail. And I know it’s updated since it’s marked read, so this seems like a bug to me. I tried looking through the mail settings to no avail. I did find that I could set the interval at which mail is deleted, but “manual” was not an option.
The iPhone makes connecting to other mail services pretty simple. I tried Gmail only, but the options include Yahoo!, .mac, and AOL. Of course, the Gmail option only helped me set up POP access to my gmail account and there were precious few options. For instance, if you use an alternate email address, such as I do, and only store your mail on the Gmail server, too bad. You MUST use your Gmail address when sending mail. Perhaps this could be changed with a generic POP account set up to access Gmail, but it still wouldn’t manipulate Gmail as I would wish. No archiving or labeling, in other words.
Phone: As a phone, the iPhone isn’t half bad. There have been some rumblings about how many clicks it takes to make a call. Some are complaining about 5 clicks! Well, hell, a usual call is 7 or 10 digits, right? And then a send? So what’s the complaint? But here’s my experience.
To call someone in your favorites: Turn iPhone on, slide to unlock (can we really count those steps?), press “Phone”, press “Favorites”, press the contact you wish to call. Five steps, and that includes turning the phone on and unlocking it.
To call someone in your contacts: Turn iPhone on, unlock, press “Phone”, press “Contacts”, navigate to person you wish to call, press their name, press the phone you wish to call (home, mobile, work, etc.).
To call a number: Same steps, except select “Keypad” and then dial the number and press “Call”.
All in all, it’s a better phone than my old MDA; it sounds better and people say they hear me better.
Safari: Being able to surf “the real web” is a godsend, it really is. But it’s still far from perfect. First the bad. Most webpages aren’t designed to be viewed microscopically. Most webpages are designed to be viewed over broadband, not the relatively slow EDGE network. Flash doesn’t work. A lot of Javascript doesn’t work. No home page? And why can’t I open a link in a new page (yes, the iPhone Safari has multitab, er multipage viewing)?
The good: In a pinch, you can visit any site. It doesn’t have to have a WAP page. I changed my rental car reservation whilst sitting in the airport terminal yesterday, for example.
Overall, this is a step in the right direction. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the iPhone spearheads a move toward making webpages more iPhone browser friendly. I know I heard that Google is doing just that.
SMS: The SMS function has some interesting features, but it takes a little getting used to. It presents SMS conversations as, well, conversations. So if you forgot what you asked when you get a cryptic answer, it’s all right there. Conversations can be cleared of messages easily, but the conversation remains. This is good and bad. If you have friends that you SMS frequently, you can keep them there. But if you get random messages, like detailing your minutes remaining, for example, you have to take 2 steps to delete the conversation.
And there’s no MMS, so if you want to send a picture, you have to email it. If you want to send a picture to a friend’s phone, better hope they have email on their phone! I do hope that Apple fixes this in the next update.
Calendar: Nicely done, Apple, but not perfect. I didn’t use iCal before, so I set it up, subscribed to my Google calendar, and then bingo. On the next sync, I had all my Google appointments on my iPhone. Of course, it only updates when I sync.
Another problem: my appointments are in Central time. The iPhone now knows when I am in Eastern time (the clock changed automatically), but my appointments still are in Central time. In other words, my 4:30pm flight yesterday should show up as 5:30pm now, but it still shows 4:30.
But there are some nice features. When you navigate to Today, the calendar scrolls so that the current time is at the top. When you navigate to a different day, it scrolls to show the first appointment. Pretty handy, but I wish it were an option in case someone wants it to act differently.
The main screen of the iPhone shows todays day and date for the calendar button. Nice touch.
Photos: Here is one area where Apple got it almost perfect. Browsing photos on the iPhone is a breeze and pretty intuitive. The zoom-in and zoom-out are very nice, and the flick-scroll works very well. There are albums, which come straight from the same in iPhoto on your Mac (I haven’t tried any of this with a PC, so I don’t know what the equivalent is) and there is an album for pictures taken with the iPhone.
But you cannot delete photos except those taken with the iPhone itself. As well, pictures taken with the iPhone cannot be placed in albums and new albums cannot be created. Once again, the iPhone is only an extension of iTunes (or iPhoto, or Mail, or iCal), not a tool in and of itself.
