07.17.07
Apple iPhone Review
This blog entry is presented in both text and audio format, setup as a podcast. Please feel free to comment on the audio quality and content, as this is my first try at podcasting.
(Intro…)
Our contract with AT&T was eligible for an equipment upgrade at the cheaper rate, so we had been testing out different phones for the past month. Since she also wanted an iPod and I was somewhat seduced by it’s wow factor, I decided on the iPhone.
On July 7th, we got up at 6 AM, left for King of Prussia a little after 7 and were second in line in front of the Apple store at around 8:30. We probably would have been first if I hadn’t missed the exit off of the PA Turnpike. We picked this particular Apple store because the web site told us there would be iPhones available when the store opened at 9 AM. (Apparently, most of the AT&T stores have been sold out since the release date.) At about 8:50, an employee came out and handed out little cards to the first 4 people in line. They had only 4 of the 8 GB model available, so there were a few disappointed people at the end of the line. Soon after, I had spent about $650 on the phone and the car charger, including tax. (I think my debit card went a little limp after that one.) I didn’t buy one for myself because I already knew of some of it’s shortcomings, which I’ll get into later. We’ll see if it was worth the big bucks…
Being a Pocket PC user (Windows Mobile 5) myself, I am familiar with touch screens and the damage they can suffer, so the first thing we did was to buy a screen protector for it. Since nobody in the mall had one I could buy without also purchasing an overpriced rubber skin for it, I decided to buy a Sony PSP protector from EB Games and cut it down to the correct size when I got home. (This was suggested by a guy at the AT&T store, and it worked out just fine.)
The Interface: The initial reaction to it’s design and interface is “Wow, that’s cool!” I was quite amazed at the accuracy of the touch recognition. Part of this, however, is the fact that the whole interface is designed to be used this way. There is no stylus, so you won’t be drawing anything useful on the screen or taking notes using your own handwriting. The biggest thing that impressed me was it’s sheer speed. It reacts instantly to your touch and has no delays when changing applications or loading artwork. In this way, it kills my Pocket PC. My 200MHz Cingular 8125 can’t do hardly anything without the spinning wheel showing up for a few seconds.
Email: The email application is easy enough for my wife to use, and does a great job displaying HTML emails. Some emails that are formatted in MIME come through as an empty message with an unreadable attachment. In fact, it appears you can’t do anything meaningful with attachments. It will only display pictures inline or launch the ones it likes. There isn’t even an option to save the file to the filesystem. For that matter, there is no access to the filesystem within any of the applications. I tried to play a simple .WAV file sent from my Vonage voicemail, but it won’t even attempt to open the file.
Calendar: The calendar seems pretty simple and straight forward. It doesn’t have the ability to sync over-the-air, so you’re limited to using Outlook or the equivalent software on the Mac.
Contacts: Elegantly displayed, with photos if you add them. The simulated Rolodex motion that it uses when you “flip” your fingers is very handy for this. If you want to skip to somewhere in the alphabet, you can use the teeny tiny letters on the right edge to move around. I found this to be awkward. They should make it so the letters magnify when you’re using that feature so you have better control. This also has no OTA sync.
Web: The Safari web browser seems to be faster than any mobile device I’ve seen so far. Opera might be able to give it a run for it’s money if I had a faster processor in my Pocket PC. Scrolling and clicking on links is easy and it does support multiple windows. It’s too bad it doesn’t support Flash.
Google Maps: We have used this while out to try and find a restaurant… unsuccessfully. It should be noted for the inexperienced that not every business is listed on Google’s Local service. This would be very useful if the device had GPS capability.
Accessories: The stocks, weather, clock, calculator and notes applications are nothing special. They work and look nice. As I said before, you can’t take notes with handwriting, since there is no way to write on the screen.
Camera: We’ve taken a bunch of photos with the camera. Without having downloaded them into the PC, I can’t say much for the fine detail. I will say that they look bright and well focused on the iPhone’s screen. Why they didn’t include the ability to record video, I can’t figure out. Since this thing has YouTube built in, it would be nice if we could upload video as well as play it back.
Phone: Ahh, yes… This thing IS a cell phone, isn’t it? 
So far it seems to be on par with audio quality and signal strength. My wife works in a building where the AT&T signal is unusable. The iPhone did not drain it’s battery down to nothing looking for a signal like some phones seem to do.
iPod: This is our first iPod device, so I can’t compare it to the older models very well. I can say that in comparison to my Pocket PC’s Windows Media Player it kicks ass. It only likes video that is in certain formats, but then WMP is the same way. I’m doing some research to see how easy it might be to convert MythTV shows over to .MOV so my wife can bring her soap operas to work and watch them on her lunch break. I’ll keep you all posted on that one.
Bluetooth: We were able to connect and use my wife’s Scala 500 headset without reading any instructions. I was also able to create a pair relationship between the iPhone and my Pocket PC, but the PPC shows no available services. On the iPhone, it shows that there is a relationship but gives you no options to do anything with it. I was unable to beam any contact or appointment to it and there is no option to beam anything from it. Since it doesn’t have infrared, this leaves out any ability to have someone send you their contact info in a face to face.
WiFi: This is a sore subject, because I had a lot of trouble getting this to work. I have been unable to get the iPhone to connect with my D-Link wireless router using WPA encryption. It discovers the network and prompts me to put in the key, but it will not connect. I even tried shortening the key to 8 characters, but no luck. I tried manually setting the ESSID and WPA key, but it refuses to even save the information unless it is able to make a connection. In the end, I hooked up a spare Netgear router and was able to connect with that using the same WPA encryption and key. Weird, huh?
This brings me to another subject. While working on the WiFi problem I had to type in a long hexadecimal type encryption key. The on-screen keyboard is HORRIBLE for this, as you constantly have to switch back and forth between the letters and numbers. The key is not even visible on the screen as you type it, so you can’t tell if you mis-type something. Now, being from the Pocket PC realm I figured I would solve this problem by using copy & paste. NOPE! There is no such function. I was able to email the key to myself and see it on the screen, but there is no mechanism to copy or paste. I thought this thing was supposed to be running a real operating system at it’s core!Ringtones: There are bunch of tones included, and while they might be nice as sound effects they are not nearly loud enough to be ringtones. What was a big surprise to me is that you can’t set a music track to be your ringtone. There isn’t even a function to use your own wave or MIDI file. Even the simplest modern phones have MP3 ringtone capability… Why not the iPhone???
So here’s a summary for you…
Pro’s: Very stylish design and an awesome touch screen interface. Great for pictures, music and video. Very usable cell phone.
Con’s: Not comparable to a PDA style phone like the Pocket PC in feature set. No way for the user to upgrade the storage memory or replace the battery. The price is high and I would expect artificially inflated to some degree. No support for the faster and multi-threaded 3G / UMTS network. Closed application support, which means any programs that come out for it are either going to be Java based within the Safari screen or unsupported hacks.
It should be mentioned that I have heard some rumors about one or more applications that are still being developed by Apple and will become available sometime in the future. Let’s all hope that they will address some of the shortcomings with applications or upgrades.
My wife is pretty happy with the phone overall, as she is not a power user and she can impress everyone because she’s the first one we know to have one. For myself, I will stick to my Pocket PC for now. I hear that there may be a 3G model of the iPhone brewing for this fall, so I’ll take another look at it when and if that happens.
That’s my review of the iPhone. Thanks for reading or listening.