Apple iPhone 3G
At some point last year, I talked about my then-new Nokia E65. I might have even said that I was happy with the phone.
That was a lie. In fact, after a year of living with that phone, anything good I said about it is clearly a ball-faced lie. The operating system is clunky and poorly designed, the initial problems I had with various bits of functionality never went away thanks to an abject lack of updates/support from Nokia and, to make things worse, the phone developed a rather irritating habit of switching itself off when you slid the keypad out. This made answering calls rather difficult.
I explained all this to the friendly Indian guy at a nearby mobile phone store, and, perhaps seeing a vast commission standing in front of him, he decided to bend over backwards to make sure I walked away with a brand new phone.
(I should point out that my issues with the E65 stem from its design, so getting the phone repaired/replaced is not an option.)
The phone I got was an Apple iPhone 3G. It is, without question, the best mobile phone I have ever used.
First up, the thing looks great. Mine is the 8GB Black model, and the smooth, flush keypad-less front and curved back make for a typically pleasing Jonathan Ive design. Everything about the iPhone’s external appearance is about keeping it simple and clean. It’s a philosophy Apple has applied to all of its products over the past several years (even the MacBook I’m writing this on).
There are just four external buttons on the iPhone. A Power/sleep button on the top, a silent/not silent switch on the side (and seriously, why isn’t such a switch on every phone ever made?), a volume control, and a “Home” button. This last is the only button directly on the front face of the phone.
The only other interactive part of the unit is its touchscreen. And here is where the iPhone really shines. The screen is quite large: 480x320 and about 9cm diagonally across. It’s crisp and readable, and Apple’s experience in UI design really shines through it.
The basic way of using an iPhone is by touching the screen. There’s no need for a stylus or any other input device. Everything is handled via this single screen. Entering phone numbers, contact details, SMS text messages, answering calls, everything is done here. One thing I love about this is that it brings the concept of context to the phone. On most phones, there’s two “context buttons” below the screen. Text on the screen generally explains the current function of those buttons.
This “context button” system is one of the most confusing and unintuitive features of a mobile phone. By using a touchscreen, Apple have bypassed the problem entirely. Everything in the iPhone is contextual. It’s also much, much easier to understand.
Usability comes in elsewhere, too. The best example is the way scrolling functions. To scroll on the iPhone, you simply drag your finger along the screen in the direction you wish to scroll. It sounds simple enough, but Apple have added the concept of inertia to it. Scrolling happens at the speed your finger moves along the screen, which is cool by itself. Move quickly, however, and the window will scroll for a little while after your finger has left the screen, slowing down as though you’ve spun some kind of virtual wheel. Hitting the top or the bottom of a scrolling window causes a bouncing effect to occur. The entire experience, simple and inconsequential as it may be, is incredibly intuitive and even a little fun to see in action.
It’s a great example of Apple’s general approach to UI design. I like to think of it as the “Man, they think of everything” approach. Stupid little things that seem too simple to even notice, but which Apple have coded for anyway. (Mac OS X, by the way, is full of these touches.)
The iPhone comes with all the things a mobile phone needs. Web browser, MP3 player, camera, mapping tool, notepad, weather applet, world clock, calendar and, of course, an online app store right there on the phone.
(What, your phone doesn’t have a dedicated application store where you can buy new apps from it directly from the phone, wherever you are? And which keeps apps up to date directly?)
The App store is really nifty. I’ve spent far too much money and time over the last couple of days downloading things on it. While I certainly won’t be keeping them all (most are, fortunately, free apps) I’ve found some good ones. Beejive is a nifty multiprotocol IM app that replicates most of the functionality of Adium and, unlike most of the other IM apps I came across, didn’t require signing up to a web-based service. I’ve also got a nifty dice-rolling program that rolls when you shake the phone, a facebook app, an SSH app (because, let’s face it, it’s not a real phone unless you can SSH from it) Trism, an app to check the WoW Armory, Mahjong, a Mandelbrot set, a Wikipedia reader and even a lightsaber simulator. I’ve got three screens of apps (Including the initial set of built-in apps) and can get more anytime, anywhere.
Unfortunately for the iPhone development community, Apple have made some otherwise useful parts of the iPhone off-limits to developers. Most frustratingly, the iPod section cannot be used by applications. This eliminates the possibility of the rather excellent iPod game Phase coming to iPhone anytime soon. I believe there’s also limits on what applications can do with address book data among other things. There’s also some interesting choices made by Apple as regard to how things can work. There’s no global clipboard (which is true of many mobile products) and multitasking is extremely limited. Applications must quit when returning to the home screen, and Apple requires that they save their state so that, the next time the user starts them, they will return to exactly where they left off.