Camera: The camera functions about as one would expect. It takes the orientation of the iPhone into account. The pictures are decent. It doesn’t take videos. But in the end, if your aim is to take videos and good-quality pictures, then you don’t want to depend on a phone for those. Get a real camera. But the iPhone will work in a pinch. You just won’t be able to bust Michael Richards in a pinch if you didn’t plan ahead.
YouTube: This is a joke. It’s not really YouTube, but just a selection of their videos. You don’t get to choose what to watch. They just give you a list of popular videos and you can choose from among them. And it barely works over the EDGE connection, so if you’re not hooked up to a wi-fi connection, you’d better be desperate for entertainment.
Stocks: This is a pretty cool function and looks like it’s a Yahoo! widget. This bodes well, for if some Yahoo! widgets can make it to the iPhone, perhaps others will as well. Stocks works about as advertised, no surprises. But for someone who doesn’t care about stock prices, it would be nice to be able to remove this button from the home screen.
Maps: This is essentially Google maps, and they did a nice job with it. Traffic is available, as are directions. But my big peeve is that once you search for a location and the pin is on the map, there is no way I have found to clear the pin. It just stays there until the next search.
Weather: Oooooh, so close. This is essentially the Yahoo! weather widget. It works wonderfully. Except, why don’t they use the primary city’s weather on the home screen’s button, a la the Calendar? It always appears to be sunny and 73 degrees.
Clock: The clock feature is very well done. It has world clocks, alarms, stopwatch, and timer. Very nice indeed. One complaint: the alarms should be time-zone dependent, if desired. Kudos on the scroll wheels to set the time, but shame not being able to specify a playlist as the alarm tone. And the world clock is limited in the cities it can display… what, no search feature, like for the weather? So, for Central time I have to select Dallas. For Eastern time, Atlanta. But they have Cupertino, of course.
Calculator: Almost a joke. It’s a no-big-deal 4-function calculator. Good for calculating a tip, but not much else.
Notes: This is about what one would expect. You can keep notes, duh. It would be nice if this function could be rotated landscape. The keyboard works better in landscape and the notes would be easier to see. In fact, all applications should have landscape functionality. But unfortunately, only pictures and Safari do.
Okay, so overall, what is the iPhone? Good or bad? Well, like the title of this article, if you’re a hardcore geek or perhaps someone who wants to use their phone as a productivity tool, look elsewhere. If you want a few cute gadgets on your phone, such as the ability to play videos and music and view pictures, the iPhone is as nifty as any other phone.
The best thing about the iPhone is that it starts a new paradigm in usability and phone interfaces. The touch screen is used very well in most every facet. Suddenly, gestures become important. Like swiping your finger across an email to delete it. Very nice. But it’s a double-edged sword. Dragging your finger across a webpage moves the page around. But what if you wanted to select text to, perhaps, paste into an email? Sorry, buster. That functionality doesn’t exist.
Another thing that I look forward to is the fact that, as an Apple product, there is sure to be all manner of accessories and development for this product. There will surely be software upgrades as well as new widgets.
But as a first effort, the iPhone itself is a mediocre smartphone at best. No games (although I’ll bet they’ll be available for purchase on iTunes very soon). No storage (it’s used for pics, videos, and songs exclusively, so you can’t, say, detach an email attachment to then attach in another email later). Poor connectivity features (no Bluetooth passthru modem support? Puh-lease!). iPod songs can’t be used as ringtones or as alarm tones (if you care about such things).
In the end, I think the iPhone is a gateway product, a product which will open doors for Apple and other manufacturers to go through when designing the next generation of portable products.
As a phone, it’s an 8. As a PIM, it’s a 6. As a productivity tool, it’s 3.
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You fail to mention that the HTC Touch brought that touch UI to the market long before Apple did, and as a smartphone and productivity tool, it far excels the iPhone. Ditto for the LG Prada.
Its just the Apple PR juggernaut is good at being a corporate media whore.
