I’ve had my shiny new iPhone 3GS for over a month or so now and thought it was a good time to jot down a few thoughts for those thinking of buying one.
Of course there is so much to talk about but I’ll concentrate on the features new in the 3GS and try and steer away from talking about applications. One of the best things is the ability to customise your device through your choice of applications “solving life’s problems one app at a time” as I keep saying to my other half, but this is about the hardware and making the switch to it.
Blackberry users making the switch
I’ve been a keen Blackberry advocate for a few years now and sometime ago I wrote a post about getting one (concerned about being always ‘on’). For work purposes they are awesome and for a long while there simply was no better way to receive work mail on the move. Push email was how it should be an the Blackberry platform delivered.
Now I’m not about to write a review of the Blackbery, suffice to say that in reviewing the iPhone I should acknowledge where it is Blackberry users are coming from. The ability of someone to ‘learn’ an interface is somewhat predicated on why they have previously experienced on other devices.
The best aspects of a Blackberry are it’s connectivity, it’s qwerty keyboard and it’s battery life. User are well oriented in the UI with the use of the back-up and menu keys while there are also familiar green and red call keys. The red being particularly useful for ‘ejecting’ you from wherever in the menu system back to the saftey of your home screen.
Yes there are other great things to say about Blackberry, but these are the main ones you bring to the church of iPhone.
Set-up and first use
Of course it’s Apple. Everything is beautiful and ‘just works’ (sideways glance at Lorenzo). However there is this weird begining where you have to hook up with your laptop and iTunes. Having just bought my phone and being all excited and bathing in post-purchase afterglow I headed to a coffee shop to play with it. However this diversion would prove frustrating as I couldn’t start the iPhone without iTunes.
It’s obvious why they need you to hook up with iTunes, it is because you need to have the latest software, an iTunes account for apps and of course your media will need sideloading onto your handset. Of course, and while different this process isn’t hard and actually broadens the new users view of what is possible. Regardless this was still a little odd.
I can imagine there are a few new iPhone owners who didn’t have everything already and had to install iTunes and stack their library before starting which would make for a convoluted out-of-box experience to say the least.
Actually as I write this it occurs to me that a prerquisite to using the iPhone is to also have iTunes. As I take it for granted, I wonder how new users respond to this idea of phone + iTunes?
Battery Life
Frankly this sucks. Big time, as I need to charge about twice a day on current usage. You simply can’t use it in the field for a day, you’ll need to get to a plug somewhere along the line, so much so that if I were going out for a whole day with it, I would have to think about taking the charger and even a back-up handset.
In this regard the iPhone is a victim of it’s own success. Because of what it does and how it does it, you tend to use it more than you regular handset.
I’m a fairly heavy data user particularly on the way in and out of work. Generally I read RSS, use Twitter, mail and IM. I often snap photos or shoot small videos on my way in and ping them to Flickr using Shozu. But for someone who does what I do for a living and probably anyone interested in this review, I guess this is fairly normal behaviour.
What isn’t normal is draining a third of the battery on 1 hour of this kind of usage! I’m writing this on my way to work and without pinging the server I’ll be draining the battery. It’s clearly a screen thing but I wonder how much searching for wi-fi and 3G it does?
I’ve worked out to switch off some of the push services respective settings because I don’t need all apps making server calls. But lets just say my mum wouldn’t be dealing with this stuff easily. There is push, then there is pull, seek and ping ping ping.
As I walk through London using the phone, moving between hotspots but not wanting to connect to them, I frequently get the ‘do you want to join this network’ pop-up which can be annoying. Yes I could turn WiFi off for a bit, but this isn’t that quick a task to do. It’s far from hard, it’s just not designed as a tier one function giving users ready access.
Last week I went to a gig and wanted to Twitter and send photographs to Flickr. I didn’t use the handset much on the way and arrived wih about 80% battery after being unplugged for a few hours. When at the venue there was a full O2 signal showing but alas no 3G would work.
Without going into details it’s fair to say that trying to connect to the network for voice was fine but anything trying to use data was not happening. We’ve all been there on New Years Eve trying to make calls only to see the network overloaded, well this was like that but data related. And then, specifically iPhone related.
I was having trouble while my friend had no issues on his Blackberry Curve. The iPhone obviously has some data hungry packets about it’s person and this nukes my battery in a few hours.
Tethering (using iPhone as a broadband modem for your laptop)
One of the great things (theoretically for most folk) is the fact that you can connect your laptop to your 3GS and use it as a broadband access point. However I wont find out if this waorks automagically with my MacBook because I wont be setting it up.
Why?
Well the problem here is O2, as they want to charge you to use this service.
