my iphone review...

[mdwsta4]

Picked up an iphone over the weekend. I'm a cell phone junkie so I just had to do it. Originally wanted an 8GB, but the stores were sold out. left, but came back with a friend a few hours later that needed to return her broken ipod. Decided to pick up a 4GB since I have a full size ipod already. Called as soon as I got home and they got a shipment of 8GB models 5 minutes ago. Ah well. Satisfied with this one. As others have mentioned, this is a phone and that’s about it. Revolutionary? Meh. It has a cool interface and some nifty features, but nothing revolutionary. If anything, it doesn’t do things that other phones I’ve been using have been able to do since 2002 (Bluetooth) or even 99 (custom ringtones). Hopefully future firmware updates will correct some downfalls, but I’ll probably only keep the phone for a few months. My SE k790 has probably been one of the best phones I’ve ever used and when the k850 comes out I’ll be upgrading for sure. Anyway, here are some pro’s and con’s off the top of my head-


Pros:
Awesome quality, large screen
Touch sensitivity works great and is easy to use
Can have lots of music/videos at my fingertips
Safari
amazing battery life
Google maps, FTW!
Multiple tasks can be done without closing other apps
Multiple browsers can be used at the same time
Ease of firmware dates (simply plug it into your computer)
New headphones can control playback (not that I’ll ever use apple’s headphones)
Zoom in web browser/maps/pictures
Visual voicemail? I guess it’s a neat feature although I don’t get billions of voicemails to where I’d need it. plus how hard is it to press ‘9’ to go to the next message?

Cons:
No MMS
Bluetooth is crippled and only works with headset (pointless really and biggest downside)
No custom ringtones (second biggest downside)
Headphone port is recessed and I can’t use my shure headphones!!! (tied for second biggest downside)
No standby status screen. The screen’s either ON or OFF (meaning no quick look for the time)
Programs crash
Cannot customize main screen (I could care less about stocks or youtube)
Never really see your wallpaper except when unlocking the screen
.5GB of space taken up by pre-installed OS.
Cannot store contacts on the SIM card (what’s the point of a SIM card then!?!?)
No voice dialing
No way to save pictures from web browser
No copy paste function?!!?
Keyboard does not work in landscape mode when messaging (which is a lot easier to use)

Neutral:
Camera. It’s crap quality, but I could care less about it
Silver back. It looks out of place with the black antenna cover on the bottom. Maybe I could powdercoat it or anodize it black?!
Tactile feedback. I like being able to press a joystick X amount of times in X direction and know exactly where I’m going in the menus. Same with texting or dialing. Impossible to do with the iphone
Size. There are smaller phones out there, but it’s a lot smaller than you might first thing. Feels fine in the hand and in the pocket
Heat? Tested out every app and put it through its paces last night for hours on end. Was getting pretty warm for a while
Can’t delete certain parts of SMS message trail. It’s either all or nothing.


Like I mentioned, overall it’s a neat device for what it does, but at the same time it doesn’t do A LOT of things every other phone I have used can do. Those things are pretty major in my opinion. So it'll be neat to have for a few months and I'll try to use it as my main phone, but think I'll still be switching out to other phones on a semi regular basis during the week.

[deathpulse]

Thank you for your review - it seems fairly balanced and gave me a good view of the good/bad features of the iphone from the perspective of someone who seems to be used to advanced "regular" cell phones. I've been wondering what the iPhone really offers above and beyond some of the cutting edge cell phones out there, and in truth, it doesn't really seem like it offers much (Above the nice large screen) more than many cell phones, and many of the "standard" cell phone features I would expect on a high end phone are not available in the iphone (removable battery, custom ringers, e-mail from my work exchange server, 3g the list goes on). I think I'll wait for gen 2 or gen 3 before I purchase!

[greenjbhsd]

I bought mine and I agree on a lot of the negatives, hopefully however, they can fix some of that with the current hardware. Much of what is missing to me seems like software fixes that should come in time. But then again, I am not too savvy with software/components and could be way off base, I am just trying to apply logic on this one....

[ryarber]

One more biggie for me is that you cannot adjust the volume of alerts or change ringtone for alerts, eg. receipt of text message, receipt of voicemail, etc. I cannot hear my text message alert.

Lack of voice dialing may make me go back to my old PDA-phone (Cingular 8525).