Posted July 2nd, 2007 at 10:15 am Michael Swanberg Says:
I just read up on the HTC Touch, and whereas it has some similarities to iPhone’s navigation (drag-flip, for instance), it doesn’t appear to be the same. The HTC Touch mentions the use of a stylus. A stylus won’t work with the iPhone (call that a plus or minus, however you wish) as it’s some sort of induction detection. A fingernail won’t even work.
I give kudos to Apple for trying to make a phone that works better with the use of a finger. All of us with touchscreen phones tend to use our fingers a lot anyway instead of dragging the stylus out.
The iPhone, I must say, also does a really good job of figuring out what you meant to push. Most other touchscreen phones will look at a ham-handed press on the screen as multiple touchpoints and will end up selecting nothing. I have been impressed with the way a tiny link in Safari on the iPhone is easily “clickable” with my finger, even when crowded by other links.
There is a paradigm shift here, though. You have to be aware of the area where your finger is touching the glass, far more than where you think the area of most pressure is from your finger. Once you begin to realize where you are really touching the screen, the typing and selecting becomes easier.
I’ve had the iPhone for about 48 hours now and I am still fighting the virtual keypad, but reports are that you get better with practice.
As for the PIM/PDA, well, the HTC Touch is a Windows Mobile device, apparently, so make your choices wisely. Personally, I think my next phone will be a Symbian-based phone.
Posted July 2nd, 2007 at 10:30 am Andrew W Says:
YouTube is YouTube! It is probably the least-finished of the iPhone features, but it is not nearly as bad as this article makes it sound.
For instance, you can search the YouTube ‘channel’ and you’ll get the same results as on YouTube proper. You can select a video and hit Done to see it’s keywords, rating, etc. as well as Related Videos.
EDGE is EDGE and mileage varies a great deal depending on what tower you’re hooked into and how many others are hooked into it at the same time… this is no different for YouTube, but certainly no worse.
Posted July 2nd, 2007 at 4:14 pm Michael Swanberg Says:
I beg to differ. The first thing I searched for on my iPhone’s YouTube was “Kennedy Assassination.” I got zero hits. Searching “YouTube proper” there are hundreds of hits. I would repeat the experiment, but unfortunately, in the area that I’m in, EDGE isn’t EDGE, but rather EDGE is down.
I realize that “EDGE is EDGE” but the point is that why should YouTube be such a special feature if it’s only really usable under Wi-Fi? Perhaps they should have reduced the bitrate even further so that the feature could be used fully in all modes.
Posted July 2nd, 2007 at 4:47 pm Lee Says:
The iPhone is only compatible with Youtube videos encoded in H.264. At present, that is only a fraction of the whole, but it will be all of them by this fall. I’m guessing that’s why you couldn’t find the Kennedy video.
And get used to bitter people desperately trying to unfavourably compare the iPhone UI with non-multitouch devices. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this much hate, fear and resentment directed at an Apple product.
Posted July 3rd, 2007 at 5:07 am Michael Swanberg Says:
Good point. I seem to recall hearing/reading something about that and then thinking it was B.S. because if I were Google/YouTube, I would be all, “like hell we’re re-encoding all of our hundreds of thousands of videos just for your AppleTV and iPhone users… get bent.” But I guess Mr. Jobs has more clout than we know. Either that or there are some far bigger plans for YouTube on the horizon.
So here’s a question. If someone sends you a YouTube link in an email, will the iPhone take you to that video in the YouTube applet, or will it try to take you to the page in Safari?
Epilogue: the IMAP mail seems to be working now. I guess the EDGE network was down in my area and that prevented the updates.
I pretty much agree with you on the UI and the animosity toward the iPhone, but I have to add that I can’t remember any other Apple product garnering this much adulation either. People are definitely split.
In the end, I stand by my assessment that the iPhone is a consumer device, not really good for productivity-minded people. Apple has done what it does best: take something that’s not very accessible to non-geeks and make it easier to use. The UI is fabulous and will probably shape the industry in that fashion just as the iPod has.
Posted July 3rd, 2007 at 5:58 am Brian Says:
After using the iPhone since a few days after launch, I’d say that my life is a bit more productive than it was prior to launch. I’ve used WM 5.0 devices and I feel that the iPhone handles scheduling much better than that of the WM5.0 Devices. I will be one of the first to admit that yes, Apple could use some improvement, but it’s generations ahead of any other WM5.0 or Smart Phone out there.
