Two week review of the iPhone
The Good:
Any worries about the iPhone being a fingerprint magnet, or easily destroyable with keys have been alleviated. there was an article where some folks put an iPhone in a bag with a bunch of keys and shook it trying to scratch the surface(to no avail). Later they tried intentionally scratching it with a key, and that didn't work either.
Really nifty user interface that just begs to be played with. There are all kinds of little touches that they put in. For example, on incoming calls for numbers that aren't in my phone book, it displays what rough general location the area code is
YouTube videos play just as advertised, so there's a fair amount of content(though it's limited to only the videos that they've converted into the Quicktime codec). This is more of a toy feature once they add flash support to Safari.
The iPhone actively seeks out wireless networks whenever it can, so it can take advantage of high speed connections whenever it can.
The SMS client is really slick, it turns text messages into iChat style bubbles so that you can actually follow a conversation rather than opening the individual message envelopes.
The widget style applications work just like they do on the OSX dashboard, and provide a nifty display of information. It'd be nice if they actually released an SDK so folks can actually write new ones to be incorporated into the interface. There's a whole black row of buttons for expandability! Though from what I've heard, all iPhone apps run as root, so it's not exactly a good thing to allow such unfettered access to a telecommunications device.
The battery life fits what I'd expect. I went on a business trip to Texas and it managed to keep me entertained through delayed flights, layovers and the like with internet access on the ground and music, podcasts, and converted DVDS in the air. It has an airline mode that turns off the network connectivity making it usable on planes. I think I'd say that I got 2 hours of video, 2 of audio and maybe 4 hours of internet use while not completely draining the battery. That's plenty of battery life since I'd imagine that most folks would charge theirs every night.
The screen is fantastic. I watched Die Hard 2 on the plane, and it looked great. The player has the same interface as the Youtube player, and it obeys the preset chapter stops.
Visual Voicemail is really slick, and I'm sure it's the one feature that other carriers and cell phone manufacturers will incorporate into their offerings.
The Bad:
No support for custom ringtones. I've heard that Apple's going to offer some form of conversion service within iTunes(and earn a healthy profit on it).
There isn't much of a way to go back to the previous application that was being used when one switches to another one within the interface.
The EDGE network is quite slow. It's back to the era of modem speeds, but luckily unsecured wireless access points are everywhere.
The web browser seems to crash a lot, booting the user back to the home screen and losing whatever the last page that the user had browsed to.
The calendar application doesn't support ToDos.
There doesn't seem to be a way to get the text from the Notes application onto the computer, other than emailing it.
The included calculator isn't scientific one.
The accelerometer gets confused(and rightly so) when the iPhone is sitting on the table, and doesn't always pick the right orientation.
The Undecided:
Lack of cut and paste - I have a feeling that this is another of Jobs' holy wars, much like with the one button mice. In principle, the interface has lots of contextual data so you don't need to cut and paste. For example if you see a phone number on a web page, tapping on it will bring you to the phone app to dial the number.
The typing interface seems to be mostly functional. Once you start to trust the auto correction it's actually possible to type with decent speed on it.
Email account settings got transfered over as soon as the phone was synced. My second email account that I had in Mail.app didn't get transfered over. Reading email works well on the iPhone, and it'll allow you to view some attachments(mainly PDFs and Word files). Sadly you can't edit any of these files. I use an IMAP account, so my mail came out great, I'm told that folks with POP or Enchange email accounts have had lots of problems.
The maps application is just your standard google maps. It displays the information well integrated with the rest of the iPhone interface, but actually entering addresses and getting directions feels clunky. Plus the fact that it can't triangulate your position from the cell towers like other cell phones to act as a ghetto-gps really hurts it.
The iPhone generates a lot of attention while using it. As a cell phone it's functional, lack of voice dialing is annoying, but I haven't used that feature on a cell phone in a while.
Any worries about the iPhone being a fingerprint magnet, or easily destroyable with keys have been alleviated. there was an article where some folks put an iPhone in a bag with a bunch of keys and shook it trying to scratch the surface(to no avail). Later they tried intentionally scratching it with a key, and that didn't work either.
Really nifty user interface that just begs to be played with. There are all kinds of little touches that they put in. For example, on incoming calls for numbers that aren't in my phone book, it displays what rough general location the area code is
YouTube videos play just as advertised, so there's a fair amount of content(though it's limited to only the videos that they've converted into the Quicktime codec). This is more of a toy feature once they add flash support to Safari.
The iPhone actively seeks out wireless networks whenever it can, so it can take advantage of high speed connections whenever it can.
The SMS client is really slick, it turns text messages into iChat style bubbles so that you can actually follow a conversation rather than opening the individual message envelopes.
The widget style applications work just like they do on the OSX dashboard, and provide a nifty display of information. It'd be nice if they actually released an SDK so folks can actually write new ones to be incorporated into the interface. There's a whole black row of buttons for expandability! Though from what I've heard, all iPhone apps run as root, so it's not exactly a good thing to allow such unfettered access to a telecommunications device.
The battery life fits what I'd expect. I went on a business trip to Texas and it managed to keep me entertained through delayed flights, layovers and the like with internet access on the ground and music, podcasts, and converted DVDS in the air. It has an airline mode that turns off the network connectivity making it usable on planes. I think I'd say that I got 2 hours of video, 2 of audio and maybe 4 hours of internet use while not completely draining the battery. That's plenty of battery life since I'd imagine that most folks would charge theirs every night.
The screen is fantastic. I watched Die Hard 2 on the plane, and it looked great. The player has the same interface as the Youtube player, and it obeys the preset chapter stops.
Visual Voicemail is really slick, and I'm sure it's the one feature that other carriers and cell phone manufacturers will incorporate into their offerings.
The Bad:
No support for custom ringtones. I've heard that Apple's going to offer some form of conversion service within iTunes(and earn a healthy profit on it).
There isn't much of a way to go back to the previous application that was being used when one switches to another one within the interface.
The EDGE network is quite slow. It's back to the era of modem speeds, but luckily unsecured wireless access points are everywhere.
The web browser seems to crash a lot, booting the user back to the home screen and losing whatever the last page that the user had browsed to.
The calendar application doesn't support ToDos.
There doesn't seem to be a way to get the text from the Notes application onto the computer, other than emailing it.
The included calculator isn't scientific one.
The accelerometer gets confused(and rightly so) when the iPhone is sitting on the table, and doesn't always pick the right orientation.
The Undecided:
Lack of cut and paste - I have a feeling that this is another of Jobs' holy wars, much like with the one button mice. In principle, the interface has lots of contextual data so you don't need to cut and paste. For example if you see a phone number on a web page, tapping on it will bring you to the phone app to dial the number.
The typing interface seems to be mostly functional. Once you start to trust the auto correction it's actually possible to type with decent speed on it.
Email account settings got transfered over as soon as the phone was synced. My second email account that I had in Mail.app didn't get transfered over. Reading email works well on the iPhone, and it'll allow you to view some attachments(mainly PDFs and Word files). Sadly you can't edit any of these files. I use an IMAP account, so my mail came out great, I'm told that folks with POP or Enchange email accounts have had lots of problems.
The maps application is just your standard google maps. It displays the information well integrated with the rest of the iPhone interface, but actually entering addresses and getting directions feels clunky. Plus the fact that it can't triangulate your position from the cell towers like other cell phones to act as a ghetto-gps really hurts it.
The iPhone generates a lot of attention while using it. As a cell phone it's functional, lack of voice dialing is annoying, but I haven't used that feature on a cell phone in a while.