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

It’s all part of the process – Paper Prototyping

Nothing to see here.

I just love seeing lots of the same thing together. Although users never actually see your site like this (of course not). I always find it useful way to stand back and see the level of complexity you may be asking them to navigate.

The ’stand back and go ‘ooh yeah, bit complex a’int it?’ test’™.

Fosta and I did a book about it once showing shops all with the same naming convention.

Snow point in travel websites, Twitter wins out

Britain is closed.

Today was always going to be hugely disrupted because of the ‘adverse weather’ but I tried to get into work anyway.

Prior to traveling I tried to check the necessary pages of National Rail, London Transport and SouthWest Trains only to be disappointed by Error 404 pages and Runtime Errors.

Even as early as 6 a.m. both the National Rail and SouthWest Trains websites were down. The IVR system wasn’t really working either due to ‘high demand’ and I hate IVRs that hang up on you and say ‘We’re busy, f*ck off and come back later’.

I turned to Twitter and received a flurry of decent travel, tailored and localised to my needs, giving me every piece of rumour and unfiltered conjecture I need to stay at home.

Thanks @jasonmesut for trying to get in and discovering that you can’t. You saved me some wet toes.

Rumour has it that the under 30s with no children are traveling in to work today (I’ll add the source later).

South West Trains Optimism

I was in the process of arranging my new train season ticket when I felt the need to ask customer services something.

Naturally I navigate to this form only to find that their default option for an enquiry is ‘Praise’.

Nice one.

Technorati Tags:
Train, Travel, User Experience, Customer Service, South West Trains, Interaction Design, Forms

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.

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

Tricked into sending invites to my contacts

DAMN YOU IMEEM.

DAMN YOU.

YOU TRICKED ME!

I recently set-up an account on Imeem for exploratory and research purposes and the process arrived at that ‘enter you Gmail address and we’ll see if there are any of your contact already n this site’ moments.

Except it wasn’t.

It was one of those ‘We’re being very sneaky and are going to send an invite to each and every one of your 400+ contacts, many of whom are clients that you haven’t spoken to for a while’ moments.

ARGGGHHHHHHH!

If you received an invite to Imeem on my behalf, I apologise.

I’ll review Imeem later, but they are not in my good books.

PayPal has a new look! So what?

I just received an email from PayPal telling me that “We’ve made PayPal easier to use – just our way of saying thanks for choosing us.”

Thanks for that.

Couldn’t you put more effort into your shockingly bad password retrieval process. It sucks and I always have to use it when I’m in the throws of a closing eBay auction.

There’s More to Shozu than Flickr Uploading

We’ve known about Shozu for a while now and have been using it to publish photos directly onto Flickr albeit not knowing how much it costs each time due to lack of transparency on the part of the networks. either way, we still keep playing because we love it.

I think that I was so enthralled that I could just get photos from my phone directly to Flickr (or whatever) that I didn’t really dive in to the other things that it can do. This post is a reminder, Shozu rocks on many fronts.

Shozu can upload images or video from your phone to any appropriate web service via API. It collects and remembers all your relevant user IDs for you and will act as a conduit between your phone and whatever service you like including Flickr, WordPress, Typepad, Blogger, Vox, LiveJournal, You Tube and a whole bunch more besides. Best if all it is free.

Apparently you can also hook it up to the BBC or CNN if you happen to be (un)fortunate enough to find yourself in a spot for some citizen journalism. Of course this requires foresight on the part of the user, but still very cool all the same.

Shozu Using Captcha

Originally uploaded by Snowbadger.

The only downside is that while networks continue to avoid allowing customers a flat fee per month, data charges lack transparency and are expensive and sending your 3 minute video clip to You Tube might cost you a few quid. Also, I’m not sure how you apply Creative Commons to these artifacts as you pass them to the likes of the BBC or CNN…?

Getting Shozu onto your phone is a little bit of a bind as I need the website to do so. It’s a shame that they didn’t make it easy to download via wap in my opinion but hey ho.

I’m currently sporting a Sony Ericsson w810i which is connected to the Orange network here in the UK so I have to go to Shozu’s website tell them my details and have the application delivered to my handset via wap-push. Of course, there is once again a leap of faith on your part, not knowing how much the download is going too cost. But in the interests of science, you’ll just plough on wondering what 267kb actually costs.

Still, all this is very nice but from a UX point of view it’s all a bit clunky. Any pictures I upload still require tagging, sorting, possibly even geotagging if I’m so inclined and the best place to do that is on the web.

Well, the new GPS enabled Nokias, see the N95, allow you to deal with one of those things as it’s now possible to autotag assets with geodata accurate to within 10m.

Yay, that’s meaningful to my Gran.

Apparently you have to run an app to unlock the functionality but the new version of Shozu will have a set-up function to do this for you. Aren’t they nice?

Anyway. This was just a reminder, I’m now off to start blindly sending images and video via Shozu to WordPress, Vox and You Tube.

I wonder how much it will all cost?

Shozu Using Captcha

I was just re-downloading Shozu to my phone so that I can send images directly to Flickr, video to You Tube and other stuff to my blog on WordPress when I was presented with the following madness:

Shozu Using Captcha

Originally uploaded by Snowbadger.

Captcha is not the most accessible of form validation, bot-destroying nonsense in any form, but this use of hieroglyphics astounded me. I have the feeling that anyone with dyslexia would be sent into a tailspin. It certainly made me think.

The best solution I ever heard of was the use of a field that users wouldn’t see and bots would, bots would fill it in and thus render the form submission invalid – I can’t remember where I saw this though.