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Published On: Jul 04, 2007 09:00 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2007 09:00 PM
iHype? Not so much
As Dave Haxton pointed out, as of a few days ago, the era of
the iPhone is upon us.
And yes, I was there.
I wasn't in one of the big Apple stores in New York or Los Angeles. When six o'clock rolled around, I quietly drove to my local AT&T store, and got in line behind five other people. My previous service with Verizon had been less than stellar in this area, and it was time for a change. I had just been waiting to switch to AT&T when the iPhone came out, although I wasn't actually convinced I was going to get one until I saw it.
Ya'll know I'm biased toward Apple, being a long-term user of their products and a previous stockholder in the company. For that reason feel free to add as many proverbial grains of salt as you like when I tell you THAT THIS THING IS FRIGGING AWESOME! I'm using features that I thought would go useless (useless in the sense of not being used, rather than not having a use).
So, from the top:
SETUP: After taking the phone out of the box, I plugged it into my computer to register for the service. I ran into a few problems and had to call an AT&T help line at one point, but I did manage to set up an account (I will say that I wasn't terribly thrilled that the credit check code I'd been given at the AT&T store didn't work, and that I wasn't able to transfer my number from Verizon, but these are both things I can live with). After that everything went smoothly.
PHONING: I'm really impressed with how easy it is to make a call. Early reviews had complained about it taking too many steps to place a call to someone, but I haven't noticed that as a problem. iTunes syncs my address book straight from my computer into the phone; when I click on the phone button, I see a list of the names, and I click on the name and then the number, and it dials. The speakerphone is impressive, but I have to admit that when it's on I have to hold the phone as far away from my mouth as possible, or the people on the other end complain about the volume. I haven't really used any of the conference call features or visual voicemail, but I think I could if it came up.
iPODDING: The iPod interface on the iPhone is fairly familiar and simple to use. It resembles my most recent previous iPod, with a few extra kicks thrown in, like the shuffling album cover selection thing (there's an official name for it, but I don't remember what it is). The only problem that I had here was a difficulty figuring out how to leave the shuffling album screen and go back to the iPod menu so that I could select a TV show. Speaking of that, I've watched two episodes of Veronica Mars (alas! now cancelled) on my iPhone, which is two more episodes of TV shows than I ever expected to watch on my phone. Good screen quality, and it doesn't drain the battery very much at all -- one tiny little slice was gone off the battery monitor after watching one episode.
Speaker quality is excellent; the speakers are located at the bottom of the unit. When watching video, I've found it's best to curl the palm of one's hand around the bottom of the phone to angle the sound toward you; when just listening to music, you can just lay the phone down and aim the bottom at yourself.
EMAILING: It was easy to set up my .Mac email account, and I have it set to sync up whenever I click on the mail button. I had it set to auto-sync every 5 minutes, but it was rather annoying when it would do the "new mail chime" in the middle of the night. Sending mail is easy, and I really can't complain very much about the onscreen keyboard; it's easy to use and a lot easier for me than using a numeric numberpad to type text. However, with emailing, the screen is always vertical -- with the phone held in an up-and-down position -- it doesn't rotate based on the orientation of the phone. This crams the keyboard together a little more than with, for example, the web-browsing Safari window, which reorients horizontally when you turn the phone horizontal, stretching out the keyboard. It really makes a difference for my fat little fingers, but doesn't slow me down too much.
I'll just add I was really surprised at the handling of attachments -- for some reason I wasn't expecting large JPEG images -- 3 megs plus -- to render, but they did! The first time, though, one of them locked up my phone, and I had to restart it. It worked fine after that, though.
WEB BROWSING: I've already mentioned the typing/screen orientation thing, so I'll focus on what iPhone Safari can and can't do. It can render message boards and such complicated pages perfectly, and I've been able to post responses and start new threads on various boards I frequent. It won't, however, run Flash or, what I found particularly strange in an Apple product, Quicktime movies on web pages.
Not really much else to say here; the browser mainly just works. Various reviewers have trashed the AT&T Edge network. It's certainly not the fastest thing ever, but it's much faster than dialup. All in all, I have no complaints there. My phone's faster at browsing and email when I'm at home on my Wi-Fi, but it works fine elsewhere as well.
YOUTUBING: Meh. I don't really care one way or the other about this one, but I don't like that I can't log into my YouTube account and view my favorites.
PHOTOGRAPHING: Haven't used it. I've played with it, though, and it's easy enough to use. I also like being able to keep my photo albums from my laptop on the phone so that I can, for example say "Hey! Check out these photos from Italy!" and instantly bore someone into leaving me alone.
MISCELLANEOUS STUFF: Google Maps work fine, but are fairly useless for me. If there was a built-in GPS which worked with the map images then it would be a useful thing for me, but it's not. I like the weather and stock functions -- they both resemble OS X Dashboard Widgets, and are easy to modify. I haven't used the Calendar at all. SMS texting works great, and are organized like on iChat (look it up on apple.com if you have no idea what I'm talking about).
That's pretty much it, ya'll. Overall, I'm impressed. Oh, and I"ve dropped it twice and the screen hasn't shattered (although one time that I dropped it it was because the belt snap on my acrylic case from Belkin broke in half, so I'm not happy about that purchase.