Posted July 30th, 2007 at 12:28 pm Michael Swanberg Says:
I am curious. What do you mean by “scheduling”? Are you talking about the calendar application?
If so, then I must not be using it correctly because it seems extremely anemic to me. No alerts. No live updating over the web. It’s about as useful as simply printing out your schedule from your PC and taking that with you.
-Mike
Posted July 30th, 2007 at 1:24 pm wansai Says:
Great review! I share some of your sentiments as well in that iPhone is a consumer device and not a smartphone proper (for productivity/business).
Just to reply to some of the comments about the love/hate going on with the iphone.
Much of it has to do with the fact that far too many reviewers and “experts” are pushing the iphone as the greatest smartphone ever–being years ahead of other mobile phones. The erronous categorization of the device and the ridiculous hype of this product has stepped on a lot of toes, especially among smartphone users who are using much more sophisticated/advanced devices in the smartphone category. Granted a lot of smartphone are pretty trashy, not all are…and some are excellent for the target market.
The problem started with Apple itself with it’s ridiculous marketing. Most of the people who hate iphone (I don’t hate it, i’m against the concept) are people who are smart enough to not buy into marketing jargon and untrue statements about a prouct meant to drive demand and lust.
Most of this “hate” group are just saying, “Wait a second. Stop. We’re not that stupid. Your stuff isn’t revolutionary and it’s not aimed at my market…yet, if Apple fans and apple itself is to be believed, we hate our mobile phones. We’re not buying it so stop with the retarded assumptions (pushed as facts) and comparisons.”
Not all of us hate our phones, nor are they all hard to use. Most of my phone choices have been very advanced models where the primary function of a phone and SMS are extremely easy to use. Click Address Book > Select Name > Call. Or New SMS> To (select name) > Message > Send. It’s not as ugly or as hard as Apple makes it sound, nor as hard or complicated as some Apple Zealots would have us believe.
So for people like myself, I dislike it tremendously when people crap on my decision on a product that has worked exceptionally well for my and other people’s needs. This is something Apple and most iPhone fanatics are still clueless about seeing as how inexperienced they are in this mobile environment.
It wouldn’t garner so much hate if they and their fans/media had moderated themselves better. As it is, it’s too much hype. Too much grandstanding. Too many untruths. Too much trash-talking. And far too many mobilidiots newbies who suddenly think they know abotu what’s going on in the mobile world and how they are suddenly the most advanced player in the world because of the iphone…when the reality is that the USA and Canada are still fighting for last place in the industrilized world in the mobile environment…and America is still 2 years behind the rest of the world even with iPhone. That’s not even comparing them to Japan & Korea who are lightyears ahead of the USA in the mobile space.
So yes, a reality gut-check needs to take place somewhere along the lines.
Posted September 12th, 2007 at 10:26 pm Michael Swanberg Says:
Well, I have to say, one thing I remember from Marketing class in college is that marketing is part of the product. If Apple can create such a media buzz, then kudos to them, I say.
And I would hazard a guess Apple doesn’t really care about the people out there that already have a smartphone that they love. They’re after those that have never made that plunge before. It was the same with the iPod; they made it acceptable to have such technology in lay circles, but it certainly isn’t the best MP3 player.
The iPhone does have some pretty unique features that make it a tad easier to use for near-luddites. But you’re right, it isn’t the end-all-be-all of smartphones. In fact, I myself wouldn’t put it firmly in the smartphone category.
Out of curiosity, what exactly did you mean by you’re “against the concept”? Do you think phones shouldn’t have email and texting and calendars and such?
-Mike
Posted September 13th, 2007 at 4:59 am wansai Says:
Hi Mike,
I’m not fond of the concept of the iPhone. A 2hand touchscreen. I’ve used PDAs since the original Palm Pilots to Palm V to WinCE/WM and there has been a natural progression to using a more 1hand centric device (Smartphones) doing the same thing as PDAs as they became more readily available.
