Apple iPhone 3G

Introduction

I have owned over the past 15 years a new PDA or cellphone every year. The best have been: Psion Series 5mx (portability, OS stability, portable Office document creation and editing, battery life, keyboard), Palm 750p-Sprint (keyboard, OS stability, battery life (with extended battery)). The worst have been: anything with Windows Mobile -HP 4705, Treo 700wx-Sprint, UTStarcom 4700-Sprint -all having to do with OS instability, horrible internet experience, and dreadful user interface. iPhone 3G trumps them all in: user interface, screen quality, multimedia play and iTunes, phone quality and functionality, interface with Outlook Exchange, and Apps - App Store. It falls short in: OS stability, text entry, Apple-centrism, and battery life. 

Pluses 

User interface - This is Apple's calling card. It unclutters, almost to an extreme. Where other phones have maximized the number of buttons that one can put on a device, the iPhone only has a handful. Windows Mobile basically takes the position that everything can fit on a menu and while it works okay on a computer, it fails on a phone screen. Palm's UI and OS works okay but that's like saying Mac OS 9.2 works okay -it's been stretched and kludged to make it work in 2008, but is still the same OS that was around in 2001. The UI on iPhone is simple, but not dumbed down. 

Screen Quality - The screen makes you feel like you are holding some artifact from the far future. It is deep and rich, the blacks are truly black, and the colors are vivid. My HP 4705 has a larger, higher resolution screen, but it is handicapped by the Windows Mobile and now ancient processor so that photo viewing was a chore and not a pleasure. The other half of the deal - the camera on the iPhone, has been criticized for being merely 2 megapixel. This is a misunderstanding by these critics - the camera and lens are perfectly tuned for the iphone's screen and for printing 4x6 snapshots. Anything bigger, and you really should take a dedicated camera. 

Multimedia Play - iPod works. It just does for everything that you channel via iTunes. It'll play Youtube via the Youtube App. The sound quality is great - not discernibly different from my other iPods. The 16 gigabytes of memory are adequate, but don't think it will replace a large hard -drive iPod (yet). 

Phone Quality and Functionality - All of my smartphones up to now have been very poor telephones. The dialing, the voicemailing, the sound quality of the call, have all been barely acceptable on both Verizon and Sprint. This has to do with the fact that I live in a suburb of Des Moines. I noticed on both Verizon and Sprint that the signals are at around two bars at my house, but if I choose Roaming only, I would get 4 bars. I think iPhone does a better job at handoffs with roaming towers, although not perfectly. The great thing is even at 1 bar, the sound is clear on my iPhone. I have not had a chance to check 3G functionality as it is unavailable in Des Moines until next year. 

Outlook Exchange - I live on Exchange -my secretary plots out my day via the calendar, and I can see updates rapidly. It works fine, although it does not zip as fast as it did on the 750p. Windows Mobile should be the best, but it fails by instability and keyboard lag that occurs which can only be ameliorated by periodic and scheduled soft resets (happened with every Win Mob phone I have had). Emails are beautiful and readable. No To-Do's -can't fathom why.

Apps -Apps Store - Apple has created an addictive candy store for iPhone owners. You have to consider ALL the programs in there to be advanced beta's. They crash and stall, but no harm done to the phone or data. The reasTon why I go back is there are wonderful apps that are a dream to install  - this can be a miserable experience on Win Mob with cabinet files and un-uninstallable apps that crap up the onboard RAM. There are new Apps everyday. The App Store is the killer app for the iPhone, and you realize the hermetically sealed eco-system of Apple's gadget's allow App Store to succeed where web stores like Handango with their crappy Palm and Windows store front apps fail horribly. 

Shortfalls

OS stability - The phone does freeze up on some apps. I think it has to do with multitasking background 'net related items - email pickup, facebook refreshes, app store upgrade refreshes -anything with push that makes the phone look up stuff via Edge or Wireless. If you try to bring up some other app, it freezes, and you have to do an occasional soft reset - This happens about once or twice a week which is much better than the every day that occurred with my Win Mob phones. Palm would do it too, but I never tried to run too many apps on these phones -not many are good enough to have a must have. 

Text Entry

The popup screen based keyboard is a huge initial turnoff -the accuracy is disturbingly poor -at first, until you realize that it does a predictive suggestion trick. You have to trust that it will predict what you are trying to type and then if it is correct, you press the space key to accept the suggestion. It becomes fast, but the whole proces is useless for extended document creation. Which leads to my next point -Apple does not want you to sit and create documents with a phone. That is what a laptop is for. That is why there are no bluetooth keyboards and there is no copy/paste. This is a shame. With a snapon keyboard or a bluetooth keyboard, there is really no need to bring a laptop anywhere with iPhone, which is NOT what Apple wants. 

Apple Centrism

The iPhone, it goes without saying, is part of the Apple universe. This includes a vision of how people use their technology. It is flexible within the parameters that they set. For example, the Apps are wonderful, but can only be sold via App Store, which is great in streamlining the purchasing process, but keeps out programs that would allow things that stray from Apple's vision or business plan (Skype and VOIP is a glaring example). iPhone is meant to be a reader of data, and an occasional generator of data, but the laptop is what Steve wants you to use to create documents. It should be capable of multitasking and heavy data lifting, but this would cause iPhone to slow down doing things that it was not designed for. It has a niche in the Apple universe, and it is designed to avoid competing with its fellow Apple devices. This may be a deal breaker for some.

