Apple iPhone - Review

[farhan]

Introduction

I got my hands on the long anticipated new gadget by Apple – the iPhone. The phone or more appropriately the iPhone was initially released in two flash based storage versions, the 4GB and 8GB but now the 4GB version has been scrapped and only the 8GB model is for sale.

In simple words iPhone is a WiFi, Blutooth, USB- enabled mobile device which you can also use to listen to songs and watch videos. Oh and yeah you can make calls with it too:

Currently, it’s being offered solely on an AT&T contracts but hackers around the world have got around this restriction and now you can “unlock” your iPhone (at your own risk) to work with other carriers.

Unboxing

Inside the cute little black iPhone box is the iPhone and a packet with the iPhone booklet and a soft wipe cloth. Underneath, there is a standard iPod/iPhone USB connection cable, a tiny AC adapter, a dock, and the iPhone headphones.

Size Comparison

Size-wise the iPhone’s is almost identical to the regular iPod Video, maybe a little taller. I personally don’t like to get into numbers but for those of you who do here are the dimension details

Height: 4.5 inches
Wdith: 2.4 inches
Thickness: 0.46 inches
Weight: 4.7 ounces

For me its how the phone feels in the hand or in the pocket. And the iPhone seemed to be very comfortable to hold as well as to keep in the pocket. You don’t get that feeling of uneasiness that you get when u have other PDA’s like the K-Jam or that huge brick called the Jasjar.

I found the phone to be just right weight wise as well – not too bulky like Nokia 9500 nor too light like the Samsung or Motorola phones. Holding it, you get the feeling of a solid, well-built phone, which in my opinion; the iPhone is, as are all products made by Apple.

In short, the iPhone isn't the world's smallest phone, but its sleek design and particularly its thickness make it an easy phone to pocket.

Design Details

On the front of the iPhone there is a single button: the home button. On the left side, there is a silent ringer switch and volume controls; on the top, a recessed headphone jack, a sleep/wake switch, and the SIM card slot. There is nothing on the right side of the phone, and a tiny camera lens rides on the back.

The most noticeable thing about the iPhone is its large screen and lack of physical buttons. This is because the futuristic touch screen interface has been given the responsibility to handle all the user input/interaction. Despite the fact that the glossy glass surface does get very smudgy after much use, when the screen is on, the smudges are a non-issue because you can't easily see them.

The iPhone has an ambient light sensor built into it, too, so that the brightness of the device automatically adjusts to what it thinks is appropriate based on its surroundings. However, for control freaks, the ambient light sensor can be turned off via the iPhone's settings, and the brightness of the screen can be controlled manually.

The Accelerometer

The iPhone also has an accelerometer that allows the phone to tell when it has changed from upright to landscape position and vice versa or for the newbies here who do not know what an accelerometer is, the iPhone has this awesome ability to change its screen orientation automatically when you rotate it , as if by magic. This is a cool feature for when you're surfing web pages, viewing photos, and watching videos. All you have to do is change the physical orientation of the device, and it will change the screen accordingly.
It won't change to landscape mode and back under all circumstances; you have to be holding it at the correct angle, or else the iPhone ignores you. But its just a matter of getting used to handling the device. And soon you will be able to control orientation of your device completely. This feature really adds value to the overall wow factor of the device and gives it a more futuristic look.

General Usage

The iPhone home screen is where you can find everything you'll need to make use of the iPhone's functionality. Any one of the icons can be tapped with your fingertip to access that particular function, and you can return to the home screen at any time by pressing the one and only button on the front of the iPhone. The four main buttons across the bottom of the screen represent what Apple considers to be the phone's main functionalities: phone, mail, Safari (web browsing), and iPod. This is like the famous Dock which the Mac users are familiar with and windows users try to imitate.

One interesting thing about the iPhone is that by returning to the home screen in the middle of doing something else (say, checking e-mail or loading a web page), you are not "quitting" out of that application. The iPhone allows you to multi-task and do multiple things at once, so if you fire up a song on the iPod, you can return to the home screen and check some e-mail, go load a few web pages in Safari and, while those are loading, go back and make a phone call. The iPhone always saves whatever you were doing in each separate application, and that's what will come up by default when you return to that app.