If the reports and data are to be believed, people are migrating from PDAs to smartphones, leaving the PDA losing marketshare and filling more of a niche market role than it originally was.
The whole iphone concept I refer to is my own reading of the iphone/Apple effect. With so many people in the media and public thinking it’s the greatest smart phone ever, it’s possible it could force maufacturers to start refocussing on PDAs again when the natural evolution is to the 1hand centric smartphone use. It would be a pity as smartphones are now getting extremely advanced and it’s on the verge of being more useful to more people with it’s media/music/mobile web/data functionalities.
Again, it’s a personal gripe. iPhone itself is a nice machine and as a media device, I’d buy one if they sold it here. But I’d really dislike it greatly if more PDAs started popping up as “answers” to the iPhone.
Of some concern also is the closed nature of the device/OS with no specific plans for a sdk for developers, means the product use is limited unless apps are written by Apple itself. The strategy used by Nokia and Sony Ericsson both work extremely well in extending the usefulness of their devices. Web apps, while some agree are good ideas, is an idea that only a PC maker would think is a good idea..on a mobile device. It’s just wrong. From the way people access their mobile devices to the way people use their mobile devices, forcing web applications as the only real app development platform goes against every usability sense I have (I’m a designer). In a mobile scenario, users should not be made to starta web browser, wait for web to load, surf (favorites) to the URL, wait for it to load etc… It’s the anti-thesis of what it truly means to be mobile.
The idea behind the iPhone seems to throw everything that has been tested and shown to work out the window.
Mobile devices follow a very different criteria and terms of use than most other consumer devices and especially is different from computers. It looks to me that Apple is trying to apply a very PC centric concept to a mobile device. It’s just not the way to do it and if other manufacturers start following suit, we’re going to be using some really dumbed down products not developed for our very specific needs as mobile individuals.
An example is the marketing of the “Real web experience” on the iPhone. My initial take on the idea was that it was baloney. While yes, at the start it will impress, in the longer term, it will hinder. I have a Nokia E90 and the web experience is better on my E90 simply because my 800 pixel screen means I actually don’t have to bother with scrolling left and right, has flash and javascript…and yet, while on the move/mobile, I tend to use the outside screen in “standard” phone mode, which really requires a whole new type of format rather than the “Real internet”. IF you read a bit more about this online, you’ll see that some iphone users are starting to complain; what’s the point of having the real internet on my iphone when people are designing websites to autodirect me to an iphone formatted website to compensate for bandwidth, screen size etc… in short, trying to apply radio era concept to the television.
Actually I could go on much longer but I think you get the gist of my meaning.
Saying that, it sounds like I hate the iphone. Really, far from it.It’s a beautiful device that will do wonders for it’s target market (music/media focused iPod markets). But the threat to the rest of the mobile market is there in that it will throw manufacturers into dropping everything they’ve learned through trial and error through the years. As consumers of this tech and way of life (because it is a way of life moreso than any other area of technology), we will lose in the long run.
Posted September 17th, 2007 at 12:16 am Michael Swanberg Says:
I pretty much agree with everything you have said.
I particularly agree with the idea of the “real internet,” but I would add that it is obvious that Steve Jobs is never far from a wi-fi signal and thus doesn’t realize how slow the EDGE connection really is. The iPhone was apparently meant to be wi-fi-connected for its browsing.
It is nice, however, to have the possibility of getting to certain sites in a pinch. But if flash and Java aren’t present, then many sites are useless to the iPhone anyway.
It should also be said that the concept of online apps is a huge security risk. I am ashamed to say, I tried an SSH application… well, just as I clicked “connect” with my username, password, and address in the proper boxes, I realized I had been had. I don’t even have an SSH server running that’s exposed to the Net, but it was dumb enough to give out that information. So I changed all my passwords, just in case.
I agree that it’s a step in a direction that may bring about revolutionary devices, but the iPhone isn’t the end-all-be-all device.
I do like mine. It’s the best phone I’ve ever had (best sounding, best access to contacts, etc.). It’s not the best smartphone I’ve ever had, though.
I can only hope that Apple will be adding games and other apps in the future.
-Mike
Posted September 17th, 2007 at 8:12 am
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