It’s a clever idea, and one of the ways Apple squeezes more speed out of the hardware. By phone standards, the iPhone is quite powerful, with a 667Mhz ARM11 CPU and 128MB of RAM. It has a decent 3D processor (not sure of the exact specs here) as well, and is more powerful than several of the computers I’ve got in this household. That said, Apple seem to be forcing developers to write fast, clean code to make the iPhone feel even snappier than it is. This is, in my eyes, a good thing because that’s what devs should be doing anyway.
So, with all the good things mentioned, are there bad points?
Yes. First and foremost, the camera sucks. It’s a 2MP camera with less functionality than I had on my T610. To be honest, it’s not any worse than the one on the E65, but even that was a backward step from the (for its time) excellent camera my K750i had. On the other hand, I have a really nice digital camera now, so this doesn’t bother me.
I’m not bothered by the iPhone’s inability to do MMS. On the other hand, I’m not sure I like the way it deals with SMS messages. Displaying them as IM conversations is... annoying. I wish it were possible to use an email-style interface here. Perhaps this is one of those personal taste things, however. I’m going to blame the fact that the phone is designed in America, and therefore has this quirk due to the particularly backwards nature of the American mobile phone market.
I also miss the “Cell location display” that my previous two phones had. I dunno, but always liked it when my other phones told me the location of the cell they’re currently connected to. I guess it doesn’t matter.
I do like the seamless way the phone can jump from WiFi to mobile network, although I can see how this could be problematic for people unfamiliar with how it works. The heavy reliance on internet access for the iPhone has forced many carriers here to rethink their mobile data plans. While this is a good thing, as mobile data in Australia is stupidly expensive, it also exposes the problems we have with internet access here.
Video calling is a feature I don’t miss at all. It’s not there, but I don’t miss it. The severely limited Bluetooth features, on the other hand, are something I miss. That said, it seems to me that Apple can update the iPhone with additional Bluetooth functionality (Bluetooth modem support would be really awesome here) , so I’m not that concerned about it.
Overall, the good far outweighs the bad. I am in love with my iPhone. The idea of having such a versatile and powerful device on my that isn’t my laptop appeals to me a lot. That the device is so damn nice and easy to use just makes it that much better.
To reiterate: This is the best phone I have ever owned. Hopefully I’ll still be of that opinion in a year.
That was a lie. In fact, after a year of living with that phone, anything good I said about it is clearly a ball-faced lie. The operating system is clunky and poorly designed, the initial problems I had with various bits of functionality never went away thanks to an abject lack of updates/support from Nokia and, to make things worse, the phone developed a rather irritating habit of switching itself off when you slid the keypad out. This made answering calls rather difficult.
I explained all this to the friendly Indian guy at a nearby mobile phone store, and, perhaps seeing a vast commission standing in front of him, he decided to bend over backwards to make sure I walked away with a brand new phone.
(I should point out that my issues with the E65 stem from its design, so getting the phone repaired/replaced is not an option.)
The phone I got was an Apple iPhone 3G. It is, without question, the best mobile phone I have ever used.
First up, the thing looks great. Mine is the 8GB Black model, and the smooth, flush keypad-less front and curved back make for a typically pleasing Jonathan Ive design. Everything about the iPhone’s external appearance is about keeping it simple and clean. It’s a philosophy Apple has applied to all of its products over the past several years (even the MacBook I’m writing this on).
There are just four external buttons on the iPhone. A Power/sleep button on the top, a silent/not silent switch on the side (and seriously, why isn’t such a switch on every phone ever made?), a volume control, and a “Home” button. This last is the only button directly on the front face of the phone.
The only other interactive part of the unit is its touchscreen. And here is where the iPhone really shines. The screen is quite large: 480x320 and about 9cm diagonally across. It’s crisp and readable, and Apple’s experience in UI design really shines through it.
The basic way of using an iPhone is by touching the screen. There’s no need for a stylus or any other input device. Everything is handled via this single screen. Entering phone numbers, contact details, SMS text messages, answering calls, everything is done here. One thing I love about this is that it brings the concept of context to the phone. On most phones, there’s two “context buttons” below the screen. Text on the screen generally explains the current function of those buttons.
This “context button” system is one of the most confusing and unintuitive features of a mobile phone. By using a touchscreen, Apple have bypassed the problem entirely. Everything in the iPhone is contextual. It’s also much, much easier to understand.
