iPhone 3GS – A Virgin’s Review

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

Nice Things This Week 5

Okay. Okay.

I know. I promised.

‘Nice Things’ every Friday.

Well. Life (work) got in the way.

Here are a few nice things I found this week that tickled my tummy.

I’ve linked to Calvin and Hobbs before. My buddy Fosta used to like them so here’s 25 great comic strips for you.

I love Lego, though I’d argue they’ve taken the imagination out of it. I used to make Airwolf helicopters. I never thought of doing Escher in Lego.

Fancy a sobering thought or two? And no. Not strictly ‘nice’ either. But check out the Nuclear Weapons Archive dot org.

Never be shamed by a lack of eighties style grafitti skills, using these fonts you can ‘hip hop you don’t stop ‘cos I’m not sloppy’ ’till the cows come home. And no-one will ever know.

Email yourself in the future. Might be useful. Be better if it allowed you to go back in time. Needs Mr Fusion I think.

What is it with HDR images right now? They make interesting images look like the posters of University stoner kids. But hey, some are okay. I hate post-production. It kills the nature of photography.

More nice business cards.

That’ll do for now.

Multimap launches new features

By Warren Hutchinson

Hot on the heels of my posting about Multimap being honored at the Webby Awards in the Service category comes some great news that a new feature-set has been implmented.

Those that have watched closely would have been expecting this due to the recent acquisition of Multimap by Microsoft.

But ah-ha, it’s not all MS integration stuff.

First up, Improved mapping functionality with Microsoft’s ‘Birds-Eye View’. While I wasn’t a great fan of Microsoft’s mapping solution, I did quite like the idea of the Birds-Eye view, a 3/4 isometric view from above.

It definitely taps into that ‘thing’ that makes looking at maps quite addictive and for me is a nice step ahead of Google Earth in terms of flying about. GE is slightly limited (unless you use the 3D buildings) at providing a decent non-distorted angled view.

Also note the Wikipedia view, overlaying information from Wikipedia that has a geospatial reference.

I find this sort of view really useful when it comes to looking at directions to a place that I have never visited. Mostly as a way on envisioning the route before I drive it. Overhead view is useful for orientation and proximity purposes, but it doesn’t really look like the real thing. Only the other day I sat down with my father to ‘fly’ him through some directions on GE.

I’d like to see Bird-Eye View fly-thoughs added to Multimap Directions at some time. I think Map24 has some sort of solution for this. Yes you can switch on Birds-Eye when in View Map mode of the Directions service. But it’s not a prime feature.

I should quickly add that Multimap’s Birds-Eye Vie isn’t available for all locations, just “major cities”. Although my town is covered and I live out in the proverbial ’sticks’.

In this new release they have also improved the directions functionality with better, more coherent step representation for journeys. When I played with it yesterday, the map view wasn’t quite working as the site was obviously rolling out across the servers. But it looks promising indeed.

And lastly, exacerbating the blur between location based services and directory services, Multimap now has Business Listings. The Multimap communications said:

Now you can use our maps to find businesses in your area – or your destination. We’ve got details of everyone from accountants to woodworkers in the UK, US, Canada, France and Italy – with other countries coming soon.

For those ardent lovers and web 1.0 stalwarts, the old site has finally gone. but don’t fret. If interactive maps really aren’t your thing or you are on dial-up or have an old system then you’ll be happy with the introduction of ‘Basic Site’ functionality. Essentially a rasterised map offering with some new features, but optimised for more basic delivery.

I like the way Multimap have retained this as important. When we at LBi first engaged with them, Sean (Founder), Eric (CTO) and Jeff (CEO) were all fairly adamant from the get-go that ALL users were important.

Anyway, there you go. Have a play and switch your favourite mapping service over to Multimap.

BTW – I do have integrity and this isn’t a shameless plug for LBi work. I firmly think that this is the better browser based mapping solution out there at the moment.

Flickr does video

So, Flickr now offers video.

That’s my ‘Photostream’ kiboshed.

They’re offering Pro users storage for up to 90 seconds of video. Not sure if freebies get video or not.

At first I thought this is a bad move, but now I’m not so sure. I’ve read their blog article and decided that I like the idea of sharing ‘long photos’.

I like the 90 second cap.

It tally’s nicely with those short mobile videos I capture of my kids and do nothing with. Now, instead of rotting on my phone I can share them with my family.

Lovely.

Initially I thought 90 seconds is short and will hamper adoption, but actually the shortness keeps the idea of video quite pure. It is about ‘long photos’ and not a repository for pirate film and clips. I’d hate to see it used like YouTube which to me is a bit of a chavvy web brand.

