Yes, that’s right. Don’t believe the hype. Because the hype simply doesn’t do this sexy thing justice. My expectations were pretty high for the new iPhone and they were exceeded.
So, here’s my initial take on the iPhone experience.
I was 83rd in line at the Apple store in KOP and I had two phones in hand in about 20 minutes after the line started moving. Apple really had their game on. Buy your phone(s), then continue through the store to purchase accessories. That way they can get people their phones as quickly as possible and move the line.
The Good
- As expected, Apple created an amazing experience, right down to the packaging (photos to come a little later).
- Overall, I find the iPhone to be the first really well designed, portable, usable communication product I’ve ever used. I’ve had probably 20 phones over the past 15 years – starting with the Magnum PI Motorola brick phone to my most recent Samsung t589 slim candy bar phone. I’ve used a few Treos, smart phones, and a Blackberry. None of them really left me amazed. Until now.
- Typing on the virtual/soft keyboard is pretty easy. There’s visual feedback, the letters magnify as you scroll over them, and audio confirmation when you type. Additionally, the iPhone suggests words as you type and simply hitting the space bar fills in the word, or corrects your spelling.
- Activation was really quick. I had two phones activated with numbers and working in under 10 minutes from the privacy of my own home.
- Thinner than I expected. It’s actually smaller than my 60GB and 80GB iPod videos. It’s a little taller, but thinner.
- The ads don’t do the UI justice. It’s really slick. Motion is seamless. And the resolution is incredible.
- The keyboard took about 2 minutes for me to get used to. Now I’m flying along pretty quickly. I can’t type as fast as I can on a normal keyboard, but I can type a lot faster than I did on my Samsung t589 series (slim candy bar phone). My wife is a Blackberry user and it’s taking her a little longer to get used to it – couple hours probably.
- A couple of clever things about the keyboard. Audio feedback. The keys magnify as you move over them (you have to be on top of the screen for this). And when you’re surfing the web, there’s no space bar. You can’t type spaces in URLs, so they just eliminate it and
instead give you a handy little .com button. Very clever – contextual keyboard. - EDGE network isn’t bad. It’s no WiFi, but it’s not bad. YouTube on EDGE is lower quality than using the WiFi.
- The wireless network mode is really clever. When it senses you’re near a WiFi spot, it comes up on screen and asks you if you want to join it – just like a Mac. In the future, it just remembers that network and when it’s in range, it automatically hops over to that instead of using EDGE for downloading email, stocks, Google Maps, or surfing the Internet.
- Syncing worked flawlessly. I manually selected a few playlists, photo albums, and a list of people from my Address Book. It synced them up in a few minutes (about 2GB worth).
- One of the greatest things about Syncing and the iPhone – you can unplug it anytime you want, even mid-sync. There’s no “Ooops! You disconnected a device…” message. It just knows. Finally.
- Zooming in/out, panning, and scrolling take a bout 2 seconds to
learn. Scrolling is backwards from how you use a mouse, but way more
intuitive. You simply throw the screen into the direction you want to
move. - Google Maps is great on the phone as well. And getting directions
works well. - Battery life is about 2 days so far for me with surfing the web, some YouTube, email, photos, playing a bit of music, SMS, and a few phone calls.
The Less Than Stellar
- The screen shows fingerprints real bad. I’m going to get a
protective film for mine. They run $14.99 for two. - EDGE network isn’t as fast as WiFi, but it’s still pretty good. I’ve been reading reports of 160k-250k across the US. So, it’s acceptable for me, but I’m sure some people will gripe about it.
- YouTube videos when surfing on the EDGE technology from AT&T is downgraded a bit. The video looks bit mapped and mediocre to say the least.
Suggestions
- I want to be able to select the little WiFi/network icon in the upper left corner of the screen to change networks. In just about every neighborhood I’m in, there are a number of open networks. Typically I just use my own, but…
More to come later.
I’m in general agreement with your assessment. However, I’m dumbfounded how there isn’t a select all for a mass delete of emails. Gosh that’s painstaking.
Yes, however, I did find a handy little trick these past couple of days. When you’re in your inbox, if you slide your finger from left to right across a message in the inbox, a Delete key comes up at the left. So, while it’s not as easy as Delete Multiples, it does make deleting faster than doing it through the message preview mode.