iPhone: The Initial Review

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about the iPhone, so I figured I'd try and give a brief overview of all the things I love about it, as well as highlight the things I'm not so crazy about.

The good things first: The screen is really amazing. Even looking at it from angles or in bright sunlight, it's easy to see. And yes, even with smudges from fingers it's easy to see. I'm pretty used to touchscreens at this point (my car has one, which IS really hard to see in sunlight), but this touchscreen is not like anything else. I'm able to type on it a lot quicker than I could on my last phone, although I won't be able to type while driving anymore (which is a good thing, since I shouldn't be doing that in the first place). Navigating back and forth is intuitive, although it would have been nice to have seen some conventions carry over (like flicking right to left/left to right to go back and forth, instead of hitting the navigation buttons at the top of the screen). The sound quality from the built-in speaker is good too, but you will want to play with the equalizer settings a bit to avoid distorting music. The text looks great on it, and it's easy to read; you can blow up e-mails as well as Web pages to view them, and it refreshes the screen quickly with the magnified views. It really is great browsing through songs in the cover flow mode; iTunes does a respectable job of finding album artwork, although I was surprised that one of my purchased songs couldn't find the artwork. One of the first things I did was download the homestarrunner video podcasts; I could see a big market for video podcasts on this phone! The phone does a great job of finding wifi whenever it can, and shows you which networks are unlocked. I've managed to find quite a lot more hotspots with unlocked access than I thought I would, so that's been a pleasant surprise.

Checking e-mail is great on this phone. With the data plan being unlimited, there's no excuse for me to not get my e-mail... that could be a bad thing :) But it was a snap to set up my GMail account, and once I configure other accounts on the backend (i.e., to reduce the amount of junk I get sent to them), I may even set up more accounts. One item that was mentioned by another iPhone user is that you can only attach one picture per e-mail; I haven't yet looked into sending pictures via the mobile Flickr process yet (where you send images by e-mail), but I will be testing that this week. As for the Web, every site I have visited so far has loaded up reasonably fast, and functionality hasn't been an issue. I know that there will be issues with sites that are dependent upon Flash or certain Flex/AJAX-style interactions, but that hasn't impacted me yet, and it seems to be the type of issue that could be corrected eventually w/updates. And speaking of updates, the whole process of integrating with iPhoto and iTunes has gone well so far. Unfortunately, you can only sync it with one computer, and you can't drag and drop individual songs or photos onto it; it's an all or nothing approach, so you have to create albums/playlists first. There's also no way as of yet to put other types of data on the phone, so you can't upload a PDF or Word document, for example. You can, however, view those files if you send them to yourself in an e-mail. I'm also not sure about the method of trashing e-mails. it seems as if when you delete them, they go to the trash (okay), but there isn't a 'mass delete' of trash I've been able to find - you have to delete them again, one by one. I'll keep looking into that...

SMS is nice, as it displays in a conversation thread, a la iChat. I have the feeling there may be more iChat stuff added with Leopard. The 'lack' of MMS is no big deal, as you can just e-mail pictures to someone's mobile address and they'll get it as an MMS (and therefore no message charges against your plan). You should warn people that MMS messages they try to send to you will fail; they should send them to an e-mail account instead.

Some of the lesser known features are the scrolling screens to select dates (a really neat interface!), and the world clock, alarm, stopwatch, and timer features in the clock. I have found that I actually use the calendar, and that having it sync with my iCal means that I'll actually have it up-to-date. Other apps that are included are weather, stocks, YouTube, calculator, notes, and maps. Maps will display in satellite or 'normal' view, but what's really cool is the ability to see traffic information on a particular route. In the DC area, that is priceless!

As for the built-in camera, it takes good pictures, but isn't going to replace your dedicated camera any time soon. It lacks controls of any sort (like zooming in) and there's no flash, both of which I miss from my old phone. It does a good job of auto-adjusting for light, though, and does what it needs to do. I really hope it supports motion video at some point, because with 4-8G of storage, using this as a little video maker would be great. Plus, there'd be more YouTube content to watch, guaranteed!

One of the most unintuitive areas is the Phone area. This is where the contacts are stored, as well as calls. When you view the calls (i.e., missed), you expect to select the call to see info on it (i.e., at what time the call you missed was made). But instead, selecting the name starts calling the person. That will take some getting used to. The visual voicemail truly is one of the highlights of this phone. I'm sure the manual (had I read it) would have told me to set that up immediately, but it took someone telling me that they couldn't leave a message to realize I needed to set it up :) Adding things like birthdays to contacts brings up the cool scrolling date picker. And you can select a different ringtone for each user, which is always nice. I am one of the folks who is keeping their fingers crossed for a quick rollout of custom/purchaseable ringtones. Dog barks and cricket chirps just don't cut it. The sound quality of calls is very good, and the coverage is really the same since I didn't switch carriers.

As for the settings, there are several nice customizations, but not too much. You can view your phone usage, and set the airplane mode to disable the not-okay-for-flight features. You can specify to make sounds for certain things (new voicemail, new mail, etc.) but you can't set different sounds for each. The brightness auto-adjusts nicely, but you can change it to a fixed brightness if you want to. You can set 'wallpaper' on the phone, although it doesn't display behind the menu screen, just on the screen in locked mode. You can set transitions and times for photo slideshows, adjust the EQ for music, set a volume limit, select the default search engine (the default is Google), enable javascript, block pop-ups, accept cookies, clear history and cache, adjust the contact sort order, handle call forwarding/waiting, enable TTY, show caller ID info, set up e-mail accounts, set auto-check time durations, select how many e-mail messages to show, how much to preview, and change the signature line (from the default of 'Sent from my iPhone'). You can set up a password to lock the phone, set how long until the phone 'sleeps', turn on/off bluetooth, change the date/time, and change the auto-cap/caps lock settings. There are a couple more settings, but those are the most important ones.

My wishlist? It's relatively short; more custom widgets for the menu (i.e., enable plug-ins like the stock app), ringtones, video, be able to change the picture behind the menu, and a way to upload/sync selected files. Additional bluetooth support would be nice, too - I'd love to use it w/my BT GPS receiver, for example, or send files to other BT devices.

Overall, I am really happy with this phone. I am not really a power-user for cell phones, so it does everything I want it to do, and more. Having a great Web browser and usable e-mail on the go is great, and having that also be a great iPod makes it even better. I know that the visual voicemail is going to be immensely useful, as will the traffic maps. Just like my Mac systems, it's the kind of interface where people who try it out fall in love with it and can't imagine going back to their clunky old interfaces. While some users will need or want more features, this phone is perfect for anyone who wants a great personal phone that's fun and plays nice with various media.

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