Owners: What are your iPhone Impressions ?

[Pete_L_P]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to hear feedback from all of the new iphone users on ilounge, but I can't seem to find such a thread. If it's already here please forgive me, and direct me.

If not, please let us hear your reactions.

Pete

[Bakerman]

I love it. The technology is so far ahead of where I expected it to be. The interface is fantastic, and both the calling and iPod features are implemented well.

I forsee quite a bit of confusion in the coming weeks with the accessories for iPods, as to whether the work with the iPhone.

Overall, I am delighted.

[bigshot]

Here goes...

I've never had a cell phone before, but I own several Macs, including a Macbook. I've got multiple iPods (each with a different type of music) and a Honda Element with the line in and power for the iPod built into the dashboard.

I decided to stand in line for the iPhone at the last minute. I brought it back to my main computer to activate it, and within a few minutes, I had synced my contacts, loaded it with music, transferred my safari bookmarks and loaded a bunch of desktop images and slide shows. Everything synced perfectly.

Having never owned a cell phone before it would take some getting used to- I didn't realize at first that this isn't a phone receiver that you hold up to your head to use. The user interface, however took absolutely no time to get used to. I never bothered to download the pdf manual. Everything was perfectly logical and self explanatory. I gather that isn't typical of most cell phones.

The touch sensitive screen and typing are perfect. I want a laptop like this. The way the various functions interact- maps and google searching and dialing phone numbers and contacts in the address book and web surfing- all dovetail perfectly and simply. This is the most astounding thing about the iPhone, and you really can't get a feel for it until you actually use one.

I do have a couple of complaints. The included headphones and speakerphone functionality is marginal. I am going out tomorrow to get a bluetooth headset. It would have been nice to have GPS and a nice big hard drive. But I don't see this replacing an iPod, so I guess it doesn't really matter.

The thing I didn't realize until I actually got it was how it would work as a video player. I thought, how can this thing be useful with just 8 gigs of storage? Now I know. There are two types of networking... the AT&T EDGE and WiFi. With WiFi, online videos stream without a delay. Loading that YouTube video with the treadmills using EDGE was perfectly acceptable. It started playing pretty quick and looked fine on the screen. I never thought I would use streaming video on this, but I can see myself uploading a few M4P movies to my web server at a secret address and accessing them through safari. In fact, I'm going to try that right now!

Lots of fun

See ya
Steve

[CptanPanic]

I love my iphone.

[S2_Mac]

I don't need one, but here's Xeni Jardin's first take (along with several others) over at boingboing (http://www.boingboing.net/2007/06/29/jesusphone_he_is_ris.html).

[Mr. Fister]

Love my iPhone free basically after selling my launch PS3 on ebay for $1300

Never had an iPod and I was out of contract with T-Mobile

So I got a new number setup and activation took about 2 minutes



cant belive how far technology has come

[Pete_L_P]

I didn't realize at first that this isn't a phone receiver that you hold up to your head to use.
I don't think you meant what you wrote. You're saying you can't use your iPhone like a normal cell phone by holding it up to the head and talking?

[deftdrummer1]

no he's saying its so oddly shaped that it is not intended to be used as a phone-to-ear type of phone. It is, in actuality supposed to be used in whatever way is convenient at the time for you, but it is interesting to note that the size makes you not want to hold it to your ear. This reminds me of other "smart" phones. Hmmmmm

[joeylang]

Well this phone is absolutly amazing. I waited in line for over 10 hours and it was totally worth it. I am actually typing this message on my phone via wifi right now and it is super fast. It to so long to activate though. I actually have some funny stories though. when we were waiting in line there was a lady that drove up around 330 and she didn't want to wait in line and me and my dad had 2 spots in line at numbers 3 & 4 so we sold her number 4 for 200 dollars. Also, after i finally got it activated i showed my parents and they decided they liked it so much that they went and bought 2 more from the apple store today. It is a really great phone. I love it!