This functionality can both be annoying and a blessing, depending on what you were expecting when you went to a specific e-mail account, returned to the home screen, and then tapped "mail" again. Some people would rather return to the main mail screen with multiple accounts listed, while others like being taken back to exactly the same spot they left it at. This is a matter of personal preference.

SIM card

The SIM card is accessible through the slot on the top of the iPhone and can be popped out with the help of a paperclip or safety pin. The SIM itself, once activated with AT&T, can be used in other AT&T-compatible phones, but the iPhone cannot be used as a phone without a SIM. It can, however, be used as an iPod and a WiFi Internet device without a SIM.

WiFi

The iPhone currently only supports 802.11b/g networks, not 802.11n.
Selecting and joining a WiFi network is as simple as tapping on the desired network and entering the password (if one is required). You can specify a static IP or a proxy server, but the default settings have the iPhone picking up an IP automatically through DHCP, and this works most of the time.

Keyboard

The keyboard/keypad is the single most important thing in on mobile device because lets face it if the keyboard/keypad is crappy, the device is crappy. It means all your SMS, notes, mails, browsing; almost everything is useless. In that respect the iPhone touchscreen keyboard was a major gamble on Apple’s part. It had to work or critics would eat it alive with taunting comparison to the much appreciated blackberry.

For me atleast, the keyboard is does seem to work efficiently though it requires some getting used to time. After several hours of solid use, I became significantly better at using the keyboard. After two days, browsing, writing message and even multi-page emails wasn’t a problem.

The word recognition software that is tied to the iPhone's keyboard is extremely intelligent. You can severely mangle words, and the iPhone will typically figure out what you were attempting to write, as long as it's a dictionary word. But thats not all, it also adds frequently used words into the dictionary so its not a hassle to correct spelling every time for the people , like me, who use a mixture of urdu and english in their SMS/emails. The keyboard software tracks the pattern of keys that you've pressed and tries to predict the words that you're typing. As you progress through a word, not only does iPhone refine its prediction about what you are typing, but it also reduces the hit area for keys surrounding what iPhone thinks is your next key to hit. This isn't 100 percent perfect, but it greatly reduces mistyped characters for experienced users.

iPhone also looks at the keys surrounding the keys that you've already hit in order to determine whether you had meant to hit the "w" key instead of the "q" key when typing "qhen," for example. Type in "eorld" and iPhone will figure out that you're trying to write "world."

If you don't want the iPhone to correct a word, you tap the word that you were spelling and it will use the word that you had typed. This is also how you add words to the dictionary that aren't already in there. One problem, however, is that if you accidentally add words to the dictionary, there seem to be no way to remove them. On the BlackBerry it is very easy to edit your custom word list. On the iPhone you have two choices: live with it, or nuke your entire custom dictionary.

More noticeable is the lack of basic punctuation on the main keyboard. The lack of a period, comma, and a question mark is unfortunate. Switching to another keyboard screen for basic punctuation should not be necessary, and it definitely slows you down.

Two more keyboard kinks must be mentioned. The placement of the delete/backspace key in the bottom right corner leads us to an unfair share of false hits. Also, Apple has only enabled the wider, horizontal keyboard for Safari, which is irritating because it is both wider and the keys larger. This would be great to use for mail, for instance.

Safari

Web browsing on the iPhone is a dream. I have used mobile web browsing on the SE w810i web browser to the Pocket IE on the Imate Jasjar but I have to admit the iPhone's web browsing experience is far superior to anything that I had ever used prior.

Safari on the iPhone functions as a full-blown, computer-based web browser and can load any web page that is compatible with similar versions of Safari on the computer. I not only browsed sites like Yahoo, Football365, Espnstar and other text heavy sites, I also used interactive sites like GMail, Hotmail, and our very own WCCFTECH

If you chose to sync your bookmarks and browser history with the iPhone, it has everything stored as if you were on your home computer. This means that you can either access your bookmarks by going to the bookmark menu......or you can begin typing in the URL and the iPhone will search your bookmarks and history to find sites that match up. If the site you're trying to go to shows up in the list underneath the address field, all you have to do is tap it to load it in a browser window.

What makes the iPhone's web browsing so outstanding is its approach to limited screen space. A web page loads in its entirety in each browser window, shrunk down to fit the screen. Zooming in and out of various parts of the window is simple and can be done in one of two ways: double-tapping on a section of the browser or "reverse-pinching" the screen (where you start with your thumb and index fingers together and move them away from each other).