One other thing, the keypad is too darn sensitive. Hovering my thumbs above the screen can result in errant screen taps.

[mdwsta4]

oh, another pretty big Con I discovered was that you cannot send a single SMS message to multiple recipients nor can you forward SMS messages!! so if you want to send the same message to 10 people, you have to retype the message 10 times!

[Jesse Hollington]

.5GB of space taken up by pre-installed OS.

This one's a common misconception. As far as we've been able to tell, the OS is about 200MB. The remaining size difference is the same as it is on other hard drive and flash-based devices like the iPod Nano. You only get about 7.45GiB out of an 8GB storage device to begin with. The iPhone has 7.27GiB of usable space, meaning the difference is the iPhone operating system and other files.

People have been citing 700MB for the OS since the earliest pre-release reviews last week, which is incorrect.

Visual voicemail? I guess it’s a neat feature although I don’t get billions of voicemails to where I’d need it. plus how hard is it to press ‘9’ to go to the next message?

I guess it's more a question of how hard it is to navigate to that one important message you need to hear, without having to listen to a half-dozen unimportant or blank messages.

Personally, while I agree that the rest of the list above are all obvious omissions, and many are surprising, many of them also aren't going to affect the average user. However, for me the single biggest glaring omission is the lack of any kind of voice dial support, particularly considering how difficult it is to dial a contact otherwise on a touch screen. One of the deciding factors for me to go from my Blackberry 8700 to a Nokia E62 was that the BB lacked Voice dial, and was otherwise a device that was far too cumbersome to dial with "blind" (unlike a normal cell phone with a 12-button tactile keypad).

[greenjbhsd]

Hopefully Apple will accept feedback on features we would like to see and hopefully the present hardware will support the vast majority of what users want. I looked at it like this, and yes, I am trivializing the changes to the OS or programs to get you to the end.

Cons:
No MMS - Should be nothing more then a software change since all hardware is present.

Bluetooth is crippled and only works with headset (pointless really and biggest downside) - that may be all we are stuck with until we get firmware updates and software updates.

No custom ringtones (second biggest downside) - hopefully will come later. There is already a speaker and microphone present so I would think this is just software that needs to be updated.

Headphone port is recessed and I can’t use my shure headphones!!! (tied for second biggest downside) - this we are most likely stuck with until a 3rd party adaptor comes around.

No standby status screen. The screen’s either ON or OFF (meaning no quick look for the time) - annoying but should be able to be fixed via software updates.

Programs crash - updates to software should correct.

Cannot customize main screen (I could care less about stocks or youtube) - I could not agree more and hopefully this will be something we get later on.

Never really see your wallpaper except when unlocking the screen - again, should be something they can change via software updates.

.5GB of space taken up by pre-installed OS. - reports on this site claim it is closer to 200 MB and then the typical "you get less then reported" for capacity.

Cannot store contacts on the SIM card (what’s the point of a SIM card then!?!?) - I doubt they will change this as it seems to be a deliberate action on their part.

No voice dialing - the unit has the speaker and mic in there already. I would guess this could be added with no changes to hardware.

No way to save pictures from web browser - safari update could handle this.

No copy paste function?!!? - agreed, so annoying, software updates again

Keyboard does not work in landscape mode when messaging (which is a lot easier to use) - Oddly I didn't even know this till I read it here, now it annoys me. Should be something they can update as well and hopefully will.


So as I see it a lot of what we want should be doable with the hardware that is present. It might actually be a good time to generate a feature list and after it gets to a good length send it on over to Apple and see if they will take it as feedback. While I would not expect them to issue a future development plan, they may give some kind of feedback to this site on it.

[mdwsta4]

oh i totally agree that most downfalls could easily be fixed with firmware updates. it's just a matter of when!
i could live with a bunch of the pitfalls, but some of them really 'need' to be fixed for me to keep this phone for more than a month or two.
custom ringtones- i'm sorry, but i like to differentiate callers
group/forwarding SMS
receipt of MMS- currently if another user sends you an MMS you don't receive it, nor do you receive an error message, nor do they receive an error message!!! it's just lost in limbo!)

i think some of the other major points are major, but can be learned to live with until a later date. the above ones are pretty major IMO.

[Jesse Hollington]

It does go to show how much more difficult it is to produce a phone for the masses, however.... People's needs are far too divergent in the world of cell phones to produce a one-size-fits-all device unless you really do load it with features.