I mean. Come on guys. Why is it that I can have uimited data access on my iPhone but as soon as I choose to view that data on a larger screen with a keyboard (and Flash installed ahem) you want to go and charge me £10??!!??!!
Seriously, what difference does it make to you? This service has never cost before, I’ve never paid specifically for the ability to hook up my laptop to my GPRS handset and attain exspense per kilobyte slow ass access so why now?
Robbing bastards.
Push Services
Not much to say here other than finally! Now I can sit back and let it come to me.
What I will say is that while it’s nice knowing that things will pop up on screen when they are good and ready, I have to say I’m not massively confident that it’s all happening when it’s supposed to.
I guess I should run a comparison test and send stuff to both my Blackberry and the iPhone. But really, this means little.
Applications
It is oh-so-easy to spend money in the App Store and on iTunes. Too easy.
Of course, when you get a new shiny handset beware the excited kiddy in a sweet shop mentality that will see you load your handset with lots of shiny new apps. Of course you will load up the musthaves, but be prepared to spend some dough.
What Apple have got right here (inevitably) is making it super friction free for you to part with your cash using micropayments Adding apps is a key way to make your iPhone a) useful and b) personal an it’s very simple to do, just make sure you have WiFi
Camera/Video
The poor camera was one of the reasons I didn’t buy the first iPhone. I’m an amateaur photographer (why does that statement always conjur up seedy images?) and having a decent pocket snapper is a key must have of mine.
Yes I have a decent SLR, yes I have a decent pocket camera but I still want a decent camera in my phone. It doesn’t have to be 10 megapixels, but it does have to have a decent sensor, take pictures when I press the button (and not 5 secs after) and it needs to have good connectivity for uploading.
Phone cameras warrant a post all of their own, but the main issue is always shutter lag, the time it takes between pressing the button and actually capturing the image. This is always complicated by the fact that the flash units on cameras run a red eye reduction feature which pulses the flash before the main flash in order to dilate the pupils. This has the effect of making your subject thinking that th the shot has been taken resulting in the blinky half eye shots that we all know and love.
Anyway, I. digress as the iPhone has no flash so this is not an issue.
What is an issue is that it’s utterly useless for taking pictures on nights out. Shame. Big shame.
Yep. That’s right no flash. Why oh why doesn’t it have a flash? The 3.2mp camera is actually decent, it snaps fairly quckly and the shots can be quite sharp. It’s certainly way better that my old LG Viewty which boasted a 5mp camera with HUGE lag and a decent flash.
Don’t get me wrong, the iphone is as good a mobile cam as I’ve had during the day, but in low light it’s bloody useless.
It’s great that it has video which really works nicely and enables you to trim and edit. Though I’ve never understood these sorts of tools on mobiles as they’re almost never used.
Cut/Copy/Paste
Believe it or not this was another reason why I didn’t want the first generation iPhone. Well, this the shite camera and the famed inability to send contact details, but finally THE BASICS ARE HERE!!!!
Yay.
What more is there to say other than: ‘Why the funk wasn’t it in the first phone’?
That said, the cut copy paste interaction is sweet. You tap to select then drag handles to position across the get you want to take. Lovely.
Also, you discover by accident that to ‘undo’ you simply shake the handset. I love this interaction because the input method (shaking) emulates the frustration you feel when you cock things up. Nice.
Gaming
I’m by no means a big gamer. We have a PlayStation and a Wii at home, but I never really got into the whole Nintendo DS and PSP thing.
Anyway like most people I have time to kill, especially on the train, so I’ve started buying games again. From the stupidly addictive PaperToss to RagDoll to Real Football 09.
The games are really well delivered, easy to play with controls presented on the touchscreen. Oh, and they are addictive.
Some games exploit the motion control capabilities such as Glow Ball or Rolando, but I think we are yet to see this come into it’s own.
In Summary
I read the other day that 75% of iPhone users spend 40% of their Internet time on their handset.
This may well be because they are now using the handset more than they would previously and are actually performing more Internet based tasks or it may actually mean a direct transfer of laptop tasks to the iPhone.
I know I fall into both categories as I quite often reach for my iPhone over my Macbook to do things that the later is arguably much better at, namely Reading blogs and surfing that webbernet thing.
Also im finding that I access the web when I normally wouldn’t have bothered and this is purely driven by the convenience factor.
It’s an awesome device. I dont regret buying it at all. It’s beautifully made and a joy to use and furthermore it’s actually useful as a handset thanks to the high level of custisation through applications.
It has immediately become more than a phone to me. It’s good as a phone, for browsing the web, for productivity, for gaming and has all kinds of utility depending on which apps you install.
It comes at a price though weighing in at around £1500 for 18 months plus apps (and don’t underestimate the cost of those).
However, it’s my new friend and I love it.
– Post From My iPhone