[deftdrummer1]

I see where you are coming from JoeyLang but maybe I'm not alone when I say I can't see your reasoning in doing that 100%. If you were in line with your father and knew that it essentially constituted as one place then what makes you feel you have the right to "sell" something that is virtually non-existent? Do you sell the "4th" place in line at the expense of the person behind you? Adding to their time lost standing around and / or possibly missing out on an iphone all together in some scenarios? Its to the point that there's no doubt in anyone's mind that this is the core of the American agenda.

[joeylang]

Well when that lady came there was only one more person behind us so we asked her first and she was getting paid to wait for her brother so she did t care and we just told everyone else we were holding of for a friend.

[deftdrummer1]

oh, that sounds a little different.

[ExtremeSIMS]

I am able to type on it very quickly, with a very short learning curve. I know that was a sticking point for some reviewers. I am as fast as I was on my Treo, and nearly as fast as I am on my 8525.
Yes, EDGE is slow. However, it's fast enough to pull down my email when not in use. I'm not a Blackberry addict, and am not constantly checking my email.
The screen is absolutely stunning. As I noted, I have an 8525 with a large screen, and this blows it away. I never really made time to watch the vidcasts I downloaded, since I sync those to my PSP, which I rarely carry with me. I always have my phone. While I was waiting on my wife yesterday at the mall, I got caught up with my news vidcasts. Very nice.
The earbuds are not that bad. Not as nice as my Shure earbuds, but not that bad. The recessed earphone jack is a bummer - again, I wonder if Apple did this not for aesthetics, but to limit the stress on the port.
Speakerphone is anemic.
UI is phenomenal. SPB/SBSH shells on my 8525 still do not come close to the elegance of the iPhone's UI.
Battery life is good. I spent all day yesterday with WiFi and Bluetooth on, as well as lots of calls, and I still had plenty of battery life left. I'll do a full-on stress test later.

[925]

The iPhone is phenomenal - absolutely phenomenal... and EDGE speeds are not a deal-breaker (really!)... but iPhone is also definitely version 1.0. What happened to the adage "Never use version 1.0 of anything"? iPhone is a true next generation, and a defining technology.

I like my iPhone. I am keeping my iPhone. But the rest of this email is my grousings of things I don't like, or that need to be fixed in version 2.

Don't buy an iPhone if you want to make calls while driving -- unless it gets voice dialing someday. I expect laws to be passed that say that cellphones with virtual keyboards are unsafe and can not be used while driving.

iPhone is definitely NOT the best cell phone ANYONE has made. No safe way to dial a call while driving - or maybe even answering a call safely.

No one-touch dialing. Try four-touch dialing. You can't do anything "by touch".

No Redial: Does not appear to be a "call the guy back" method like most phones have by just hitting SEND again.

Really needs voice dialing. And once you do voice dialing well, why not add voice tune selection. And once you've done that, why not make the entire command structure voice based. A phone with a virtual keyboard and no voice dialing is a true driving hazard.

As a cell phone, the implementation is quite limited compared to any existing cell phone in today's marketplace. The iPhone is a piece of electronics that happens to be able to place phone calls. It isn't (yet) a real cell phone.

The stupid earphone jack design obsoletes every existing earphone already owned by man unless you use an extraneous ugly annoying additional-cost adapter.

Relatively easy to get "stuck" in some apps where it isn't obvious what you should do to stop or back out of an app. Main Menu gets you back, but when you re-enter the app, you are stuck at the same place. It makes you feel trapped. There is always a way out, but you have to fumble and fumble. Poor design.

The camera is good, but not good enough. Too low quality. No zoom. And where is the video camera, especially since they push YouTube.

Google Maps are great. But where is the GPS? A mapping program without a GPS is very clumsy and a tough user intensive.

I can't find any "push" email - email only comes in long cycles. If you have ever had push email, or want sub-minute email cycles, you need push badly.

Standards are terrible. The city naming standards for setting clock time zones are different from the city naming standards for setting Weather cities. And the clock program promotes "World Time", while the weather is limited to US only.

Lots of screens do not change from portrait to landscape.

Lots of keyboard changes between apps. Stuff that was "really neat" on one keyboard simply isn't there on another. And the guy that left the comma and the period off of the basic email screen was a real moron.

No Windows 2000 drivers! And no Vista 64 bit drivers. You are just out of luck. Sorry!