Most of the list above I'd consider merely "nice to have" as opposed to requirements, but that's just me. My phone almost always lives on vibrate mode, so I couldn't care less about custom ringtones (I tend to set them on phones that allow for it, and then end up never using them ), and I've never really used MMS on an e-mail-capable device (although the lack of an ability to receive them in at least text form is a very strange oversight).

On the other hand, as somebody who does drive on longer trips frequently, things like voice dial are huge show-stoppers, particularly on a device that can't be dialed by tactile feedback.

[mdwsta4]

i agree it's near impossible to create the 'perfect' cell phone for everyone, but creating such a 'revolutionary' device that doesn't do simple things that many cell phones since 2000 have been able to do is obsurd.
with the exception of the touch screen, my year old SE k790 does everything the iphone does and more. hell, even my back up razr and t610 can do much of the same and more! the point being, why cripple so many items that just about every other cell phone on the market has? that's not a recipe for success (although i guess it doesn't matter w/ them selling as many as they are thus far).

[Jesse Hollington]

I said several months ago that there's really little to nothing that the iPhone would do that hasn't been done to death by other phones on the market, so this really isn't much of a surprise.

In true Apple form, they're "revolutionizing" the cell phone not by what it does, but by how it does it. I don't necessarily agree with that approach (at least not entirely), but if you look at their design history in other products such as the iPod, it's not in the least bit surprising.

[Surf Monkey]

Originally Posted by jhollington

Most of the list above I'd consider merely "nice to have" as opposed to requirements, but that's just me.

There are some pretty serious issues in those lists though. The lack of copy/paste is just absurd for example. Apple is going to have to address the important ones with firmware IMO.

[Surf Monkey]

Originally Posted by jhollington

In true Apple form, they're "revolutionizing" the cell phone not by what it does, but by how it does it.

Exactly. But also in typical Apple style, they've dumbed it down a little further than they should have. Luckily they usually respond fairly quickly to glaring omissions serious bugs. Since iPhone is 1.0 ware I have no doubt in my mind that there will be several firmware updates over the next 12 months that really refine and polish iPhone's features.

[Jesse Hollington]

Yes, but for the average user, how much of an omission is cut and paste, really? Not having an iPhone, I can't say, and I have a gut feeling that I'd personally hate not being able to do this, but since the applications that are present are already otherwise limited, is it really that much of a loss? In other words, what would you really copy and paste between?

It seems to me that most of the information that you would want to copy and paste, like URLs, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses is all presented as links anyway. While that doesn't solve everything, it should address the things that most people are going to be concerned about transferring between applications.

Ultimately, it probably depends on what device you're coming from. Somebody who is a smartphone user is going to see this as a huge omission (heck, it ocassionally frustrates me when I use my RAZR instead of my BB or E62 ). On the other hand, somebody coming from any other cell phone isn't even going to notice that it's not there.

[Surf Monkey]

Originally Posted by jhollington

Yes, but for the average user, how much of an omission is cut and paste, really? Not having an iPhone, I can't say, and I have a gut feeling that I'd personally hate not being able to do this, but since the applications that are present are already otherwise limited, is it really that much of a loss? In other words, what would you really copy and paste between?

You're kidding, right? You don't suppose that you might like to cut and paste as you write and edit an email? That's just one of the areas where copy/paste is essential. Also, the idea that "average users" won't miss copy/paste seems like a stretch to me. Haven't most people used a computer for email before? I think they have.

Originally Posted by jhollington

It seems to me that most of the information that you would want to copy and paste, like URLs, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses is all presented as links anyway. While that doesn't solve everything, it should address the things that most people are going to be concerned about transferring between applications.

Again, it's not just about transferring between applications. It's also about transferring data around a single page or between emails or between emails and calendar entries or between lines in a calendar entry and so forth and so on.

Originally Posted by jhollington

Ultimately, it probably depends on what device you're coming from. Somebody who is a smartphone user is going to see this as a huge omission (heck, it ocassionally frustrates me when I use my RAZR instead of my BB or E62 ). On the other hand, somebody coming from any other cell phone isn't even going to notice that it's not there.

I disagree. Copy/paste is practically a universal. It isn't some obscure function that nobody uses much. It's an essential part of the baseline computer experience. iPhone needs it IMO.