Snuck in at the bottom of the blog post is the news that they are doubling the upload image size for Pro users to 20Mb and 10Mb for free users.

I wonder what the Flickr community will make of it.? They can be quite a reactive bunch.

Nice.

Multimap.com Honored at the Webby’s

Nearly 2 years ago here at LBi, we started working with Multimap to redesign their public .com web property.

It was time for their loved, but ageing raster-map offering to be dragged inline with, then new and innovative, Google’s ’slippy’ Maps.

With a raft of new features including drag, zoom, pan, hybrid view,all stuff we take for granted now, we set about defining a sharpened mapping proposition that worked for both Multimap users and advertisers.

It was a brilliant project, great fun, hard work and really quite challenging. The guys at Multimap (which sold to Microsoft in December last year) were all smart cookies and pleasure to work with. Personally I see it as one of the triumphs of the team I work in here at LBi. Not only was it great solution, it was a great learning experience and those two things make for great projects. Certainly satisfactory ones.

Stephen Barber was, and still is, ace on this project. Will Bloor was his usual unremitting creative self, Peter Jupp smashed the design and Mike McIntyre and Gavin Edwards aced some complex interaction and James Norton provided some wonderful interface development. It was also a pleasure to see Lorenzo in action, which doesn’t happen nearly enough for some of us here at LBi.

Well, enough spouting from me. Multimap.com has just been named as an Honoree in the Service category at this years Webby awards.

This is no mean feat as only the best 15% of submissions attain the accolade and this from a pot of nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 US states and over 60 countries.

Multimap is now owned by Microsoft, so expect to start using it a lot more as it integrates into all their properties. Exciting stuff indeed.

The guys I worked with on this project were:

• Stephen Barber
• Will Bloor
• Peter Jupp
• Mike Mcintyre
• Dave Dunlop
• Lorenzo Wood
• Darren Gerry
• Gavin Edwards
• Phil WHitehouse
• James Norton
• Marcus Alexander
• Suzanne Chapman
• Claire Freund

Microsoft Surface

This has been about for a while and the videos are over-egged, but Oh my. I SOOooo want one of these.

Think iPhone interaction, communally on a big table. Okay, a big ass, expensive table.

Microsoft Surface

…and the inevitable parody of the previous video:

Check out the remaining videos of this touchcreen table from Microsoft called Surface. Nice.

Bye Bye Torrentspy

Bye Bye Torrentspy

Originally uploaded by Snowbadger

I once heard about these torrent type sites.

This one, which was quite popular, has chosen to close on their own accord. It hasn’t been shut down, but in the message it’s clear they can’t afford to continue the battle and paying the court fees.

It also appears that the Court tried to impose some privacy policy conditions on Torrentspy which they simply weren’t prepared to assume.

Nice Things This Week 3

Wow. 3 for 3.

Okay, it’s Saturday, but you got last weeks a day early.

Reet bonkers slide show on the future of our planet and galaxy.

New street signs springing up all round London. Thanks Mr Hellens.

Some bonkers nanotech for you.

VideoJug shows you how to compose your photographs in this instructive little video.

Here are some batteries that charge via USB.

Photos from nuclear tests. Pretty scary but beautiful stuff.

For those who like cartoons, did you ever get into Calvin and Hobbs?

Ever wondered how to classify lists of animals..? What do you mean no?

Twango allows you to upload files that will automatically have geospatial data added to them based on the text associated with the file.

Based on consumer insight from over 1000 guests in 5 countries, Swisscom are about to reinvent hotel connectivity (thank God!). Called room 2.0 it’s an interesting story about innovation, whitespace and conducting primary research.

Amazon launches the Kindle – a portable eBook reader

Amazon’s new eBook device the ‘Kindle’ was released this week.

I find this an interesting one.

It was very well covered yesterday on lots and lots of blogs with pretty much everyone saying it’s rubbish. The 400 or so reviews on the Amazon page are largely negative too, this is an interesting point in itself for Amazon.

Here is a video of the out-of-box experience as captured by Robert Scobble:

The packaging looks okay, quite cute for it to come in a ‘book’.

Here is a video of using it and experiencing some issues

I was watching the Amazon demo thinking things like ‘Wouldn’t it be good if you could look-up words as you read. Oh, it does’, ‘Wouldn’t it be good if it wasn’t based on wi-fi hotspots. Oh, it isn’t.’ And so on…

Featurewise, it’s quite nice. It ticks a few boxes and for this reason Amazon will shift a few I’m sure.

Then I thought about the product design and decided that it’s a lame dog. It has some weird, flimsy, asymmetrical form that looks a little like James Bond’s underwater Lotus Esprit.. A little 80s.