There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Double-tapping can accidentally click on links you weren't intending to click, and sometimes it's not your fault. When an entire page is loaded on the screen, you often cannot even see the links you are clicking on. On the plus side, double-tap centers the screen on your tap and zooms optimally to show the surrounding context. If a web page is separated into sections and div tags, double-tapping on a certain area will zoom into that div (for example) so that it fits perfectly to the screen.

Reverse-pinch zoom allows you to zoom further into a page than you could possibly want. It's very flexible, very fast, and almost poised to make double-tap useless. The biggest flaw with using pinch actions for zoom is that the screen is not centered on your pinch. If you are reading something on the left side of the browser and use reverse-pinch to zoom in, you will have to reorient the browser over to the left again.

My favorite part about the browser, though, is the "tabs." They're not actually tabs in the traditional sense, but they function the same way that tabs in a normal browser would function. You can load multiple browser windows at once and switch between them whenever you want without having to close them or stop their activities. Even though getting into this habit can remind you of how slow EDGE is when you're sitting on the train trying to load six pages at once, it's still a multitasker's dream to be able to do this on a mobile device. When scrolling (or "flicking" as the case may be) between your open tabs, Safari shows you a shrunken-down version of the site as well as the name of the site at the top of the screen so that you're never confused as to what you're clicking on.

There are other helpful little tidbits, too. While the iPhone lacks cut/copy/paste capabilities, Apple has built in a few little helpful functionalities, such as the "Share" function in Safari. When typing in a URL, you can tap the "Share" button at any time, which will send that URL to a new e-mail message. You can then e-mail the link to anyone you want.
Overall, Safari on the iPhone provides a superior mobile browsing experience that is unmatched by any mobile browser I have used.

SMS

Unlike pretty much every other phone on earth, the SMS interface on the iPhone is set up conversation-style, complete with colored chat bubbles like Apple's chat program on the Mac, iChat. Instead of showing a giant list of incoming SMSes and a separate list of outgoing SMSes, with multiple conversations mixed together, the iPhone displays each conversation as just that: a back-and-forth conversation that can be read over and actually understood. This makes the SMS experience infinitely better.

The iPhone keeps a log of all the conversations you have had (or are currently having), separated by conversation partner. You can clear the chat history at any time by tapping the "Clear" button at the top of your conversation.
Clearly, SMS is set up in a way that makes it as visually pleasing and usable as possible.

On the negative side, the iPhone cannot send SMSes to multiple recipients at a time (also known as the "mass SMS" among friends of ours), and does not currently have MMS support; that is, you can't text-message your friends a photo or movie, for example, and they can't send you one either. If someone tries to send you one, the iPhone displays a SMS saying that the person tried to send you an MMS and that it can be viewed online. This is quite a puzzling omission for the iPhone, and we can only hope that it's added in the future.

Another little issue is that you cant forward a message sent by someone to another person. Again this is one of the features that comes in even the most standard Phones like Nokia 1100. Its omissions like these which beg the question how could anyone forget this?

YouTube

Using the YouTube widget is simple to figure out; you can look through a list of favorites, popular videos, recently-watched videos, or search for your own videos. Tapping on a video in the list will bring it up in full, widescreen mode. Video quality is surprisingly good, depending on the quality of the source.
You can share a link to any given YouTube video by tapping the e-mail icon, which will open up a new e-mail message with a link to the YouTube video inside.

This feature is certainly cute and handy when you're bored out of your mind and have already surfed the entire Internet in Safari. However, I would be willing to trade YouTube for some of the other nits that have come up thus far, without a doubt.

Maps and Other Widgets

Maps is another nice feature the iPhone offers.You need to be near a Wifi access point or have Edge working on your device to use it. Just like Google Maps on a computer, Maps on the iPhone allows you to search for businesses or addresses nearby using any number of criteria. Looking for nearest Starbucks is as easy as putting in your Zipcode.

Though this feature won't be of much use to the users here in Pakistan (since no detailed maps exist for Pakistan), the ability to get satellite images similar to those from Google Earth will provide good pass time for all the navigators amongst us. Maps is definitely a very handy tool to have in your phone if your living in the US.