In Safari, there are definitely times you wish the app could resize data, or could work only one column. Sometimes even after pinching data to get just the right sized display, the data just doesn't fit right on the screen. And when you return to the page via favorites, it appears that none of the settings are sticky. Examples of frustrations include reading the two-columned Google News, reading Bloglines when the blog selector is off to the left, and even trying to read just one tiny area of a larger website - like box scores during a baseball game on a major league baseball site - and wouldn't it be great if you could stay looking at a particular place on a website, and tell it to refresh once a minute automatically?

Not the "best iPod" ever made - sorry Steve. The iPhone is in between a Nano and a iPod, and sits in a middle no-man's land that isn't the best of either. It doesn't begin to compete with an 80GB iPod, and a Nano is easier to use both because of dedicated controls and the Nano has much more storage space than an iPhone of the same 4GB or 8GB size due to 700+ MB of OSX memory overhead.

The phone probably should have 3 or 4 fixed buttons instead of the one fixed "main menu" button. It wouldn't have taken up any more valuable real estate, and then you would have just a little more app flexibility... like a "back" button, instead of a only having a main-menu "start over" button.

Where are the commands for cut and paste?

The calculator is amateurish. My biggest complaints are lack of tactile response (which includes not knowing whether you actually hit any of the operator keys), lack of comma groupings of numbers, and being limited to 8 meaningful digits. This is a virtual calculator. It could have been an extremely good one very easily.


Little stuff:

When you are on Edge, the screen shows AT&T as the carrier. When you are on WiFi, the AT&T still shows, instead of showing the much more useful name of the WiFi connection.

Why no date and day of week on the main screen? AT&T (which never changes) is more important than "Friday June 29"?

Web access is labeled Safari. CLEARLY it should be labeled "Web" or "Internet".

Can't listen to gameday audio on MLB.com.


And an enhancement proposal: Group the clock and calendar icons next to each other. And make the calendar actually be TODAY's date and day. Change the icon once every 24 hours. Making the clock icon change continuosly would also be quite cool. I happened to notice the clock icon at 10:25 this morning, and thought my iPhone time was set wrong.

[bigshot]

I don't think you meant what you wrote. You're saying you can't use your iPhone like a normal cell phone by holding it up to the head and talking?

Nope. Both the speaker and the microphone are on the bottom. There is no earpiece. If you put it on speakerphone, you hold it away from your face with the bottom facing your mouth.

See ya
Steve

[Surf Monkey]

Nope. Both the speaker and the microphone are on the bottom. There is no earpiece. If you put it on speakerphone, you hold it away from your face with the bottom facing your mouth.

See ya
Steve

Uhm...

The bottom speaker is only active when you operate it in speaker phone mode. When the speaker phone is off, the speaker on the bottom turns off and the speaker at the top, by where you put your ear when you use any phone, turns on.

[deftdrummer1]

Nope. Both the speaker and the microphone are on the bottom. There is no earpiece. If you put it on speakerphone, you hold it away from your face with the bottom facing your mouth.

See ya
Steve

wtf, didn't steve jobs hold it up to his head while talking at the keynote or did I miss something?

[Sarlacc]

Nope. Both the speaker and the microphone are on the bottom. There is no earpiece. If you put it on speakerphone, you hold it away from your face with the bottom facing your mouth.

See ya
Steve


Look at your phone again Steve. There is a little "slit" near the top. Basically opposite of where the home button is on the bottom. That is the earpieve speaker.

So, you can in fact talk on the phone like a normal phone. I've done many times already :D

There is also a proximity sensor in there. So when the phone is on your face the screen goes black. This why that cute pudgy little cheeks of yours wont accidently hit a button.

Try it out and report back.

[bigshot]

Yeah! You're right. But that slit comes nowhere near my ear when I hold it in normal phone position. It's down pressed against my cheek. I'm used to regular phone recievers, not cell phones. I suppose I'll get used to it.

When I put it in the right spot to hear through the slit, my cheek bumped the button on the screen and switched from phone to bluetooth. Oy!