Kindle

Lotus Esprit

The interaction looks far too complicated and it smacks of ‘get it to market quick’. It could have been soooooo much better, so much more desirable, so much easier to use. Also it seems that the interaction itself is awkward, scrolling up and down aligning a little cursor with menu commands rather than selecting them.

However I am a fan of the electronic paper screen, it’s just a shame it couldn’t be tough screen, but then that would defeat the point right?

But this isn’t the problem I se with this device.

My main reasons this won’t be the ‘next big thing’

• People love books. A bookshelf says a million things about its owner and people love the tactility of paper, the romance of curling up under a reading lamp in a comfy chair and losing themselves.

  The books we read represent us in some way, they have ‘self-expressive benefits’ to quote ‘Aaker’. To have read, own and display works by Shakespeare, Brontë and Dickens says something about the individual. The collection of books one has says something about the owner. Why else would we all have bookshelves? Okay, so they are practical, but they could easily be hidden.

  The same goes for newspapers. It brands an individual to be seen reading the FT, The Independent, The Guardian, The Sun, The Daily Mirror.

• It has DRM and apparently spies on you . Has Amazon learned nothing? You can’t ‘lend’ books. PEOPLE LOVE LENDING BOOKS!
• The product design sucks and the interaction is a little fussy. Before iPod, listening to music, changing track, albums and artists etc was a little less-than-slick. iPod made it slick. The Kindle flashes as you do things. HOW ANNOYING! This is not slick. It’s slow.

  You have to pay for blogs if you download them but can browse them in the web browser for free. Weird.

• People don’t consume books like they do music. With music you flit between things. The Kindle can’t ‘do an iPod’ which changed the way we listened to music. It broke the CD model. The Kindle has nothing to break, no stranglehold to release.
• People don’t want another device in their bag. “Keys check, wallet check, phone check, blackberry check, laptop check, kindle…? Sod it I have my phone/blackberry/laptop”

The name Kindle is rubbish.

It’s exciting because:

• It’s a very cheap mobile bookshop
• The screen is a great step forward
• It has the potential to change the way [some] people read

Sure some will fly of the shelves, but at $400 it’s simply too much for £50 man. People will offset the amount of books they read and think it’s not worth it.

It appeal to the niche. The tech geeks, the academics but it won’t light the fire for my younger brother. As one reviewers says:

“If you travel a lot, or require rapid and accurate access to references (as I do), the Kindle is definitely soon to be a necessity. I am a medical student, and I loaded an entire medical library onto the one I’ve been beta testing”

Having said all this, I might get one… For research purposes of course.

Blyk has landed, mobile operators take heed.

Launched on Monday this week, Blyk is a new mobile MNVO (mobile network virtual operator) to hit the UK where everything is ‘free’. Users of the service will get 217 free texts and 42 free minutes when the insert the Blyk SIM into their handset.

It’s paid for by advertising where users of the service will receive up to 6 MMS advertising messeages per day. You have to be 16-24 years old to play and the segmentation model and value exchange between Blyk and user is such that the free service is given in exchange fo personal information. So, potentially a very tightly targetted advertising indeed.

Blyk CEO sas:

“We have spent the last year developing a unique, robust advertising content engine, and whilst the technology we are using is incredibly advanced, the main premise of Blyk is driven by three basic principles–ease of use, interaction, and relevance of communication.”

And the killer?

It’s invite only.

Watch the kids go mad for something you can’t see.

Apparently they are distributing invite codes at Freshers fairs at the moment.

It asumes that the individual has a mobile already so that they can insert their Blyk SIM. When their ‘free’ time runs out they can either ‘top-up’ or throw in their regular PAYG SIM from ‘monolithic operator X’ into their handset.

Users of the service need to provide quite detailed information to make the advertising engine worth it’s salt. Apparently the segmentation already narrowed to 16-24 year olds can be further focused into product specific categories i.e. 17 year old boys who love Halo 3.

At the time of writing the Blyk site is down (demand? ) so I can’t comment on the proposed service design, but I’d be let down if there wasn’t something to manage, share use and distribute content online. Then again, maybe it’s all about keeping it imple.

I know from my own experience working with large Telcos (BT, Orange, Vodafone) that their segmentation is vague to say the least but Blyk has the potential to go super-focused and generate some super-revenue.

What a fantastic idea. I want one. I’m too old.

Disruption alert.

Disruption for the telcos and for advertising.

Links: Blyk

UPDATE: Blyk has come under fire for failing to deliver MMS users to the Orange, T-Mobile and Vidafone networks because the connections are ’still under construction’. Very embarrassing indeed given that it delivers its 6 ads a day using MMS.

Watch this one roll.