Other widgets included on the iPhone that make use of the Internet connection include the Weather widget, Stocks widget, and the Clock widget. These all look and work in the exact same way as they do on the Mac's Dashboard. You can keep track of any number of time zones simultaneously through the world clock, enter all of your own stock symbols to constantly monitor them in the Stock widget, and keep track of the weather forecast for as many cities as you'd like in the Weather widget. Again, they're helpful but not required to have a fulfilling iPhone experience.

Making calls

Here's a quick tour of the basic features: in order to dial a number that's not in your contacts list, all you have to do is hit the Phone button from the home screen and make sure that you are on the keypad, then dial away.

To call a contact, tap Contacts once you are in Phone mode, and you will see a list of contacts to choose from. Tapping that contact will show you all of his or her information, and if there are multiple phone numbers to choose from (say one for work, one for home, and one for their mobile phone), you will be able to choose which number to call. Tapping that number will automatically call that contact.

While on a call, you can do a number of things, such as swap calls (if you have more than one person on the line), merge calls (so that you can have a conference call), mute, switch back to the keypad, go to speakerphone, and view your contacts. You can also go back to the iPhone's home screen and do any number of non-phone activities while on the phone, although this means that you should be conducting the phone-call part of your multitasking adventure over a headset of some sort. Regarding the conference call features: you can conference in up to five people at once.

Call quality of the iPhone appeared to be fine from both ends. At times, I felt that the volume was a bit low even while maxed out, however. This can prove frustrating in louder environments; a louder max volume will definitely be appreciated..

The speaker-phone volume was the same: tolerable, but quiet. If you attempt to use the speaker-phone to conduct a call in anything but a quiet room or office, doing so will be irritating. The quietness of the speaker-phone in phone mode is somewhat puzzling, since playing music or videos through that same speaker is significantly louder. This is a major downside for some who use the speaker-phone a lot, and so we can only hope that Apple does something to remedy the volume issue in future iterations of the iPhone.

The volume woes don't just end there. You can only change the sound for the actual phone ring itself; the sounds for SMS alerts, e-mail alerts, and almost any other type of alert (aside from alarm clock) are preset and unchangeable.
You cannot currently use your own ringtone for the phone ring; you must select from what Apple gives you by default.The large majority of the available ringtones, while audibly pleasing, are far too quiet at maximum volume.

IPOD

With all the excitement about what the iPhone can do as an Internet device and a phone, it's sometimes easy to forget that it's an iPod, too. But it's not like any old iPod; both the interface and the controls of the iPod in the iPhone are different from what we know and love from iPods past.

The interface is similar to that of the "regular" iPod and just as intuitive. Once you enter into iPod mode, you can look at your playlists that you have synced, as well as a list of artists, songs, and videos. Scrolling through the lists is done the same way as scrolling through anything else on the iPhone: using your fingertip, you flick up and down in the list (or drag along a slider) until you find what you're looking for. A few taps later (depending on what you're looking for), and you're listening to some jams.

Videos on the iPhone are displayed horizontally, the same way that YouTube videos are displayed. They're shown in full screen mode with controls that disappear after a few seconds, but touching the screen will bring them back if you want to skip ahead, back, play/pause, or scrub.

The iPhone can play movies, music videos, and video podcasts from the iTunes Store, but it can also play other videos. Anything that is compatible with iTunes can be transferred to the iPhone. Audio quality on the iPhone is good identical to the 5th-generation video iPod.

A cool feature of the headphones, though, is that they can also be used to take calls. If you are listening to a song, and a call comes in, you can click the headphones to pause the music and answer the call. The clicker acts as a microphone, so you can conduct an entire phone call through the included Apple headphones. To hang up, you can click it again and return to your music.

Overall, the iPod functionality was cool and very easy to learn. It certainly adds some usefulness to the device. If you're the type of person who carries around both an iPod and a phone, the iPhone certainly offers a nice amalgamation of the two-in-one gadget. And especially if you're not the type to carry around 80GB of music with you at all times, the iPhone could potentially replace your old phone and your iPod nano/shuffle.

Battery Life

When using the iPhone as a phone, I got about 6 hours of battery time with the regular WiFi and stuff on. So that’s pretty good considering Apple advertised 8 hours of voice calling time with WiFi off.

Apple advertises "up to" 24 hours of audio playback based on certain configurations of the iPhone's settings (WiFi and cell phone capabilities turned off). From what I figured out, you get about 12 hours of constant playback with all other features WiFi, Phone mode ON.