Battery Life

The battery life is "ehh-ehh." With heavy use, I start hitting red at the end of my day (10-12 hours). It is simple enough to carry a USB cable, and use it to charge off any available computer or USB socket -there are multiple docks and power supply solutions. With Bluetooth and WiFi on, the batter drain is annoying. I recently purchased a Kensington battery for backup, but it is something else to carry. Again, for heavy work, Apple wants you to buy a Mac to do work on. 

Summary

iPhone is a beautiful device. It works better than any modern smartphone I have owned, but doesn't multitask, it has no keyboard options, it has no real good document creation options. That being said, it is the best device out there because it does so many things well, including being an excellent telephone. Everyone has to realize that buying now means buying during the beta period. Still, no gadget has made me this happy except perhaps my first Mac, circa 1985. 

Addendum: 9-19-2008

With 2.1 update, I have noticed a stepwise improvement in Contacts loading, a 20-30% improvement in battery life, and better behavior on the part of some third party apps. I haven't had to reset as often. This increases the battery life score to 4. 

Addendum: 10-4-2008

Safari crashes are frequent and annoying cutting into my love for the iPhone. I don't know if 2.1 is to blame or if it is a third party app or something in the backup/load process for upgrading to 2.1. The crashes result while loading image heavy pages, or scrolling fast. Also the keyboard's suggestions are wrong enough you have to be very careful to read what you end up with -sort of a return to Newton version 1.0. 

Apple needs to fix Safari, but good, give us Copy/Paste/Select Text with a clipboard between programs (for pete's sake, i'm writing down numbers with a paper and pen and retyping them on other pages/programs), and let bluetooth keyboards into the sandbox. 

Waited in line at the AT&T store with the rest of the faithful on 7/11/08 to get the last G3 IPhone, number 20, of the first 20 avaliable in my area, PTL.  I got a black 3G 8, and after the line dissipated, ordered the black 3G 16 that I really wanted.  Gave the 8 gig to my wife when the 16 came in about 10 days later.  Have been loading apps ever since.  My wife loves hers.  The Apps store is a genius idea.  

The phone has great sound quality and is of course very cool and extreemly useful.  I can get to and review my emails faster than on my dual processor desktop.  The only drawback to internet access is the small screen size and no cut and paste feature, but the portability outweighs all that.  The apps are cool, fun and also very usefull, most are free or .99 to 1.99 each.  My favorite is a weather app with a moving radar loop, 14.99, you can set the radar to your current location and/or drag it all over the US.

The GPS is very cool and we used it during a trip to Orlando recently.  We could see ourselves as a blue dot on interstate 4 going to Lakeland and I keyed in food with just an 'F' and it dropped pins over the nearby restaurants, touch the pin and you get more info about the restaurant, touch their phone number and you can call them.  We used this at home after dinner at KrackerBarrel.  I keyed in ice cream and it showed us a Brewsters just 1/2 mile down the road.  My wife knew it was there, she knows the location of all ice cream places that she has ever seen and she's still thin, but I digress.  They did not have White Galaxy or a moca flavor, but the ice cream was still great.      

Both my wife and I had our AT&T contracts come up for renewal this month,so we were in the market for new phones. My wife wanted to upgrade from her Razor, and had her heart set on an iPhone. I love Apple, although I can't currently afford or justify a Mac, but remained a bit skeptical on the iPhone. We decided she would get hers and I would evaluate it before deciding if I wanted one too.

After a screw-up in activating it that was wholly a reps fault, not Apple's, we were on our way. Actually we could use the wi-fi feature the evening it was not activated, so that was handy. Call quality is avarage to a bit above. Way better than my wife's old Razor (louder too), and about equivalent to my Sony-Erricson w810i. My wife does not read manuals, and has managed to figure it out on her own. I've only referred to the manual once for a question I could not figure out. Works great with my Plantronics Bluetooth headset.

The stand-out feature for me is the sheer versatility of the iPhone. My mother-in-law is on our plan too (we run a small business), and in the iPhone she can get four things she wants for the proce of one: a new phone, a GPS, an iPod, and wireless internet access. As someone who works in the field for the real estate market, that is priceless.

My worries are few, but not insignificant. AT&T will not currently insure the iPhone. I'm not too worried about me, but my wife and mother-in-law are brutal on phones. This could be an expensive problem. I already got a solid case for my wife's phone, and I will invest in one for mine when I get it. The battery life on a 3G network is poor. If you are out of the house, a car charger is a must. I work in an office all day, so I will be able to plug mine into a USB port on my workstation - but I still want a car charger. The camera, while 2 megapixels, is feature-poor. There are some good software solutions for this, but the best involve "jail-breaking" your phone, which is not a great idea.

Lastly, the sharing of the phone has been an issue. If you are mrried, I recommend buying two, as the prying of the iPhone from your hands will be sure to cause some strife. Marital bliss is worth the extra $199.

Coming from a Blackberry that had everything I wanted but was ugly and deemed a "worker-bee phone", I am still missing a lot in the iPhone.

Overall, I am extremely let down by the kinks present in the current OS version 2.0.  As expected there would be kinks in any first generation OS but these are serious.  The battery life is terrible, the worst I've had in, I can't even remember.  The notification sound for SMS randomly quits and will only vibrate.  The alert volume for the ringer Will randomly set itself to low.  Applications crash every now and then.  The keyboard is sluggish when typing in SMS especially when multi-tasking.  The rounded back feels better in my hands but the plastic back feels cheaper and immediately smudges upon touching, even if you have the white one (which I got), but still better than the black by far. 

The upside, I would suppose, is that I have faith in apple to fix all of the said problems in a software patch.  I am hoping that they get a good grip on battery life because it certainly doesn't feel as good as they claim it to be.  Other than that I am keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't make a mistake by waiting in line for hours.