Usability comes in elsewhere, too. The best example is the way scrolling functions. To scroll on the iPhone, you simply drag your finger along the screen in the direction you wish to scroll. It sounds simple enough, but Apple have added the concept of inertia to it. Scrolling happens at the speed your finger moves along the screen, which is cool by itself. Move quickly, however, and the window will scroll for a little while after your finger has left the screen, slowing down as though you’ve spun some kind of virtual wheel. Hitting the top or the bottom of a scrolling window causes a bouncing effect to occur. The entire experience, simple and inconsequential as it may be, is incredibly intuitive and even a little fun to see in action.
It’s a great example of Apple’s general approach to UI design. I like to think of it as the “Man, they think of everything” approach. Stupid little things that seem too simple to even notice, but which Apple have coded for anyway. (Mac OS X, by the way, is full of these touches.)
The iPhone comes with all the things a mobile phone needs. Web browser, MP3 player, camera, mapping tool, notepad, weather applet, world clock, calendar and, of course, an online app store right there on the phone.
(What, your phone doesn’t have a dedicated application store where you can buy new apps from it directly from the phone, wherever you are? And which keeps apps up to date directly?)
The App store is really nifty. I’ve spent far too much money and time over the last couple of days downloading things on it. While I certainly won’t be keeping them all (most are, fortunately, free apps) I’ve found some good ones. Beejive is a nifty multiprotocol IM app that replicates most of the functionality of Adium and, unlike most of the other IM apps I came across, didn’t require signing up to a web-based service. I’ve also got a nifty dice-rolling program that rolls when you shake the phone, a facebook app, an SSH app (because, let’s face it, it’s not a real phone unless you can SSH from it) Trism, an app to check the WoW Armory, Mahjong, a Mandelbrot set, a Wikipedia reader and even a lightsaber simulator. I’ve got three screens of apps (Including the initial set of built-in apps) and can get more anytime, anywhere.
Unfortunately for the iPhone development community, Apple have made some otherwise useful parts of the iPhone off-limits to developers. Most frustratingly, the iPod section cannot be used by applications. This eliminates the possibility of the rather excellent iPod game Phase coming to iPhone anytime soon. I believe there’s also limits on what applications can do with address book data among other things. There’s also some interesting choices made by Apple as regard to how things can work. There’s no global clipboard (which is true of many mobile products) and multitasking is extremely limited. Applications must quit when returning to the home screen, and Apple requires that they save their state so that, the next time the user starts them, they will return to exactly where they left off.
It’s a clever idea, and one of the ways Apple squeezes more speed out of the hardware. By phone standards, the iPhone is quite powerful, with a 667Mhz ARM11 CPU and 128MB of RAM. It has a decent 3D processor (not sure of the exact specs here) as well, and is more powerful than several of the computers I’ve got in this household. That said, Apple seem to be forcing developers to write fast, clean code to make the iPhone feel even snappier than it is. This is, in my eyes, a good thing because that’s what devs should be doing anyway.
So, with all the good things mentioned, are there bad points?
Yes. First and foremost, the camera sucks. It’s a 2MP camera with less functionality than I had on my T610. To be honest, it’s not any worse than the one on the E65, but even that was a backward step from the (for its time) excellent camera my K750i had. On the other hand, I have a really nice digital camera now, so this doesn’t bother me.
I’m not bothered by the iPhone’s inability to do MMS. On the other hand, I’m not sure I like the way it deals with SMS messages. Displaying them as IM conversations is... annoying. I wish it were possible to use an email-style interface here. Perhaps this is one of those personal taste things, however. I’m going to blame the fact that the phone is designed in America, and therefore has this quirk due to the particularly backwards nature of the American mobile phone market.
I also miss the “Cell location display” that my previous two phones had. I dunno, but always liked it when my other phones told me the location of the cell they’re currently connected to. I guess it doesn’t matter.
I do like the seamless way the phone can jump from WiFi to mobile network, although I can see how this could be problematic for people unfamiliar with how it works. The heavy reliance on internet access for the iPhone has forced many carriers here to rethink their mobile data plans. While this is a good thing, as mobile data in Australia is stupidly expensive, it also exposes the problems we have with internet access here.
Video calling is a feature I don’t miss at all. It’s not there, but I don’t miss it. The severely limited Bluetooth features, on the other hand, are something I miss. That said, it seems to me that Apple can update the iPhone with additional Bluetooth functionality (Bluetooth modem support would be really awesome here) , so I’m not that concerned about it.
Overall, the good far outweighs the bad. I am in love with my iPhone. The idea of having such a versatile and powerful device on my that isn’t my laptop appeals to me a lot. That the device is so damn nice and easy to use just makes it that much better.
To reiterate: This is the best phone I have ever owned. Hopefully I’ll still be of that opinion in a year.