For average on-and-off use throughout the day, the iPhone generally lasts about a day or slightly longer before needing a recharge. This is generally how most people use their smartphones, and so I was satisfied with the result. The overall "general use" battery life is on par with other smartphone devices that I have used.

Camera


The picture has been scaled down for the sake of this review, the native resolution of the picture is 1600x1200
Click here for the original picture

The iPhone comes with a built-in 2-megapixel camera on the back. The interface can be accessed by tapping the "Camera" icon on the home screen and is very simplistic. Apple has animated a camera shutter that opens up when you select the camera which also closes when you take a picture (probably to mask the time it takes to save a photo).

There have also been some complaints about the camera's quality in the iPhone; however, I think that it was largely acceptable as a cameraphone. You can see, it takes a decent picture with proper lighting.

Some major downsides to the iPhone's camera abilities are that it doesn't have support for digital zoom like most cameras do, and it has no setting for night photos. Therefore, the iPhone can only take very limited photos in dim lighting and almost no photos whatsoever when it gets downright "dark."

Another glaring omission is the lack of video capabilities in the iPhone's camera: something that many very basic (and much cheaper) handsets can do. If Apple wants this to be a full-fledged multimedia device, adding video capabilities almost seems crucial. Plus, how cool would it be to be able to take video from the iPhone and then view it right there on that giant widescreen?

Bluetooth

Bluetooth on the iPhone is, to say it nicely, very limited. There are very limited functions that Bluetooth can be used for: connecting with a wireless Bluetooth headset and controlling the iPod (audio) through a compatible system such as that in BMWs. To people who are used to using their phones with their computers for much more, you will be sorely disappointed.

This sucks for a number of reasons. Probably affecting the most people, it obviously means that you won't be able to wirelessly sync the iPhone with the computer for anything, even non-media items such as contacts and calendar info.

The iPhone's inability to connect to a computer in any meaningful way over Bluetooth leaves us very disappointed. It also means that you can't use the iPhone as a Bluetooth modem and the lack of this feature is a deal-breaker for many people who view a smartphone as a device that can be used with a computer as well as by itself.

Conclusion

The concept of the iPhone is great. It's extremely easy to use and almost entirely self-discoverable; the interface looks better than any other phone—smartphone or not—currently on the market, and it's just plain fun to use..

Then there's the stuff that just isn't right with the iPhone. The ringer/alert volume issue is silly, the inability to use it as a modem via Bluetooth or any other method is irritating, and third-party application support is weak. The camera video support seems to just have been forgotten.

Some of these features can actually be added via firmware updates. Apple has said publicly that they plan to continue to update the iPhone with new features that you’ll just download into the phone. Nevertheless, these features are missing today and some of them are key and makes me scratch my head as to why they are not there now?

Pros:

• Web surfing experience is superior to other phones
• Overall SMS experience is great
• Practically non-scratchable
• Looks fantastic in every way
• Easy to use, self-discoverable
• Soft keyboard is definitely usable
• iPod interface rocks
• Videos is nice

Cons:

• iPhone is currently locked to AT&T
• Lack of third party application support
• Only way to Connect to the PC/MAC is through itunes
• No wireless syncing over Bluetooth or WiFi, must tether via USB, no modem use at all
• Extremely quiet ringer/alert/speakerphone volume
• No MMS, Mass SMS and Forward SMS support
• No Copy/Paste facility
• No Video Recorder or Voice Recorder
• The video interface isnt user friendly Moving between scenes in a video using the progress bar is utterly painful
• Non-Removable Battery

The Bottom Line

The iPhone is a huge step forward in the right direction. The more I use it the more it makes me smile and I catch myself thinking “this is so cool!” The iPhone is not perfect by any means. Show me a smartphone that is. Some of the missing features just make me smack my forehead and say “how in the heck could they have left that off?” However, the iPhone is the most interesting phone I’ve seen to date. Like it or not, the iPhone HAS changed the world of cell phones forever. Apple has raised the bar and everyone else has to now step up. I’m pleased with what I got and if you ask me “would I buy it again?” The answer is a resounding YES!

Apart from all(Homer Simpson style) “Doh!” missing features, I will give the iPhone a juicy 8/10 on the wow factor alone.

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