And yes, I was there.
I wasn't in one of the big Apple stores in New York or Los Angeles. When six o'clock rolled around, I quietly drove to my local AT&T store, and got in line behind five other people. My previous service with Verizon had been less than stellar in this area, and it was time for a change. I had just been waiting to switch to AT&T when the iPhone came out, although I wasn't actually convinced I was going to get one until I saw it.
Ya'll know I'm biased toward Apple, being a long-term user of their products and a previous stockholder in the company. For that reason feel free to add as many proverbial grains of salt as you like when I tell you THAT THIS THING IS FRIGGING AWESOME! I'm using features that I thought would go useless (useless in the sense of not being used, rather than not having a use).
So, from the top:
SETUP: After taking the phone out of the box, I plugged it into my computer to register for the service. I ran into a few problems and had to call an AT&T help line at one point, but I did manage to set up an account (I will say that I wasn't terribly thrilled that the credit check code I'd been given at the AT&T store didn't work, and that I wasn't able to transfer my number from Verizon, but these are both things I can live with). After that everything went smoothly.
PHONING: I'm really impressed with how easy it is to make a call. Early reviews had complained about it taking too many steps to place a call to someone, but I haven't noticed that as a problem. iTunes syncs my address book straight from my computer into the phone; when I click on the phone button, I see a list of the names, and I click on the name and then the number, and it dials. The speakerphone is impressive, but I have to admit that when it's on I have to hold the phone as far away from my mouth as possible, or the people on the other end complain about the volume. I haven't really used any of the conference call features or visual voicemail, but I think I could if it came up.
iPODDING: The iPod interface on the iPhone is fairly familiar and simple to use. It resembles my most recent previous iPod, with a few extra kicks thrown in, like the shuffling album cover selection thing (there's an official name for it, but I don't remember what it is). The only problem that I had here was a difficulty figuring out how to leave the shuffling album screen and go back to the iPod menu so that I could select a TV show. Speaking of that, I've watched two episodes of Veronica Mars (alas! now cancelled) on my iPhone, which is two more episodes of TV shows than I ever expected to watch on my phone. Good screen quality, and it doesn't drain the battery very much at all -- one tiny little slice was gone off the battery monitor after watching one episode.
Speaker quality is excellent; the speakers are located at the bottom of the unit. When watching video, I've found it's best to curl the palm of one's hand around the bottom of the phone to angle the sound toward you; when just listening to music, you can just lay the phone down and aim the bottom at yourself.
EMAILING: It was easy to set up my .Mac email account, and I have it set to sync up whenever I click on the mail button. I had it set to auto-sync every 5 minutes, but it was rather annoying when it would do the "new mail chime" in the middle of the night. Sending mail is easy, and I really can't complain very much about the onscreen keyboard; it's easy to use and a lot easier for me than using a numeric numberpad to type text. However, with emailing, the screen is always vertical -- with the phone held in an up-and-down position -- it doesn't rotate based on the orientation of the phone. This crams the keyboard together a little more than with, for example, the web-browsing Safari window, which reorients horizontally when you turn the phone horizontal, stretching out the keyboard. It really makes a difference for my fat little fingers, but doesn't slow me down too much.
I'll just add I was really surprised at the handling of attachments -- for some reason I wasn't expecting large JPEG images -- 3 megs plus -- to render, but they did! The first time, though, one of them locked up my phone, and I had to restart it. It worked fine after that, though.
WEB BROWSING: I've already mentioned the typing/screen orientation thing, so I'll focus on what iPhone Safari can and can't do. It can render message boards and such complicated pages perfectly, and I've been able to post responses and start new threads on various boards I frequent. It won't, however, run Flash or, what I found particularly strange in an Apple product, Quicktime movies on web pages.
Not really much else to say here; the browser mainly just works. Various reviewers have trashed the AT&T Edge network. It's certainly not the fastest thing ever, but it's much faster than dialup. All in all, I have no complaints there. My phone's faster at browsing and email when I'm at home on my Wi-Fi, but it works fine elsewhere as well.
YOUTUBING: Meh. I don't really care one way or the other about this one, but I don't like that I can't log into my YouTube account and view my favorites.
PHOTOGRAPHING: Haven't used it. I've played with it, though, and it's easy enough to use. I also like being able to keep my photo albums from my laptop on the phone so that I can, for example say "Hey! Check out these photos from Italy!" and instantly bore someone into leaving me alone.
MISCELLANEOUS STUFF: Google Maps work fine, but are fairly useless for me. If there was a built-in GPS which worked with the map images then it would be a useful thing for me, but it's not. I like the weather and stock functions -- they both resemble OS X Dashboard Widgets, and are easy to modify. I haven't used the Calendar at all. SMS texting works great, and are organized like on iChat (look it up on apple.com if you have no idea what I'm talking about).
That's pretty much it, ya'll. Overall, I'm impressed. Oh, and I"ve dropped it twice and the screen hasn't shattered (although one time that I dropped it it was because the belt snap on my acrylic case from Belkin broke in half, so I'm not happy about that purchase.
Posted: Wed - July 4, 2007 at 09:00 PM |
