Sunday, September 21, 2008
About the iPhone
About the IphoneI have been using the iphone for about a month now, and I guess it's time for my take on the iPhone. The MK's review.
For a smart-phone, the iPhone is quite dumb by today's standards. It doesn't allow you to copy-and-paste text, forward sms-es, search through emails, record video, no digital zoom, you can't share files via Bluetooth, send MMS-es, edit office documents and the list goes on.
It has no hardware keyboard, no removable battery, no support for flash files and only a two-megapixel camera.
Some of these deficiencies are startling and enough reason to keep some users away from an iPhone completely But why would thousands of others queue up at SingTel's ComCentre on the midnight of August 22nd, waiting for hours to get their hands on an iPhone?
It's all about style.
There's no other phone on the market generates the same level of attention or recognition from others when you whip it out for use in public.
People will go "omg, that's an iphone..." with instant recognition and that instantly elevates your status.
There is no lack of reviews on the iPhone everywhere. Most of them, however, tend to focus on what the iPhone can or cannot do. But just like the iPods, the iPhone really is about doing things with style. Style is after all the reason why iPods are the best-selling portable mp3 players around despite costing more and doing less than it's competitors.
In the case of the iPhone, style is defined largely by an intuitive and consistent interface: intuitive because you navigate with your thumbs and fingers on virtual buttons sized comfortably for use: consistent because the same swiping, pinching and tapping finger gestures work throughout the entire iPhone operating system and it's third-party applications.
The phone is designed so simply. It's only got one button. Everything else is either automatically detected by the myriad of sensors, or done with the same swiping action of your finger. The iphone has a proximity sensor that turns off the screen when you put the phone to your ear, it has a light sensor to automatically adjust the screen backlight according to the brightness of the background environment, and of course it's accelerometer that makes the iphone so unique.
Style is not about looks and feel: it is really about how things are done. Examining the oft-dubbed “iPhone-killers” for instance, the Samsung Omnia and the HTC Touch Diamond – reveals there are no shortage of eye candies.
Although both phones have attempted to emulate the iPhone by allowing users to scroll through their custom interfaces with the swipe of a finger, such behavior is not consistent throughout the entire phone.
The problem arises when users are thrown out of these custom interfaces, which are no more than application launchers, into native Windows Mobile applications. At which point, finger swiping no longer works and buttons return to their standard miniature sizes that are more suited for pin-point precision of a stylus than for use with fingertips or thumbs.
In contrast, because the iPhone was designed from the start to be used entirely with fingers and thumbs, every aspect of it's interface works well and naturally without the need for additional input devices (the Diamond includes a stylus and the Omnia has an optical mouse.)
It's about what you do.
Web surfing is probably the greatest strength of the iPhone. Several of it's features make surfing on it feasible and enjoyable. First, the large bright and high-resolution screen displays text clearly and crisply; second, the swiping of the pinching finger gestures allow for quick and natural navigation of the web pages; and third, the built-in mobile Safari brower displays web pages accurately and quickly.
The caveats are that the iPhone's browser cannot handle Flash (which locks you out of most web videos, as with the Omnia and the Diamond), and Java (used mainly for internet banking and some payment services).
But for just about everything else, the iPhone surfs the web well as a computer. You can access most of the NTU's web services, such as StudentLink , Edventure and webmail. Outside campus, having the internet available at your fingertips everywhere can save you the agony of wasting money on a lousy movie.
The Keyboard.
The iPhone's keyboard is easy to love and use. I make mistakes on it all the time, but the auto-correction technology works so well that I can blast messages off using both thumbs now. Ironically, for the amount of aversion the BlackBerry-maker has towards the iPhone's keyboard, I found the lack of a real plastic keyboard a blessing in disguise. Because there's no real buttons to press, typing requires minimal effort and results in no sore thumbs after typing a long email.
Finding your way around the built-in Google maps application with the scrolling, pinching and double tapping gestures beats flipping the street directory any day. And when you do make a wrong turn somewhere and find yourself lost, the built-in GPS of the iPhone 3G can locate you on the map most of the time in a matter of seconds, from which you can have the iPhone plan a route to your destination. Surprisingly Google maps can locate precisely whatever address you throw at it, as long as a block number and street name is included. It has a very useful function that allows you to map the place you want to go to, then it guides you there step-by-step.
If the GPS can't detect a signal, it will attempt to identify local hotspots DNS addresses and can then place you within the vicinity of a building.
The iPhone, 3G or not, is far from perfect. Features-wise, the new iPhone continues to suffer from some serious omission of features, some of 'them so basic in hand phones today that the question is inevitably raised of why a state-of-the-art phone can be so primitive in some areas.
Performance-wise, the new iPhone 2.0 software no longer runs as smoothly and stably as its older counterpart. Some parts of the phone now feel sluggish, particularly when searching through contacts. Some applications crash every now and then, and the phone itself hangs or restarts randomly once in a while (mine hung once and, restarted twice in the three weeks of extensive use).
The iPhone 2.1 update released last week promises to fix all these, but until more testing is done, it remains to be seen if all the problems will be fully addressed. For a smart phone that does a lot more, I have highlighted only, three functions that the iPhone does exceptionally well in. These alone, along with the phone (features of course, would have justified the price of the iPhone for me.
The iphone has a whole lot of other features and 3rd-party programs that you can install at your fancy. The entertainment value is endless because of it's built in accelerometer. This nifty sensor is what sets the iphone apart from it's counterparts as well. You can turn your phone into a speedometer, a dice (for board games), a G-force sensor, a labyrinth tilttable game, a leveling bubble, a ruler, graphic calculator, a guitar, a currency converter, and the list goes on for ever.
But for others, it could have been the iPod within-which I also use and like but did not write about in this article-having YouTube on the go, or the many third-party applications that are available to install right on the iPhone. The iPhone is great for people who are literally addicted to the internet, want to get work done on the go and .appreciate good style. For me, the two-and-a-half hours of travelling time daily can now be spent replying mails, or just surfing the web-that and listening to music. Even queuing for food in canteen A becomes bearable. But if you're one of those who are even considering not taking up a data plan with your iPhone, you are better off spending your money elsewhere-the iPhone is about having the internet with you everywhere.
MK-recommended if you can live with the short-comings.
Posted by MK at 2:17 PM