See ya
Steve

[Pete_L_P]

Originally Posted by Pete_L_P
I don't think you meant what you wrote. You're saying you can't use your iPhone like a normal cell phone by holding it up to the head and talking?
Nope. Both the speaker and the microphone are on the bottom. There is no earpiece. If you put it on speakerphone, you hold it away from your face with the bottom facing your mouth.

See ya
Steve
It still sounds like you're saying you can't simply use this as a normal phone. Surely you don't have to use it as a speakerphone, and can answer a call by just putting it up to your head (without speakerphone), and thus hear sound coming from a smaller speaker near the ear (as opposed to the speakerphone speaker).

(Part of me feels like you're pulling my leg.)

Pete

[riddlemd]

Yeah! You're right. But that slit comes nowhere near my ear when I hold it in normal phone position. It's down pressed against my cheek. I'm used to regular phone recievers, not cell phones. I suppose I'll get used to it.

When I put it in the right spot to hear through the slit, my cheek bumped the button on the screen and switched from phone to bluetooth. Oy!

See ya
Steve

Hold the slit to your ear and keep the mic out of your freakin mouth so people don't have to hear you breath ;p

It is designed for the slit to be at your ear and the mic near (but not on) your mouth.

[cpivot]

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, Im sorry I had to laugh........

Anyway back to the subject at hand, I LOVE MY iPhone!!!!!!

[Monument Man]

the iphone is awesome. literally the best gadget i've ever owned. it's my first smartphone, although I am a longtime iPod addict.

one of the best things are the third party applications, which range from mundane to truly extraordinary.

the only downside is the battery life, although i have had no real problems here.

[daihard]

I love my iPhone 3G. I had an iPod touch, and it was the perfect device for me except for the lack of phone feature. Imagine my satisfaction with the iPhone 3G now! (Oh yeah, the 2MP camera is a nice plus.)

[mainevent212]

i think its amazing .. best purchase from me since the macbook

[kyussmondo]

The first iPhone was amazing, it was a revolutionary product. The iPhone 3G is more of an evolutionary product giving some much needed features that the old one lacked. Apple have amazed me with the iPhone. I always knew they had good products like the iPod and Macs. The iPhone was like the first Mac or first iPod, it changed everything.

I am sure as the prices drop the iPhone will become as popular as the iPod is. I remember when the iPod was first out, people complained about the lack of features, yet today everyone has one. It is about the interface and the whole experience. The iPhone gives you that experience in much the same way the iPod does, maybe even more so once they iron out MobileMe.

To conclude, I love my iPhone. I still love it. Usually I get a phone and regret it after a month or 2. I have 2 iPhones now and I still love it as much as the first day I got it.

[baggss]

I'm fairly impressed with it.

I switched from a Palm Treo 700P Smart Phone and I have found mostly advantages of the iPhone over the Treo 700P. The system is not as clunky as Palm OS 5, the integration is nicer with a Mac (duh), the fact that there are 8Gb of storage space is nice, the Apps are both better thought out and better made/implemented There are some downsides to it, mostly in the area of customization, but there are some 3rd party apps that make up for this.

Overall a good product, and the $199 price tag was a good deal. My Treo cost me $450 with the discount for extending my contract when I got it almost 2 years ago.

[n3tfury]

got mine last week, hence my return to this forum ;p i wouldn't pay $400 or whatever the first gen sold for, but for $199, it's a great deal. itunes is a bit quirky with some things and sadly the couple of third party apps to replace itunes were nothing but fail. overall though, happy camper.

[Bitgod]

I'm very meh on my 3G compared to my 1st iphone. I keep trying to figure out if I'm going to keep it or not. Selling my first one will cover the initial 3G cost, but is the 3G an upgrade and am I happy with it. I'm sure the answer would be yes I'm happy if this was my first iphone, but with a bunch of little things that I'm not happy about, like the yellow tint, 3G that's somewhat useless (you have to be in the right places, and most of the time I get more bars with 3G off, plus 3G drains the battery too fast, so I just leave it off most of the time), and I can't charge it with my car stereo like I could with the 1st gen. I'll probably keep it just because "It's the newest" and maybe it gets better with upgrades.