All entries for Tuesday 22 July 2008

iPhone first impressions

Follow-up to I admit it, I cracked… from Steve's blog

[This turned out to be a bit longer than I expected – sorry about that:-]

I’ve had the device for a little over a week now, so it seems a good time to post my first thoughts, which are on the whole very favourable.

First, let’s get some of the well publicised shortcomings:

• No MMS. Yes it seems bizarre that a modern phone doesn’t do MMS, and I don’t understand how Apple could have thought it was a good idea to leave it out. But, I’ve only ever sent one and received two, so for me it isn’t a big deal. If you are addicted to MMS though, this could be a big problem.
• No copy & paste, or indeed text selection of any kind. This I’d a bit of a pain, I concede, but only a bit. I don’t notice most of the time. Replying to emails, and having to delete large chunks of the included original is the main time I wish it was there.
• Bluetooth is useless. Largely true. You can connect to a Bluetooth headset for making calls. But not in stereo for listening to music. You can’t send or receive pictures, music or contacts via BT. Nor can you connect a laptop to use the iPhone as a modem.

And some whinges flying about that either aren’t true, or at least aren’t for me:

• The battery life sucks. If you run it with everything turned on, and use it all the time, then yes, the battery doesn’t last a long time. But most people seem to be comparing it to a phone, which would normally have a battery life measured in large fractions of a week. This isn’t a phone, so that’s an unrealistic expectation. If you switch off and/or don’t use all the non-phone functionality, the battery life is not surprisingly much closer to that of a phone.
• Exchange sync doesn’t work. Well, you need ActiveSync enabled on your server, but as far as I know, once that is done (and it is on by default for version of Exchange that support it) it does seem to just work. For me at least. My iPhone beeps to indicate a new incoming message typically a few seconds before the Outlook running on my PC. And stuff created on my iPhone appears very quickly in Outlook.

OK, now that that’s over, let’s move on. For me, getting an iPhone was (hopefully) the end of a long search for a PDA to replace a Palm m505 that I had used for ages, but which was getting progressively irrelevant in these days of web services. I was using it less and less, and wanted a “PDA 2.0” equivalent. So, how does the iPhone match up? In particular, I’m looking at two different areas of functionality – web-based services and PDA functionality.

As far as PDA functionality goes, the connection to Exchange gives me contacts, calendar and email that is automatically synced and accessible from my PC and via the Exchange web interface too. The notes app on the iPhone does not sync with Exchange. Not that Exchange/Outlook’s notes functionality is that great. Being able to sync with OneNote would have been perfect. This was actually a bit of a problem for me, as taking notes on a PDA was something I did a lot. Then I discovered Evernote. This is a web-based notes app with Windows client and an iPhone client, but of which sync with the web, and therefore with each other. And all free, at least for low usage. Taking and storing lots of notes will eventually take you to the point where you have to pay, but even that is not a lot. That pretty much covers PDA functionality for me.

If you don’t have access to Exchange, you can still sync email, contacts and calendar with a local Outlook, which I’ve done for years with my Palm devices. Or pay for MobileMe. Or there are ways of faking push email using free services. Or if you are sure you’ll always have online access one way or another (part of the point of an iPhone, after all) you could just use Google’s web services.

Which brings us neatly to web functionality. The iPhone version of Safari is pretty good. With the exception of Flash, which doesn’t (yet) exist for the iPhone, everything seems to work as well as you’d expect, and generally better. The screen is small, but the multi-touch interface makes it very easy to zoom in on relevant sections of the page, and rotating the device to landscape can help a lot. I haven’t found a web site yet that I can’t use. That said, Safari has crashed on me a few times for no obvious reason. Going back to the same website immediately afterwards generally works fine. I suspect some sort of memory-related issue (leak?). Some sites detect the iPhone and present a “mobile-optimised” version of their site. Sometimes that is good, and sometimes I’d rather use the original. There isn’t usually a way of choosing. But that’s not the iPhone’s fault.

The lack of Flash is a pain, for me. Some people are enjoying browsing the web without Flash adverts and splash screens getting in the way. I’m not. There are a few sites that use Flash to present video (BBC News, ITV’s live channels, etc.) that I can’t use. For me, the sooner flash is available the better.

One thing some web service providers are doing is producing native iPhone apps to access their services, rather than providing a mobile-optimised site. I’ve already mentioned Evernote above. This approach lets them use local iPhone data, like adding camera pictures to notes or using the microphone to record voice notes. There’s a local Facebook app (and a MySpace app if you are a teenager:-), a Twitter app, etc.

Which again brings us neatly to the next point of interest – the App Store. Going back to my Palm days, there was (is) a huge development community developing applications for the Palm platform. Many are free. Those that aren’t are generally reasonably priced. And many of them are very, very good. Apple are clearly hoping to foster the same sort of developer community for the iPhone. They’ve got off to a good start. The app store has a fair amount of fluff in it, but there are gems hiding in there, even free ones. The Evernote app is great. There’s a last.fm app, if you’re a last.fm user. An eReader app, giving you access to lots of electronic books, both paid for and free. Lots of games, predictably. Finding, installing and upgrading apps is typically Apple-like, quick and easy. You can do it over the air, as well as through iTunes. You even get upgrade notifications, and can upgrade apps, over the air. It is too early to say how well this is going to take off, but there is a fair variety of apps there already so it has got off to a good start.

And finally the two areas of functionality that give the device its name – music and phone. Both of them just work, as far as I can tell. You can make and receive phone calls and texts (but not MMS and mentioned right at the beginning). And the iPod app plays music as you’d expect. The built-in speaker is actually loud enough to use without external speaker in small rooms, or for just one or two people to listen to. It is just mono, though. There is one niggle I have with the phone/iPod functionality so far:

• I can’t see a way of forwarding a contact’s details as an SMS message – something I’m used to doing on my previous phones. Nor can you send them via Bluetooth as I said above, and of course copying and pasting into an SMS message doesn’t work either. A minor irritation for me, but an irritation nonetheless.

In summary, then, there are a few things about the device that annoyme. Things that Apple could have done differently. Fortunately, since they are all software features, there is a possibility that they will be fixed in future software upgrades. Lots of other people are moaning publically about the same things, so let’s hope Apple is listening. But in general, it is doing what I expected of it, and doing it well. And the UI is really, really nice. It is a pleasure to use! It is even a pleasure to hold!!

And since I’ve never been much of an Apple fan, that’s something I never expected to say of an Apple device. I hope this doesn’t spread, or I’ll have a MacBook Air on my shopping list next…:-)

Steve Rumsby : 22 Jul 2008 16:33 |  Tags: Gadgets Iphone |  Comments (15) |  Close comments |  Report a problem